but also among the Syrians (2Ki 5:1.), and which is still found in that part of the world, most frequently in the countries of the Lebanon and Jordan and in the neighbourhood of Damascus, in which city there are three hospitals for lepers (Seetzen, pp. 277, 278), and occasionally in Arabia (Niebuhr, Arab. pp. 135ff.) and Egypt; though at the present time the pimply leprosy, lepra tuberosa s. articulorum (the leprosy of the joints), is more prevalent in the East, and frequently occurs in Egypt in the lower extremities in the form of elephantiasis. Of the white leprosy (called Lepra Mosaica), which is still met with in Arabia sometimes, where it is called Baras, Trusen gives the following description: “Very frequently, even for years before the actual outbreak of the disease itself, white, yellowish spots are seen lying deep in the skin, particularly on the genitals, in the face, on the forehead, or in the joints. They are without feeling, and sometimes cause the hair to assume the same colour as the spots. These spots afterwards pierce through the cellular tissue, and reach the muscles and bones. The hair becomes white and woolly, and at length falls off; hard gelatinous swellings are formed in the cellular tissue; the skin gets hard, rough, and seamy, lymph exudes from it, and forms large scabs, which fall off from time to time, and under these there are often offensive running sores. The nails then swell, curl up, and fall off; entropium is formed, with bleeding gums, the nose stopped up, and a considerable flow of saliva... The senses become dull, the patient gets thin and weak, colliquative diarrhea sets in, and incessant thirst and burning fever terminate his sufferings” (Krankheiten d. alten Hebr. p. 165).
verses 2-28
Lev 13:2-28The symptoms of leprosy, whether proceeding directly from eruptions in the skin, or caused by a boil or burn. - Lev 13:2-8. The first case: “When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh (body) a raised spot or scab, or a bright spot.” שׂאת, a lifting up (Gen 4:7, etc.), signifies here an elevation of the skin in some part of the body, a raised spot like a pimple. ספּחת, an eruption, scurf, or scab, from ספח to pour out, “a pouring out as it were from the flesh or skin” (Knobel). בּהרת .)le, from בּהר, in the Arabic and Chaldee to shine, is a bright swollen spot in the skin. If ether of these signs became “a spot of leprosy,” the person affected was to be brought to the priest, that he might examine the complaint. The term zaraath, from an Arabic
