leprosy
(ˈlɛprəsɪ)
Also 6 lepresie, 6–7 leprosie, 7 leaprosie, leprousie.
[? ad. med.L. *leprōsia (Du Cange has leprosia leper-house), f. leprōsus leprous. Cf. It. lebbrosia.]
1. An infectious bacterial disease (Elephantiasis Græcorum), which slowly eats away the body, and forms shining white scales on the skin; common in mediaeval Europe.
In the Eng. Bible it renders the Heb. {cced}āráﻋath, Gr. λέπρα, which seem to have been used as comprehensive terms for various skin diseases.
| 1535 Coverdale Lev. xiii. 3 Then is it surely a leprosy [1382 Wyclif a plaage of lepre]. 1563 Mirr. Mag., Buckingham ci, Thy deare doughter stroken with leprosye. 1597 Morley Introd. Mus. 163 Like vnto a hereditarie lepresie in a mans bodie is vncurable without the dissolution of the whole. 1613 Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 216 They say it procureth the Leprosie in the children which are then gotten. 1673 Ray Journ. Low C. 71 These Waters dry up and heal..Leprosie and other Affections of the Skin. 1798 Coleridge Anc. Mar. iii. xi, Her skin was white as leprosy. 1801 Colebrooke Jrnl. in Life (1873) 176 Last month, a young man..was going to be buried alive, on account of the leprosy. Ibid. 177 When one of the family dies of a leprosy. 1863 Baring-Gould Iceland 176 The people suffer severely from scorbutic attacks and leprosy. |
b. fig.
| 1598 Rowlands Betray. Christ 14 My leprosie is a defiled soule. a 1623 W. Pemble Wks. (1635) 9 The tongues, the pens, the practises of not a few discover unto us this leprosie of Atheisticall contempt of God's wisdome arising in their foreheads. 1651 Hobbes Leviath. iii. xli. 265 Such men as are cleansed of the Leprousie of Sin by Faith. 1751 J. Brown Shaftesb. Charac. 237 What this leprosy of false knowledge may end in, I am unwilling to say. 1781 Cowper Expost. 96 When nations are to perish in their sins, 'Tis in the church the leprosy begins. 1836 Hor. Smith Tin Trump. (1876) 202 Idleness is a moral leprosy, which soon eats its way into the heart. |
† c. A similar disease in horses. Obs.
| 1580 Blundevil Order Curing Horses Dis. iii. 2 The cankred mangenesse, most commonlie called of the old writers the Leprosie. Ibid. cliv. 65 b, The Leprosie or vniuersall manginesse, called of the old writers Elephantia. |
d. attrib. and Comb.
| 1648–60 Hexham Dutch Dict., de Kleppe van een Lazarus, the Clicket which a Leprosie man beggs with. 1705 Lond. Gaz. No. 4106/4 His Cordial Antidote for eradicating all..Leprosie Humours out of the Blood. 1897 Allbutt's Syst. Med. II. 62 The leprosy bacillus is by no means evenly distributed throughout the body. Ibid. 69 Instances of transmission in leprosy-free countries. |
2. A leper-house. rare—1.
| 1834 L. Ritchie Wand. by Seine 89 A malady for which a few centuries ago there were more than twenty thousand lazarettos in Europe. In the fourteenth century, in the domains of the Seigneur de Courcy alone, there were ten of these leprosies. |