have spread thence over the greater part, if not over the whole, of Europe. By the end of the seventh century it was well known in Spain, France, and Lombardy. There is a notice of its occurrence in Ireland in 432. As regards England, the first allusion to leprosy refers to about the year 950. The popular idea that it was brought to this country from the East by the returning Crusaders (circa 1098) is therefore incorrect; though, doubtless, the Crusaders, and the multiplicity of pilgrimages so much the fashion in the Middle Ages, and the destitution arising from the many wars of the period, had something to do with its rapid diffusion and great increase about this time.
So common was leprosy during the Middle Ages that the rulers and clergy of nearly all European states, becoming alarmed at its rapid extension and terrible ravages, took measures, by instituting leper asylums and enacting stringent laws for the segregation and isolation of lepers, to restrict the spread of what was speedily becoming almost a general calamity. These measures, based on what we now know to be a correct appreciation of the infectious nature of the disease, were ultimately crowned, in the case of most European countries, with almost complete success. Reaching its acme during the fourteenth century, leprosy then began to decline, although as regards Great Britain it did not finally disappear as an indigenous disease until the end of the eighteenth century. It died out first in England, later in Scotland the last British leper dying in Shetland in 1798. In Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Russia the repressive measures were almost equally successful, although in these countries, in Greece, and in the Greek islands leprosy of indigenous origin is still occasionally to be seen. The only country in northern Europe in which at the present day it may be said to linger to any extent is Norway, where, in places, it is still by no means uncommon(in 1890 there were 1,100, in 1906 under 500 known lepers); but even here, under a system of segregation and comparative isolation— more humane perhaps in its application than that
