Physicians who are not familiar with the morphology of leprosy believe that the disease should invariably occur with the symptomatology contained in the classic didactic descriptions. This disease, however, like the marine god, changes its appearance at will, probably also with a view to hiding its identity from any one trying to investigate it.
It is commonly believed that leprosy must be nodular, nervous or a mixed form. The first mentioned form with its tubercles, principally seen on the face, to which they give a typical leonine aspect, is clearly shown in figure 1. The second form, the so-called anesthetic or trophoneurotic type, recalls Lazarus' evil with its macular, dyschromic, erythematous, scaly, thermo-analgesic leprids, or blistered, pemphigoid leprosy, and muscular atrophy, with the loss of thenar and hypothenar eminences and the interossei, producing an excavated boat-shaped deformity of the dorsal part of the hand and clawhand (figs. 2 and