dure, are capable of find its prese Modern medieval man, but they understand that haunted ancient and once was, and modern Leprosy is no longer the mystery it normal lives. and cures permits most lepers to lead quite sy The belief that leprosy makes its victims unfit for either the the society of other men is supported by more than simple aversion. Both to writings of Mohammed endorse the view that the leper is unclean, creature all men. leprosy is by far the hardest of all the diseases that beset the human uncommonly What disti disfiguring, often crippling, and not fatal. must f from all other ailnients is not the physiological dissolution that its victims but the fear, horror, and violent loathing it excites in others. and fo As a plague, leprosy reached its zenith in thirteenth lt began to vanish about the middle of the fifteenth century, and w middle of the sixteenth. Many reasons have been given to accoun timely development of a diagnostic technique flexible enough to distin disfiguring diseases is considered the most persuasive. Most autho fraction of the innumerable victims of medieval leprophobia were leprosy.