It appears to have been very prevalent in this country; but when, and how it was introduced, is not known. Some certify it was brought back by the Crusaders, being the only thing they ever did bring back. But it existed here long anterior to the days of the _first_ crusade. The City of Bath is said to have originated from an old British King afflicted with Leprosy, who being obliged, in consequence, to wander far from the habitation of men, and being finally reduced to the condition of a swineherd, discovered the medicinal virtues of the hot springs of Bath, while noticing that his pigs which bathed therein were cured of sundry diseases prevailing among them. The following epigram on King Bladud, who was killed 844, B.C.,--father of King Leir, or Leal, d. 799, B.C.,--was written by a clergyman of the name of Groves, of Claverton:-- "When Bladud once espied some hogs Lie wallowing in the steaming bogs, Where issue forth those sulphurous springs, Since honour'd by more potent kings, Vex'd at the brutes alone possessing What ought t' have been a common blessing, He drove them, thence in mighty wrath, And built the mighty town of Bath. The hogs thus banished by their prince, Have lived in Bristol ever since." Many Lazar or Leper Houses were built in England during the early part of the reign of William the Norman, who founded several. The medical writers of the 13th and 14th centuries, which include the names of Theodoric, the monk, a distinguished surgeon of Bologna; the celebrated Lanfranc, of Milan and afterwards of Paris; Professor Arnold Bachuone, of Barcelona, reputed in his day the greatest physician in Spain; the famous French surgeon Guy de Chauliac; Bernhard Gordon; and our own countrymen Gilbert, _c._ 1270; John of Gaddesden, Professor of Medicine in Merton College, Oxford, and Court Physician to Edward II., minutely describe the disease. It was the custom in those affected days, when a medical man or anyone wrote a book on medicine or a medicinal subject, to call it either a "rose" or a "lily," as "_Rosa Angelica_," "_Lilium medecinae_." The following description of the malady is from the _Lilium medecinae_, by Bernhard Gordon, written about 1305 or 1309. He gives three stages or classes of the disease, viz., the (1) occult, (2) the infallible, and (3) the last, or terminating signs. None of these indications are laid down in Leviticus for the guidance of the Jewish Priests.