PROGNOSIS.--The prognosis is very different in the two forms. As we have already stated, both forms may recover, since all leprous products may disappear without any fresh ones appearing. _In nodular cases this is a very rare exception, while it is the rule in the maculo-anæsthetic._ Recurrent outbreaks are almost invariable in nodular cases, and in them, too, nephritis is an almost constant occurrence. Patients rarely live more than eight or nine years after the definite outbreak of the disease. As already remarked, we cannot state that Leprosy of itself is responsible for the end; we are rather inclined to regard the nephritis and other complications as the direct cause of death. The patients usually die long before the disease has run its course. But in the maculo-anæsthetic form the cure of the Leprosy is almost invariably the result. What remains, however, after the cure of the leprosy, is very different. We have occasionally a complete subject with vigour and good health, but usually only a miserable rudiment of a human being, with more or less paralysed and deformed hands and feet, with unclosable eyes, of which the lower part of the cornea is opaque, and from which the tears run down over the cheeks, and with paralysed facial muscles unable to close the mouth, so that the saliva constantly dribbles from it. Such cases may, however, live long and reach great ages, if under such circumstances this can be looked upon as any advantage. They die usually from some intercurrent disease. CHAPTER VII. ETIOLOGY. There is hardly anything on earth, or between it and heaven, which has not been regarded as the cause of Leprosy; and this is but natural since the less one knows, the more actively does his imagination work. And since all that was known of Leprosy was that it was a loathsome disease, search was made everywhere for a cause. We will not linger over the older literature of Leprosy. That may be found fully dealt with in Danielssen and Boeck’s _Traité de la Spedalskhed_ and in Hirsch’s _Geographical Pathology_.