Archæological Essays, Vol. 2

A great proportion of the maladies to which mankind are liable have, it is true, remained entirely unaltered in their character and consequences from the earliest periods of medical history down to the present day. Synocha, Gout, and Epilepsy, for instance, show the same symptoms and course now, as the writings of Hippocrates describe them to have presented to him upwards of two thousand years ago. The generatio de novo of a really new species of disease “is (says Dr. Mason Good[2]) perhaps as much a phenomenon as a really new species of plant or of animal.” Dr. Good’s remark is probably too sweeping in its principle; for, if necessary, it might be easy to show that, if the particular diseases of particular animal species are liable to alteration at all, they must necessarily alter more frequently than those animal species themselves. In pursuing such an inquiry, the pathologist labours under comparative disadvantages. The physiologist can, by the aid of geological research, prove that the individual species of plants and animals inhabiting this and other regions of the earth, have again and again been changed. The pathologist has no such demonstrative data to show that, in the course of time, the forms and species of morbid action have undergone great mutations, like the forms and species of normal life. But still we have strong grounds for believing that, in regard to our own individual species alone, the diseases to which mankind are subject have already undergone, in some respects, marked changes within the historic era of medicine. Since the first medical observations that are now extant on disease were made and recorded in Greece, various new species of human maladies have, there can be little doubt, made their original appearance. I need only allude to small-pox, measles, and hooping-cough. Again, some diseases which prevailed formerly, seem to have now entirely disappeared from among the human race—as, for example, the Lycanthropia of the Sacred Writings, and of Oribasius, Aetius, Marcellus, and various old medical authors.[3] Other maladies, as that most anomalous affection, the English sweating-sickness of the fifteenth century, have only once, and that for a very short period, been permitted to commit their ravages upon mankind. And lastly, we have still another and more extensive class, including maladies that have changed their geographical stations to such an extent, as to have made inroads upon whole districts and regions of the world, where they were formerly unknown, leaving now untouched the localities which, in older times, suffered most severely from their visitations.

Among this last tribe of diseases no one presents a more curious subject of inquiry than the European leprosy, or tubercular elephantiasis of the middle ages. This malady is now almost entirely, if not entirely, unknown as a native endemic disease on any part of the Continent of Europe; and yet from the tenth to the sixteenth century it prevailed in nearly every district of it. Laws were enacted by Princes and Courts to arrest its diffusion;—the Pope issued bulls with regard to the ecclesiastical separation and rights of the infected;[4]—a particular order of Knighthood was instituted to watch over the sick;—and leper hospitals or lazar-houses were everywhere instituted to receive the victims of the disease. The number of these houses has certainly been often erroneously stated, in consequence, as far as I have been able to trace it, of a strange mistake committed by Ducange, in quoting from Matthew Paris a passage in which that historian contrasts the respective possessions belonging in the thirteenth century to the Hospitalarii, Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, as they were termed, and the Knights Templars. The 19,000 lazar-houses in Christendom, as interpreted by Ducange, mark in Matthew Paris’ work merely the number of manors or commanderies of the Hospitalarii, and have no reference whatever to leprosy or lazar-houses.[5] But still that an immense number of leper-houses existed on the Continent at the period mentioned, is abundantly shown in many of the historical documents of that age. Louis VIII. promulgated a code of laws in 1226, for the regulation of the French leper hospitals; and these hospitals were at that date computed to amount, in the then limited kingdom of France, to not less than 2000 in number—(deux mille leproseries).[6] They afterwards, as is alleged by Velley,[7] even increased in number, so much so that there was scarcely a town or burgh in the country that was not provided with a leper hospital. In his history of the reign of Philip II. Mezeray uses the same language in regard to the prevalence of leprosy and leprous patients in France during the twelfth century.[8] Muratori gives a nearly similar account of the extent of the disease during the middle ages in Italy;[9] and the inhabitants of the kingdoms of Northern Europe, equally became its unfortunate victims.[10]

I have no desire, however, to enter at present into the extensive history of the leprosy of the middle ages, as seen in the different quarters of Europe. My object is a much more limited and a much more humble one. I wish only to adduce various evidence to show that the disease extended to this the most western verge of Europe, and at one time prevailed to a considerable extent in our own kingdom of Scotland, which, at the period alluded to, was one of the most remote and thinly-populated principalities in Christendom. I shall have frequent occasion, at the same time, to illustrate my remarks by references to the disease as it existed contemporaneously in England.[11]

In following out the object adverted to, I shall commence by an enumeration of such leper hospitals as I have detected any notices of in old Scottish records. The knowledge of the mere existence of most of these hospitals has been obtained more by the accidental preservation of charters of casual grants to them than by any historical or traditional notice of the institutions themselves. The information, therefore, which I have to offer in regard to most of them is exceedingly slight. The following meagre notes regarding the two first Lazar or Leper-houses, Spitals, Spetels, or Spitles,[12] which I shall mention, show the truth of this remark.

SCOTTISH LEPER HOSPITALS.

_Aldcambus, Berwickshire._—A Leper Hospital existed at Aldcambus, in the parish of Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, as far back as the reign of William the Lion.

In the Chartulary of the Priory of Coldingham is preserved a charter by which that monarch confirms a grant of half a carrucate of land to this hospital. I shall give a transcript of the charter, which has hitherto remained unpublished. I do so that it may serve as a fair specimen of the various similar charter documents to which I shall have occasion to allude in the course of the following remarks. It is entitled “Confirmatio donationis Hospitali de Aldcambus facta:”—“Willelmus Dei gratia Rex Scottorum omnibus probis hominibus totius terre sue Clericis et laicis salutem. Sciant presentes et futuri me concessisse, et hac cartâ meâ confirmasse donationem illam, quam David de Quicheswde fecit Hospitali de Aldcambus et Leprosis ibi manentibus, de illa dimidia carucata terræ in Aldcambus quam Radulfus Pelliparius tenuit: tenendam in liberam et puram et perpetuam eleemosinam, cum omnibus libertatibus et aisiamentis ad predictam terram juste pertinentibus, ita liberé et quieté sicut carta predicti Davidis testatur: Salvo servicio meo. Testibus Willelmo de Bosch. Cancellario meo, Waltero Cuming, Davide de Hastings. Appud Jeddewrith, xvi. die Maij.”[13]

_Aldnestun in Lauderdale._—At Aldneston another leper-house existed. It was under the control of the Abbey of Melrose. In the Melrose Chartulary there is preserved a charter headed “Carta Leprosorum de Moricestun.” In this charter, Walter Fitzallan, Steward of Scotland, granted to this hospital of Auldnestun and its inmates (Hospitali de Auldnestun et infirmis fratribus ibidem residentibus), a carrucate and a half of land in the village of Auldnestun; another carrucate and a half, which Dame Emma of Ednaham held (tenuit per suas rectas divisas), with the common pasturage and easement (asiamento) of the forests of Birkenside and Ligarrdewude (Legerwood), and a right to grind at his mill without paying multure.[14]

_Kingcase, Ayrshire._—At Kilcais or Kingcase, on a bleak muir in the parish of Prestwick, and about two miles from the town of Ayr, stood, for several centuries, an hospital for Lepers. The general tradition of the surrounding country avers that this hospital was founded by King Robert the Bruce. In the article on Ayr, recently published by the Rev. Dr. Auld and Mr. Cuthill, in the New Statistical Account of Scotland,[15] the foundation charter of Robert Bruce is said to have been purchased by the Magistrates of that town in 1786. I am obligingly assured, however, by Mr. Murdoch of Ayr, that no such document is known to exist among the archives of that town. It is probable that the hospital existed before the time of Bruce. In a charter to the monastery of Dalmulin, contained in the Chartulary of Paisley Abbey,[16] and of the date of the reign of William I. of Scotland, among other lands and localities in Kyle and the immediate neighbourhood of Kingcase, the term Spetel-Crag occurs. Now the term Spetel was a prefix applied, both in Scotland and England, to all hospital lands and possessions, and to these alone; and history records no other hospital whatever in Kyle, from which this appellation of Spetel Craigs could be derived. But whether Bruce was the original founder, or, what is more probable, a liberal endower of the hospital, we know this at least of the history of the Kingcase Leper Hospital, that it possessed at one time pretty extensive lands and property in the parish of Dundonald, and in Kyle Stewart.[17]

These, like many other hospital grants, came after a time to be perverted from their original objects of charity, and applied to the aggrandisement of particular individuals. Thus the family of Wallace of Newton obtained from James II. a feu-charter of the Kingcase estate of Spittalshiels, for the annual payment of eight merks Scots, and sixteen thrave of straw. In reference to this, the land of Spittalshiels has yet (observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note to his _Lord of the Isles_[18]) to give, if required, a quantity of straw for the lepers’ beds of Kingcase, and so much to thatch their houses. Along with Spittalshiels the Wallaces acquired the office of Hereditary Keeper or Governor of the Hospital itself, and of the other lands pertaining to it. In the family of the Wallaces of Craigy this right of patronage and presentation to Kingcase was long held, with all the remaining endowments of the hospital. These privileges were exposed at a judicial sale of the estate of Craigy, and purchased, 1784, by the burgh of Ayr, for £300. The magistrates, from this right, exact feu-duties from the lands formerly belonging to Kingcase, to the annual extent of sixty-four bolls oatmeal, and eight merks Scots money. This revenue has been made over to the poor’s house of Ayr. In virtue of it the magistrates have the privilege of presenting a certain number of inmates to this latter institution.[19]