FILAKIA MEDINENSIS. 397 



interior of Africa, namely, Arkin, and I beg to call the 

 attention of linguists to this. They may see whether the Arabic 

 word in question does not consequently merit this vocalization 

 rather than, Irk. 



Besides, I have still to mention that Galen had a substantive 

 Dracontiasis, in which it is not so much the agent as the action 

 that furnishes the idea from which the word is named. Accord- 

 ing to this, the superscription in ' Rhazes/ lib. vii, cap. 24, may 

 run, " Upon the Medinian gnawing, or Medinian gnawing 

 disease." 



The Arabic word halaluachalaid, which is also employed for 

 the worm, has been rendered by Yelsch : serpens pulposus sen 

 musculosus medinensiSy telce aranea in modum convolutus. The 

 old Greeks, as already observed, called the worm SpctKoWtov, 

 from which the Roman surgeons formed dracunculus tibiarum, and 

 Galen the worm-disease, Drakontiasis. In Persia, the worm is 

 called Pejunk, Naru, Farentit ; on the African coast, Ikon ; in the 

 interior of Africa, according to Tuschek, it is called, according to 

 the kind h a ling, or h'alin, from h a li, a tumour or abscess ; (which 

 is the more plentiful and readily removed worm, i "' in thick- 

 ness, usually V long, snow-white, tough, sinew-like, difficult to 

 tear, inarticulate, with no distinction between the head and caudal 

 extremity, but in other respects has the same position, produces 

 the same phenomena on breaking through, and requires the same 

 treatment), or a rkin, the more malignant form, which according 

 to Tuschek's reports, is said, ridiculously enough, to root itself in 

 the abdomen, extending its arms towards the periphery in the man- 

 ner of the polypes, and when an arm is broken off anywhere, to 

 come again on some other part of the body. The root of these 

 African names is identical with the two above-mentioned Arabic 

 names, and both names are nothing but differences of degree. 

 H a ling indicates worms occurring singly in the human body, perhaps 

 partly males, or immature, unimpregnated females; a rkin } adult, 

 large females, which occur at the same time in several places. 

 In India the worm is called Naramboo, or Nurapoo chalandy ; 

 in Bucharia, Irschata ; by Kampfer, it is called Dracunculus 

 Persarum ; by Linne, Meyer, and Jordens, Gordius medinensis, 

 (which it is not at all, as our more exact knowledge of the 

 anatomy of the Gordii has shown us, and as was known even 

 to the older writers, such as Loffler and Lind, who never saw a 

 Gordius in the water in the native districts of our worm, and to 



