Skin, or external, diseases.

These diseases, in their various forms, though not very often mentioned in Holy Scripture, have always been rather widespread in Palestine even up to the present time. The most terrible of them was and is leprosy, concerning which the Law of Moses contains the strictest prescriptions and sets forth the most detailed measures (see Leprosy). There are certain localities in the East, such as Aleppo and Aintab, which suffer from particular skin diseases, perhaps owing to the poor quality of the water, but in Palestine only those diseases are found which are generally widespread in the East. A special treatise, De morbis Biblicis (On Biblical Diseases), was written by O. Bartholomew in 1672.