[158] _Leviticus_ ch. 20. v. 18. It is true _Maimonides_ according to _Selden_, Uxor Hebraica (The Jewish Wife), Frankfurt 1673. 4to., p. 133., says: At vero si esset mensibus immunda, tametsi deducta fuerit, _etiam et coitus sit secutus_, nuptiae non perficiebantur. (But indeed if she were unclean with menstruation, though she had been led forth to a husband’s house, _even if coition had followed_, the marriage was not proceeded with)—but in that case of course it happened unwittingly; though no doubt it may very well on the other hand have been done not unfrequently wittingly. _Festus_ explains the Latin word _imbubinare_ by “menstruo mulierum sanguine inquinare” (to pollute with the menstrual blood of women), which might almost justify us in conjecturing, that _buboes_ had been observed to originate from intercourse with women during menstruation. _Hippocrates_, De natura pueri (On the Bodily Constitution of the Boy), edit. Kühn Vol. I. p. 390., derives affections of the sort in women from arrested menstruation. [159] _Leviticus_ Ch. 15. Want of space forbids our giving this Chapter here; but anyone who will read it through carefully, must easily see that in it the question is merely of a morbid discharge from the genitals (basar), the duration of which was uncertain. For this reason those affected continued still unclean for nine days after the cessation of the flux, whereas the man who had encountered ordinary pollution (verse 16.) was unclean only till the evening. The Septuagint translators render the flux by ῥύσις (flowing, flux), the person affected by the flux γονοῤῥυής (having a flux from the genitals), while they say of ordinary pollution, ὡς ἐὰν ἐξέλθῃ ἐξ αὐτοῦ κοίτη _σπέρματος_ (“if any man’s seed of copulation go out of him”). _Astruc_ and others wished to refer the flux from the genitals to Lepra (Leprosy), but in that case the Leprosy must needs have been previously noticeable in the person affected by the flux, and the flux therefore been really a symptom. Thus it would have demanded no further special ordinance for purification, as that commanded for Leprosy would have been used for it. Again the same would also have occurred, had the flux been noticed as _first_ symptom of the Leprosy, for then the Priest was bound to have confined the person so affected and put him under observation, to see whether the other symptoms of Leprosy would show themselves as well. But of this there is nothing whatever to be found in the writings attributed to Moses, who clearly distinguishes between the flux and Leprosy, as also does the Author of II Samuel III. 29. Speaking generally, no other Author ever mentions the flux as a constant or frequent symptom of Leprosy, while _Schilling_ even denies its occurrence altogether. Comp. _Hensler_, Vom abendl. Aussatze (On Oriental Leprosy), pp. 130, 396.