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302 LEPROSY LEPSIUS of antiquity. With the tide of emigration westward during the decline of the Roman empire leprosy was disseminated over Europe, and during the middle ages prevailed to such a frightful extent that from the 6th to the 15th century the efforts of lawgivers were un- ceasing to arrest its diffusion. Its principal ravages in the West date after the first crusades. The isolation of the infected was still the uni- versal practice, but under the influence of Chris- tianity a more humane spirit presided over the treatment of lepers, and hospitals and asylums on charitable or religious foundations were pro- vided for their reception. In the 13th and 14th centuries these buildings almost literally covered the face of the continent, being num- bered by thousands in every country. Every considerable town had one or more of them in its neighborhood, and at one period it is said that scarcely a town or burgh in France was unprovided with such an establishment. Al- most from the commencement of the Christian era pious fraternities are said to have been organized for the care of persons afflicted with leprosy ; and Pierre de Belloy, in his Qrigine et institution de divers ordres de chevalerie, mentions an order of St. Lazarus, so called from Lazarus the beggar (Luke xvi. 20), the patron of lepers, which was established as early as A. D. 72. A military order of St. Lazarus was established by the crusaders at Jerusalem in the early part of the 12th century, whose duty it was originally to take charge of lepers and their asylums in the Holy Land. The knights hospitallers of St. Lazarus, after being driven out of Palestine, established themselves in France and instituted a celebrated hospi- tal or lazar house outside the gates of Paris. Subsequently, under the protection of several popes, they settled in Sicily and lower Italy ; but with the disappearance of the disease they lost their distinctive religious and charitable character, in accordance with which their con- stitution required the grand master to be a leper. In general, however, hospitals for the reception of lepers were supported by chance eleemosynary contributions, and in secluded portions of the country the condition of the inmates was scarcely less pitiable than in an- cient times. But even under the most favor- able circumstances the leper was completely and for ever an outcast from the world, being considered both legally and politically as a dead person. Upon being set apart from his fellow creatures the ceremonial for the burial of the dead was pronounced over him, masses were said for the benefit of his soul, and, to carry out the illusion to the fullest extent, a shovelful of earth was thrown upon his body. His marriage ties were thenceforth dissolved, although he might contract a new marriage with a person similarly afflicted ; he was prohibited from entering any church or place where food was prepared, from dipping his hands in any running water, and from taking up food or any other article necessary to him without the assistance of a stick or fork ; and he was strictly enjoined to wear a peculiar dress by which he could be known at a distance, and to give notice of his approach by ringing a bell. With the progress of civilization, and the im- provement of the condition of the poorer classes, leprosy declined rapidly; and except in Norway and a few places in the south, it is now unknown in Europe. The horror which the various forms of the disease formerly in- spired has, notwithstanding its disappearance, remained in full force, and the word leper at the present day designates a person whose so- cial and physical condition has reached the lowest pitch of degradation. In the East it still exists in its ancient seats, and sporadic cases are found in the islands of the Indian archipelago, in the Hawaiian islands, on the coasts of Africa, in the West Indies, and in Canada and elsewhere in America. LEPSIUS, Karl Richard, a German Egyptolo- gist, born in Naumburg, on the Saale, Dec. 23, 1810. In 1828 he began the study of lan- guages at the university of Leipsic, and con- tinued it at Gottingen and Berlin, at which latter place he was a pupil of Bopp. In 1833 his essay on the Eugubian tablets obtained for him the degree of doctor from the uni- versity of Berlin. In 1834 he published his Paldographie als Mittel der SpracJiforschung (2d ed., Leipsic, 1842), and in the same year went to Paris, where through his friend Hum- boldt he became well known to the French literati. In April, 1836, he arrived at Rome, where he became a member of the archaBologi- cal institute and formed an intimacy with Bun- sen. From this time he began to devote him- self to the study of Egyptian antiquities, and in 1837 attracted much attention by his Lettre d M. Rosellini sur ^alphabet MeroglypTiique. His residence in Italy was short, but during, it he made researches which formed the basis of several works published at a later date. Among these were his Inscriptiones Umbricce et Oscce (1841), the TodtenbucJi der Aegypter, the im- pression of a papyrus in the museum of Turin (Leipsic, 1842), an essay on comparative phi- lology and one on the numerals in the Indo- Germanic languages, for which he received a prize of 1,200 francs, and two essays on the ancient inhabitants of Italy. In 1838 he went to England on a mission from the archaeologi- cal institute of Rome. Here in company with Bunsen he subsequently projected a great work on ancient Egypt, the materials for which were partly to be gathered by personal investigations in that country. Through the intervention of Bunsen, Humboldt, and Eichhorn, Frederick William IV. of Prussia was induced to send an expedition of learned men and artists to Egypt, with Lepsius at its head. The party assembled at Alexandria in the autumn of 1842, and began its researches under protection of the govern- ment. Among the discoveries which Lepsius made in Egypt are monuments of some of the Pharaohs of the old Egyptian monarchy and