Moreover we read the principal signs, which occur in the description of the Mosaic leprosy, excepting only the infection of the cloaths and houses (of which by and by) recorded by the Greek Physicians. Hippocrates himself calls the λεὑκη or white leprosy Φοινικἱη νȣσος the Phœnician disease.[51] For that the word φϑινικὴ ought to be read Φοινικἱη, appears manifestly from Galen in his _Explicatio linguarum Hippocratis_; where he says that Φοινικἱη νȣσος is a disease which is _frequent in Phœnicia and other eastern regions_.[52] In the foregoing chapter I said that the Leprosy (Leuce) and the Elephantiasis, were diseases of great affinity:[53] in confirmation of which notion the same Galen observes, that the one sometimes changes into the other.[54] Now these two distempers are no where better described than by Celsus, who lived about the time of Augustus Cæsar, and having collected the works of the principal Greek writers in physic and surgery, digested them into order, and turned them into elegant Latin with great judgment. Thus he describes the leprous diseases. _Three are three species of the_ Vitiligo. _It is named_ ἄλφος, _when it is of a white colour, with some degree of roughness, and is not continuous, but appears as if some little drops were dispersed here and there; sometimes it spreads wider, but with certain intermissions or discontinuities. The_ μἑλας _differs from this in colour, because it is black, and like a shadow, but in other circumstances they agree. The_ λεύκη _has some similitude with the_ ἄλφος, _but it has more of the white, and runs in deeper: and in it the hairs are white, and like down. All these spread themselves, but in some persons quicker, in others slower. The_ Alphos _and_ Melas _come on, and go off some people at different times; but the_ Leuce _does not easily quit the patient, whom it has seized.[55] But in the Elephantiasis_, says the same author, _the whole body is so affected, that the very bones may be said to be injured. The surface of the body has a number of spots and tumors on it; and their redness is by degrees changed into a dusky or blackish colour. The surface of the skin is unequally thick and thin, hard and soft; and is scaley and rough: the body is emaciated; the mouth, legs and feet swell. When the disease is inveterate, the nails on the fingers and toes are hidden by the swelling._[56] And the accounts left us by the Arabian physicians, agree with these descriptions. Avicenna, the chief of them, says that _the Leprosy is a sort of universal cancer of the whole body_.[57] Wherefore it plainly appears from all that has been said, that the Syrian Leprosy did not differ in nature, but in degree only, from the Grecian, which was there called λεύκη; and that this same disease had an affinity with the Elephantiasis, sometimes among the Greeks, but very much among the Arabs. For the climate and manner of living, very much aggravates all cuticular diseases.