[What was the fate of patients with leprosy during the plague pandemia in the middle ages (1348-1350)].

The author thinks that, if lepra has suddenly decreased in Europe from the 14th century, it is because the most severe cases, i.e. the most contagious ones, disappeared during the hecatombs caused between 1348 and 1350 by the "Black Death", the black plague, which took most often the pulmonary form. The author disproves the opinion of those who think that lepers died from plague. He thinks that lepers' death was secondary to that of the monks who, at this time, cared for these outcases, and thanks to their self-sacrifice permitted these lepers' survival. The monks were more exposed to contagion; obliged by their vocation and by pope's command to help the dyings and to give them sacraments, they were obliged to leave lepers to their fate. Like domestic animals, the latter died of hunger probably, any corpse or carcass being considered as plague victims. Supporting this opinion, the author reports his observations at Madagascar, where no leper of the leper-houses of Madascar center, a plague focus still to-day but very active between 1922 and 1936, contracted plague. On the other hand, experiments with "leprous" rats (Stefansky bacillus) showed a significant resistance of these animals to an experimental plague infection.