differences. One of the dialects is philologically older than the other, containing fuller and more primitive grammatical forms. The inscriptions in this dialect belong to a kingdom the capital of which was at Ma'in, and which represents the country of the Minoans of the ancients. The inscriptions in the other dialect were engraved by the princes and people of Sabâ, the Sheba of the Old Testament, the Sabæans of classical geography. The Sabæan kingdom lasted to the time of Mohammed, when it was destroyed by the advancing forces of Islam. Its rulers for several generations had been converts to Judaism, and had been engaged in almost constant warfare with the Ethiopic kingdom of Axum, which was backed by the influence and subsidies of Rome and Byzantium. Dr. Glaser seeks to show that the founders of this Ethiopic kingdom were the Habâsa, or Abyssinians, who migrated from Himyar to Africa in the second or first century B.C.; when we first hear of them in the inscriptions they are still the inhabitants of Northern Yemen and Mahrah. More than once the Axumites made themselves masters of Southern Arabia. About A.D. 300 they occupied its ports and islands, and from 350 to 378 even the Sabæan kingdom was tributary to them. Their last successes were gained in 525, when, with Byzantine help, they conquered the whole of Yemen. But the Sabæan kingdom, in spite of its temporary subjection to Ethiopia, had long been a formidable State. Jewish colonies settled in it, and one of its princes became a convert to the Jewish faith. His successors gradually extended their dominion as far as Ormuz, and after the successful revolt from Axum in 378, brought not only the whole of the southern coast under their sway, but the western coast as well, as far north as Mekka. Jewish influence made itself felt in the future birthplace of Mohammed, and thus introduced those ideas and beliefs which subsequently had so profound an effect upon the birth of Islam. The Byzantines and Axumites endeavored to counteract the influence of Judaism by means of Christian colonies and prosclytism. The result was a conflict between Sabâ and its assailants, which took the form of a conflict between the members of the two religions. A violent persecution was directed against the Christians of Yemen, avenged by the Ethiopian

conquest of the country and the removal of its capital to San'a. The intervention of Persia in the struggle was soon followed by the appearance of Mohammedanism upon the scene, and Jew, Christian, and Parsi were alike overwhelmed by the flow. ing tide of the new creed.

The epigraphic evidence makes it clear that the origin of the kingdom of Sabâ went back to a distant date. Dr. Glaser traces its history from the time when its princes were still but Makârib,

ог

Priests," like Jethro, the Priest of Midian, through the ages when they were "kings of Sabâ," and later still kings of Sabâ and Raidân," to the days when they claimed imperial supremacy over all the principalities of Southern Arabia. It was in this later period that they dated their inscriptions by an era, which, as Halévy first discovered, corresponds to 115 B. C. One of the kings of Sabâ is mentioned in an inscription of the Assyrian king of Sargon (B.c. 715), and Dr. Glaser believes that he has found his name in a "Himyaritic" text. When the last priest, Samah'ali Darrahh, became king of Sabâ, we do not yet know, but the age must be sufficiently remote, if the kingdom of Sabâ already existed when the Queen of Sheba came from Ophir to visit Solomon.

The visit need no longer cause astonishment, notwithstanding the long journey by land which lay between Palestine and the south of Arabia. south of Arabia. One of the Minæan inscriptions discovered by Dr. Glaser mentions Gaza, and we now have abundant evidence, as we shall see, that the power and culture of the Sabeans extended to the frontiers of Edom. From the earliest times the caravans of Dedan and Tema had traversed the highways which led from Syria to the spice-bearing regions of Yemen. Three thousand years ago it was easier to travel through the length of Arabia than it is to-day. A culture and civilization existed there of which only echoes remain in Mohammedan tradition.

As we have seen, the inscriptions of Ma'in set before us a dialect of more primitive character than that of Saba. Hitherto it has been supposed, however, that the two dialects were spoken contemporaneously, and that the Minean and Sabæan kingdoms existed side by side. But geography offered difficulties in the way of such a belief, since the seats of Minæan power were embedded in the midst of the

Sabæan kingdom, much as the fragments of Cromarty are embedded in the midst of other counties. Dr. Glaser has now made it clear that the old supposition was incorrect, and that the Minæan kingdom preceded the rise of Saba. We can now understand why it is that neither in the Old Testament nor in the Assyrian inscriptions do we hear of any princes of Ma'in, and that though the classical writers are acquainted with the Minæan people they know nothing of a Minæan kingdom." The Minean kingdom, in fact, with its culture and monuments, the relics of which still survive, must have flourished in the gray dawn of history, at an epoch at which, as we have hitherto imagined, Arabia was the home only of nomad barbarism. And yet in this remote age aphabetic writing was already known and practised, the alphabet being a modification of the Phonician written vertically and not horizontally. To what an early date are we referred for the origin of the Phoenician alphabet it

self!

The Minean kingdom must have had a long existence. The names of thirty-three of its kings are already known to us, three of them occurring not only on monuments of Southern Arabia but on those of Northern Arabia as well.

Northern Arabia has been as much a terra incognita to Europeans as the fertile fields and ruins of Arabia Felix. But here, too, the veil has been lifted by recent exploration. First, Mr. Doughty made his way to the ruins of Teima, the Tema of the Bible (Is. xxi. 14; Jer. xxv. 23; Job vi. 19), and the rock-cut tombs of Medain Salibh, wandering in Bedouin dress at the risk of his life through a large part of Central Arabia. He brought back with him a number of inscriptions, which proved that this part of the Arabian continent had once been in the hands of Nabatheans who spoke an Aramaic language, and that the Ishmaelites of Scripture, instead of being the ancestors of the tribe of Koreish, as Mohammedan writers imagine, were an Aramaan population, whose language was that of Aram and not of Arabia. The Sinaitic inscriptions had already shown that in the Sinaitic peninsula Arabic is as much an imported language as it is in Egypt and Syria. There, too, in pre

It is possible that a Minsan population is meant by the Maonites of Judges x. 12, the 66 Mehunims' of 2 Chron. xxvi. 7.

en

Christian times, inscriptions were graved upon the rocks in the Nabathean characters and language of Petra-inscriptions in which a fertile imagination once discovered a record of the miracles wrought by Moses in the wilderness.

Since Mr. Doughty's adventurous wanderings, Teima and its neighborhood have been explored by the famous German epigraphist, Professor Euting, in company with a Frenchman, M. Huber. M. Huber's life was sacrificed to Arab fanaticism, but Professor Euting returned with a valuable stock of inscriptions. Some of these are in Aramaic Nabathean, the most important being on a stêlê discovered at Teima, which is now in the Museum of the Louvre. About 750 are in an alphabet and language which have been termed Protoarabic, and are still for the most part unpublished. Others are in a closely allied language and alphabet, called Libbyanian by Professor D. H. Müller, since the kings by whose reigns the inscriptions are dated are entitled kings of Lihhyan, though it is more than probable that Lihhyân represents the Thamud of the Arabic genealogists. The rest are in the language and alphabet of Ma'in, and mention Minæan Sovereigns, whose names are found on the monuments of Southern Arabia.*

The Minæan and Lihhyanian texts have been mainly discovered in El-Ola and ElHigr, between Teima and El-Wej-a port that until recently belonged to Egypt-on the line of the pilgrims' road to Mekka. The Protoarabic inscriptions, on the other hand, are met with in all parts of the country, and according to Professor Müller, form the intermediate link between the Phoenician and Minæan alphabets. Like the Lihhyanian, the language they embody is distinctly Arabic, though presenting curious points of contact with the Semitic languages of the north, as for example in the possession of an article ha. The antiquity of Lihhyanian writing may be judged from the fact that Professor Müller has detected a Lihhyanian inscription on a Babylonian cylinder in the British Museum, the age of which is approximately given as 1000 B.0.

We gather, therefore, that as far back as the time of Solomon, a rich and cultured Sabæan kingdom flourished in the south of Arabia, the influence of which, if not its authority, extended to the borders of Palestine, and between which and Syria an active commercial intercourse was carried on by land as well as by sea. The kingdom of Sabâ had been preceded by the kingdom of Ma'in, equally civilized and equally powerful, whose garrisons and colonies were stationed on the high-road which led past Mekka to the countries of the Mediterranean. Throughout this vast extent of territory alphabetic writing in various forms was known and practised, the Phoenician alphabet being the source from which it was derived. The belief accordingly that pre-Mohammedan Arabia was a land of illiterate nomads must be abandoned; it was not Islam that introduced writing into it, but the princes and merchants of Ma'in and Thamud, centuries upon centuries before. If Mohammedan Arabia knew nothing of its past, it was not because the past had left no records behind it.

A Power which reached to the borders of Palestine must necessarily have come into contact with the great monarchies of the ancient world. The army of Elius Gallus was doubtless not the first which had sought to gain possession of the cities and spice-gardens of the south. One such invasion is alluded to in an inscription which was copied by M. Halévy. The inscription belongs to the closing days of the Minæan kingdom, and after describing how the gods had delivered its dedicators

from a raiding attack on the part of the tribes of Sabâ and Khaulân, or Havilah, goes on to speak of their further deliverance from danger in "the midst of Misr," or Egypt, when there was war between the latter country and the land of Mazi, which Dr. Glaser would identify with the Edomite tribe of Mizzah (Gen. xxxvi. 13). There was yet a third occasion, however, on which the dedicators had been rescued by their deities 'Athtar, Wadd, and Nikråhh; this was when war had broken out between the rulers of the south and of the north. If the rulers of the south were the princes of Ma'in, whose power extended to Gaza, the rulers of the north ought to be found in Egypt or Palestine. Future research may tell us who they were, and when they lived.

But the epigraphy of ancient Arabia is still in its infancy. The inscriptions already known to us represent but a small proportion of those that are yet to be discovered. Vast tracts have never yet been traversed by the foot of an explorer, and there are ancient ruins which have never yet been seen by the eye of the European. What has been accomplished already with the scanty means still at our disposal is an earnest of what remains to be done. dark past of the Arabian peninsula has been suddenly lighted up, and we find that long before the days of Mohammed it was a land of culture and literature, a seat of powerful kingdoms and wealthy commerce, which cannot fail to have exercised an influence upon the general history of the world. - Contemporary Review.

The

In order to explain what may at first sight appear to be an intrusion into a region altogether foreign to my line of professional work, I may perhaps be allowed to say that from a very early period of my career I have taken a particular interest in leprosy. Next to the skin, the throat is the part most often attacked by the worst form of the disease; and for this reason I have sought every opportunity of seeing it at close quarters. At the risk of falling into the "autobiographical" vein so dep

recated by Mr. Balfour, I may add that I have made special investigations on leprosy in most of its European haunts, and also in Madeira; I may therefore claim the right to speak of it with some amount of personal knowledge. My attention was first directed to the subject nearly thirty years ago, when I was studying diseases of the skin under the celebrated Hebra at Vienna. In his wards I saw several cases of leprosy, which I understood came from the "Danubian Principalities" of those

days. In 1880 I examined a number of lepers in the Hospital de San Lazaro at Seville, in 1881 I saw several cases in the lazaretto at Funchal, and in 1884 I inade extensive investigations in Norway, at Molde and Bergen, where I had the advantage of the assistance of Dr. Danielssen and Dr. Armauer Hansen, whose names are familiar as household words to the medical profession throughout the world in connection with leprosy. In Danielssen, who has watched the course of the disease among several generations of his countrymen, the doctrine of heredity finds its most uncompromising champion; in his son-in-law Hansen, the discoverer of the bacillus lepra, contagion has naturally enough one of its most thoroughgoing supporters. One could hardly be in a better position for hearing both sides of this most important question than between those two distinguished men. In 1888 I saw a few cases in Italy in the Civil Hos. pital at San Remo.* I have also had a few opportunities during the last twentyfive years of examining cases of leprosy here in London, in my own practice and that of others.

In this country most people, I imagine, were till lately in blissful ignorance of the fact that leprosy still walks the earth in all its original hideousness. Vague notions, derived partly from the Bible and partly from casual references in historical works, inade up the sum of popular knowledge on the subject, and to the "general reader" leprosy was but a name, an extinct deino therium of the paleontology of disease. Very few English doctors were better informed. The disease was either not referred to at all, or was dealt with in the most perfunctory way in lectures and textbooks of medicine. As Dr. Munro, whose writings on leprosy have done so much to diffuse a knowledge of the disease among medical men, points out, students a very few years ago might have gone out to fulfil their mission of healing in various parts of

*Invalids visiting this charming health resort need not be afraid of coming in contact with lepers. The few unfortunate victims of the disease are kept under close supervision in the Civil Hospital, which is situated on a high rock, and is separated even from the old town to which the building is adjacent. The part of San Remo which is frequented by those seeking health or sunshine in that delightful spot is as free from lepers as Brighton or Eastbourne.

the world without knowing that such a disease as leprosy was to be met with. Their first introduction to it was often when its existence was forced on them as a strange and disconcerting phenomenon in actual practice.

Space will not permit me to trace the early history of leprosy in ancient times, nor even to chronicle its course in Europe in the dark ages. My regret at being obliged to leave out some historical details which might prove interesting is lessened by the fact that an excellent summary of the researches of Hirsch,* Munro, and others, was published five years ago in this Review by Miss Agnes Lambert.

Judging from the long intervals of time which often elapsed without any mention of the disease, and the frequent notices of it by writers at particular periods, it would appear that between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries the disease underwent considerable vicissitudes, becoming at times more prevalent and then again being much less common. These changes prob. ably corresponded with alternating periods of want and prosperity, the disease becoming general when the vitality of the nation was lowered by long wars, pestilences, and famine. The extraordinary spread of the disease at the time of the Crusades led to the belief that it had again been imported into Europe from the East, and Voltaire characteristically says that this was the only permanent result achieved by these expeditions. There is, however, abundant proof that even if leprosy was reimported, it had really never left Europe. In the early part of the sixteenth century the scourge suddenly began to abate, and in a relatively short time it became nearly extinct in most of the countries of Europe.

There are, however, a few strongholds from which leprosy has never been driven. Spain supplies many centres of infection, but it is impossible to obtain exact statistics on the subject. We have, however, the testimony of Dr. Roman Viscarro to the fact that "from time immemorial

lepers swarm in Spain, especially in the provinces of Asturias, Tarragona, Valencia

*Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology. By Dr. August Hirsch. Translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton, M.D.

Edinburgh Medical Journal, vols. xxii., xxiii., XXIV., XXV.

and Castellon."* Dr. John Webster, who visited the leper hospital at Grenada about thirty years ago, found it tenanted by fifty-three inmates. He was informed that in 1851 the number of lepers in nine provinces of Spain was 284; this was probably far below the real number, as the natural tendency of lepers and their friends to hide their affliction is in Spain intensified by religious superstition, and the supineness of the authorities must lead to perfunctoriness in the difficult task of collecting statistics on on the subject. Dr. Webster was informed that leprosy was believed to be spreading in Spain at the time of his visit. At Seville, in 1880, I found thirty-nine sufferers in the Hospital de San Lazaro. During the five years 1875-80, the total number of lepers admitted was eighty-four, the greatest number in any year having been twenty-one (1879-80). Seville itself supplied the largest contingent; then came Cadiz, Huelva, Almeria, Badajoz and Pontevedra. The figures, however, give an altogether inadequate idea of the prevalence of leprosy in these districts. As a high authority says: "In addition to the sufferers from those provinces who enter the hospital, there are many others who remain at home with their families, some maintained by them, others dependent on public charity; and probably only those seek shelter in the hospital who are destitute of all resource.' The late Dr. Jelly showed how extraordinarily prevalent leprosy is in the district known as La Marina, which takes in the sea-board of the two provinces of Valentia and Alicante; and he also brought forward proofs of the spread of the disease in the south of Spain in recent years.

Portugal has more lepers than any other European country, except Norway: but want of space prevents my showing its distribution. In Italy leprosy is met with on the Genoese Riviera; it was also found till quite recently at Comacchio, in the Ferrara marshes. In Sicily the disease has been steadily spreading for the last thirty or forty years. In annexing Nice, France took over with it a considerable number of Italian lepers belonging to Le Turbie and neighboring places, but the disease is

*El Siglo Medico. Oct. 21, 1883.

Dr. Ph. Hauser, Estudios Medico-Sociales de Sevilla. Madrid: 1884, p. 319.

Brit. Med. Journ., July 23, 1887.

now almost extinct in these localities. Small foci of leprosy still exist in Thessaly and Macedonia; the affection is not rare in some of the Egean islands, e.g. Samos, Rhodes, Chios, and Mitylene, and it is extraordinarily prevalent in Crete. It is spreading to an alarming degree in Russia, especially in the Baltic Provinces, and it has lately been found necessary to establish a special hospital at Riga. In St. Petersburg cases are occasionally, though very rarely, met with; at least half of them are imported from outlying provinces. "Sporadic' cases are said to occur in some parts of Hungary and Roumania. In Sweden, where the disease was extremely prevalent up to the beginning of the present century, it seems now to have almost died out. Norway is unquestionably the most considerable leprosy centre in Europe at the present day, but the disease is curiously limited to particular regions, such as the districts round Bergen, Molde, and Trondhjem.

In almost every other quarter of the globe leprosy is rife at present, and wherever it exists it seems to be slowly, but surely, extending its ravages. It is impossible to estimate even approximately the total number of lepers now dying by inches throughout the world, but it is certain that they must be counted by millions. It cannot be comforting to the pride of England," the august mother of nations," to reflect that a very large proportion of these wretched sufferers is to be found among her own subjects.

That leprosy has spread considerably in recent times there can be no manner of doubt. Within the last fifty years the sceds of the disease have been sown in several districts where it was previously unknown, and already the accursed crop has begun to show itself. As has been shown by Dr. Munro,* the seeds of leprosy take something like half a century to mature, and there is every prospect that unless the natural evolution of the scourge can in some way be prevented, a terrible harvest will be reaped before many years are past. To say nothing of the notorious case of the Sandwich Islands, where leprosy, imported about the year 1850, either by whaling ships manned by sailors from leprous regions or by Chinese immigrants, has since made such fearful progress, we

* Loc. cit.