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V. On the Structure and Nature of the Dracunculus, or Guineaworm. By H. CHARLTON 
Bastian, M.A., M. R.C.S., Assistant Conservator of the Anatomical Museum, Uni- 
versity College, London. Communicated by GEORGE Busk, Esq., F.R.S., Sec. L.S. 
(Plates XXI. & XXII.) 
Read February 19th, 1863. 
AMONG the numerous parasites which infest the human frame, the Guineaworm 
(Filaria medinensis, Gmel.) is one of those which has been known from the most ancient 
times,—the first undoubted reference to it being made by Agatharchidas*, the philosopher 
and historian of Cnidus, who lived about 140 m.c., in the time of Ptolemy Alexander. 
Küchenmeistert, however, discusses the question whether Moses was not the first 
writer who mentioned the worm, and whether the “fiery serpents” referred to in the 
Book of Numbers were not in reality Dracunculi. 
Owing to the tedious and very painful nature of the consequences entailed by the 
presence of this worm in the human body, more perhaps has been written concerning this 
parasite than upon any other single Entozoon. The statements regarding its nature have, 
however, been most conflicting, as may be seen by reference to the works of Küchen- 
meister, Bremser{, and Moquin-Tandon§. Up to within comparatively recent times its 
very animality has been denied, and that too by the distinguished French surgeon 
Larrey, who might well have acquired a more exact knowledge of its real nature during 
his residence in Egypt. He held that it was nothing more than a portion of “ dead 
cellular tissue ;" Richerand, that it was a *fibrinous concretion;" whilst Ambroise 
Paré declares that the effects produced by the presence of the worm are due only toa 
kind of tumour or abscess proceeding from “acidity of the blood.” For other views 
equally novel, as well as for a history of the effects produced by the worm whilst lodged 
in the subcutaneous tissue of the body, and the medical treatment of the disease, also 
called Dracunculus, I would refer especially to the works before mentioned, as well as to 
other papers, to which reference will be made, in the Indian journals, as in the present : 
communication I shall confine myself to the natural-history aspect of the question. 
Ginelin || was the first to assign the Guineaworm its place amongst the true Helminthes, 
in the order Nematoidea ; but a more thorough investigation of its anatomy will, I think, 
lead us to doubt the propriety of considering it a species of the genus Filaria. 
It is endemic in the tropical parts of Asia and Africa, in the island of Grenada, with 
the small neighbouring Grenadine group, and doubtfully so in the island of Curagoa ; but 
it has not been met with anywhere in the tropical regions of the continent of America. 
* Apaxóvria ppd, Agatharchidas apud Plutarchum, Quaest. conviv. lib. viii. queest. 9, Op. moral., ed. Düben, 
Paris, 1841, i. 894. : 
+ Küchenmeister's * Manual of Parasites,’ translated by Dr. Lankester for Syden. Soc., vol. i. p. 390. d 
+ Sur les Vers Intestinaux, French edition, by Grundler, p. 198. 
$ Eléments de Zoologie Médicale, 1859, p. 333. 
VOL. XXIV. 
|| Systema Nat., p. 3039. 
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