But indeed the intrinsic evidence which is afforded by the extracts that I have given from Gordon and De Chauliac, and by the other similar descriptions to which I have referred in the works of the medical authors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, renders it unnecessary to add here any further comment to prove the double proposition, _first_, that the leprosy of the middle ages, as the disease prevailed upon the continent of Europe, was identical with the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_; and, _secondly_, that it was for the victims of this specific malady that the numerous leper hospitals were established, they alone being the individuals who were intended to be (in the language of Gordon and De Chauliac) adjudged, separated from the people, and consigned to the lazar-houses (“_judicati_”—“_a populo sequestrandi_”—“_in Malanteria ducendi_”). So far with regard to leprosy, as seen and described by the early continental authors. Let us now return to the nature of the disease as it prevailed in Great Britain. 2. _Nature of the Leprosy in England._—Reasoning analogically, it may certainly, with the greatest probability, be presumed that the incurable disease which is known in the lazar-house charters and older histories of this country, under the same name as on the continent,—which prevailed here during the same periods as on the continent,—and for which the same systems of medical seclusion and police were adopted,—was entirely the same disease as that described by and known to the continental medical authors of the middle ages. To some minds, such considerations may in themselves be sufficient to fix the identity of the disease, as it prevailed on the continent, and as it prevailed in our own country; and certainly they tend very strongly to show that if, as I have attempted to prove, the epidemic leprosy of continental Europe was the tubercular or Arabian leprosy, the leprosy of England and Scotland was of the same specific nature. But I believe I can adduce still more direct and satisfactory evidence to establish this important point. The first valuable medical work by an English author that has been transmitted to us is the _Compendium Medicinae_ of Gilbert.[182] This author is generally supposed to have lived about 1270, in the reign of Henry III. or Edward I.[183] Bale places him even much earlier.[184]