FILARIA MEDINENSIS. 401 



Angola ate and drank nothing but food and beverages brought 

 with him from Europe, and yet he acquired the worm. 



It is an important circumstance that English officers, who 

 never went about with the feet and arms uncovered, remained 

 free from the worm. Pruner even thinks that very probably the 

 germ of the worm is an independent marsh animal, and at the 

 same time speaks of a conversion of this animal by an alternation 

 of generation (certainly ill understood), into a Dracunculus 

 within the human body. Forbes thinks he found the brood of 

 the Dracunculus free in the red, ochreous mud of the drying 

 marshes ; a fact which certainly requires a closer investigation 

 and confirmation. However, the aborigines think that it comes 

 from the marshy grounds into the skin. The ordinary seat of 

 the worm is the subcutaneous cellular tissue, especially of the 

 extremities, and of these again especially the lower ones, round 

 the ankle. It may, however, occur under the skin and muscles 

 in all other parts of the human body, even under the tongue. 

 Thus, Kampfer removed a living worm from the scrotum ; Baillie 

 saw it iu a sac on the testicle; Pere on the head, neck, and 

 body; Bajon under the skin on the eye-ball. M'Gregor gives 

 the following table of 172 cases : 124 times in the feet, 33 times 

 on the lower, 11 times on the upper part of the thigh, twice in 

 the scrotum, and twice in the hands. Pruner found a specimen 

 behind the liver, between the layers of the mesentery; the pos- 

 terior portion was but little altered and readily recognisable ; the 

 anterior portion reached down over the duodenum as far as the 

 csecum, enveloped in a sort of cartilaginous capsule. Sometimes 

 the worm lies coiled up in a small space, sometimes ex- 

 tended; and in the latter case, if it lies on the surface, feels 

 like a varicose vessel. Thus, Pere saw it lying in a snake-like 

 form under the whole of the skin of the abdomen and a part of 

 that of the chest ; Kampfer saw it come forth under the knee, 

 and the great toe move painfully, as if by a sting, during the 

 extraction of the worm ; another worm broke through the leg 

 with one end, its middle lay round the ankle, and its other end 

 came out through the sole of the foot. Thus the scene changes 

 according to its seat. These examples will suffice to give a clear 

 idea of the worm, of which, moreover, as many as twenty-eight, 

 thirty, nay, even fifty specimens have been observed on one 

 man. 



Diagnosis and therapeutics. If the worm occurs in superficial 



c c 



