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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
For centuries the disease of leprosy and the book of Leviticus have been linked together. The description of skin disease given in the thirteenth chapter of that book has long been thought to be that of the disease known to medicine as leprosy or Hansen's disease as modern leprologists prefer to call it in order to avoid the stigma which still attaches to the name leprosy. As a result, the regulations in that chapter have determined the attitude of Western communities towards persons suffering from this disease, and have largely influenced the public health measures of control applied by these communities when cases of the disease were discovered.
page 153 note 1 Armauer Hansen (1841–1912) first identified the leprosy bacillus which caused the disease, in his laboratory at Bergen, Norway, in the year 1873.
page 157 note 1 The Mishnah, , Negaim, 3.1 (Danby's, translation, Oxford University Press, 1933. p. 678).Google Scholar
page 157 note 2 Snaith, N. H., The New Century Bible, Leviticus & Numbers (Nelson, London, 1967). p. 92.Google Scholar
page 158 note 1 Compare the use of ‘stroke’ in English for an apoplectic seizure, where this word stands for the phrase ‘the stroke of God's hand’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 10, p. 1151, s.v. ‘Stroke’.
page 159 note 1 See, e.g., his Aphorisms, III, 20.
page 159 note 2 Galen, , On the Natural Faculties, I, xi (Loeb edition, Heinemann, London, 1916, p. 40).Google Scholar
page 159 note 3 Celsus, , De Medicina, III, 25, 1 (Loeb edition, Heinemann, London, 1948, vol. 1, p. 342).Google Scholar
page 160 note 1 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, 98b, where the title is the Aramaic 
.
page 160 note 2 MacArthur, W., ‘Mediaeval “Leprosy” in the British Isles’, Leprosy Review, vol. 24, pp. 8–19 (January 1953)Google Scholar. Unfortunately, MacArthur does not give precise references to the original sources which he quotes.
page 162 note 1 Danielssen, D. C. & Boeck, C. W., Om Spedalskhed (Christiana, 1847)Google Scholar. A French edition entitled Traité de la Spedalskhed ou éléphantiasis des Grecs was published in 1848. These authors regarded sāara'ath as being true leprosy.
page 163 note 1 See my previous article, ‘Leprosy and Leviticus: The Problem of Description and Identification’, S.J.T. 30. 2, 1977, pp. 153–69.
page 163 note 2 Gramberg, K. P. G. A. in Leprosy and the Bible (United Bible Societies, London, 1961), p. 4.Google Scholar