Leprosy is a malignant disease that occurs as a result of the spread of black bile throughout the body, due to which the nature of the organs deteriorates, their structure and shape deteriorate and are disrupted; sometimes leprosy at the end of the disease disrupts the connection of the organs, and they fall off due to ulceration. Leprosy is like a cancer that covers the whole body; sometimes it ulcerates and sometimes it doesn’t. In some cases, it lasts for the patient for a very long time.
And sometimes black bile rushes into one organ and, depending on its qualities, causes hardening, scirrhus or cancer. If the bile is liquid and boiling, then it gives rise to corrosive gangrene, and rushing to the surface of the skin, such bile causes well-known diseases: black bruises, black bacilli, lichen, and the like. If black bile, having spread throughout the body, rots, then this gives rise to black bile fever, and if it accumulates, but does not rot, it causes leprosy.
The primary active cause of leprosy is a disorder of the nature of the liver, which strongly deviates towards hotness and dryness and burns the blood into black bile, or a disorder of the nature of the whole body, or both of these disorders are such that the blood thickens because of them from the cold.
And the material cause of leprosy is food that produces black bile, as well as food that produces mucus; if one indigestion piles on top of another and heat acts on the food, it dissolves rarefied substances and turns dense substances into black bile; Frequent overfilling and eating on a full stomach also work, for the same reason.
The contributing cause here is the obstruction of the pores, by which the innate heat is suffocated, and the blood cooled and condensed, especially if the spleen is weak and does not draw and is not able to clear the blood of the black gall juice, or if the expelling force in the viscera is too weak to drive them into the vessels anus and uterus, i pores are clogged. Sometimes all this is facilitated by the depravity of the air - in itself or as a result of the presence of lepers in the neighborhood, for this disease is contagious and sometimes transmitted by inheritance and arises as a result of the evil nature of the drop of seed from which the sick person is created by inheritance. It is bad in itself due to its nature or acquired such qualities in the uterus due to some circumstances, for example, if conception occurred during menstruation.
When the warmth of the air is accompanied by poor quality food, such as fish, dried meat, coarse meat, donkey meat and lentils, leprosy is likely to arise, as often happens in Alexandria. When black bile is mixed with the blood, a small amount of it contributes to the generation of a large amount, for it necessarily thickens the blood for two reasons: firstly, due to the thickness of its substance, and secondly, due to its coldness, causing solidification, and if part The moisture in the blood thickens and it dries more easily from the warmth of the body. The thickness of the blood of lepers is sometimes so significant that when bleeding, something like sand comes out.
This disease is sometimes called lion disease. They say that it was so called because it often affects lions, and they say because it makes the patient’s face gloomy and gives him the appearance of a lion; they also say that she torments the victim like a lion.
Even if this disease is weak, it is still difficult to treat, and there is no hope of curing a strong disease; Beginning leprosy is more accessible to treatment, and established leprosy is less susceptible to it. If black bile is transformed from yellow bile, then the disease is more violent and more painful, its manifestations are more severe and it burns and ulcerates more strongly, but is more accessible to treatment; if the bile is formed from blood sediment, then the disease is safer and calmer and does not cause ulceration. Leprosy from burnt black bile is similar in its manifestations to yellow bile, but is slower to treat.
This disease continuously spoils the nature of the organs, opposing its qualities to those suitable for life, that is, warmth and humidity, until it reaches the dominant organs, and then it kills.
Leprosy begins with the limbs and soft organs - hair falls out on them and their color changes, and it often comes to ulceration, and then the disease slowly spreads throughout the body. Although leprosy begins first in the entrails, its first effect appears on the extremities, for the extremities are weaker; however, often the patient dies before the visible danger from leprosy again turns to the insides and major organs, and death occurs precisely from leprosy and from the disorder of his nature.
Since cancer - and this is leprosy of a single organ - is one of the incurable diseases, then what can you say about leprosy, which is cancer of the whole body. However, leprosy has one difference: this disease spreads throughout the whole body, and when you use strong medicinal remedies, you deal with the entire disease as a whole and do not focus them on individual organs. But this is not the case with cancer.