VI.
WHAT IS THE REASON THAT, IF A MAN FREQUENTLY PASS ALONG DEWY TREES, THOSE LIMBS THAT TOUCH THE WOOD ARE SEIZED WITH A LEPROSY?
WHETHER (as Laitus said) that by the tenuity of the dew the moisture of the skin is fretted away? Or, as smut and mildew fall upon moistened seeds, so, when the green and tender parts on the superficies are fretted and dissolved by the dew, is a certain noxious taint carried and imparted to the most bloodless parts of the body, as the legs and feet, which there eats and frets the superficies? For that by Nature there is a corrosive faculty in dew sufficiently appears, in that it makes fat people lean; and gross women gather it, either with wool or on their clothes, to take down their flesh.
Quaestiones Naturales. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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