124 H. CHARLTON BASTIAN ON THE STRUCTURE AND 
where a plurality of worms has occurred in the same subject, as may be seen in a case 
related by Lorrimer*, where thirteen t of these parasites were thus disposed :— 
4 in left foot, 2 in right foot, 
V a M— TU leg, 
l , thigh, 8 a forearm. 
Accidental circumstances also lend support to this theory, as borne out by a statement 
of Ninian Bruce}, who says :—‘ It has been observed that Bheesties, or water-carriers, 
in India, who carry the water in a “mushuk,” or leathern bag, suspended from their 
shoulders, over the back and side, are most subject to the Guineaworm in those parts 
which come in contact with the mushuk." Mr. Busk, too, says it is not even necessary 
for a person to land or drink any of the water in places where the Guineaworm is 
endemic, as sailors have become infected merely by the contact of their naked skin 
with water contained in the boats of the natives that come off to a vessel from infected 
places. 
Dr. Chisholm$, in a long and interesting paper on the Guineaworm as met with in the 
island of Grenada, brings forward what at first sight appear most incontrovertible argu- 
ments to prove that the source of infection is in the water drunk by the negroes from 
certain wells dug near the sea in a brackish volcanic soil; but Scott || has no doubt sug- 
gested the real explanation of the facts related by Dr. Chisholm, when he says that 
the negroes who frequented these wells were really infected by contact with the wet 
marshy soil of the low situations in which the wells were dug, and that their freedom 
from this troublesome parasite after they ceased to frequent the wells, and used tank or 
cistern water instead, was really due to these reservoirs being situated near the habi- 
tations on a dry and elevated soil. 
Taking all these facts into consideration, as well as the account before given of the 
manner in which the worms I have examined seemed to have entered the body, and 
some special observations by Mr. Carter to be presently noticed, we have, in favour of the 
second hypothesis, an amount of evidence which, if not perfectly satisfactory, it would 
at least be almost impossible to explain in any other way. 
In the papers to which I have made such frequent reference, Mr. Carter has done 
much to show that a very intimate relationship exists between the Guineaworm and 
certain “microscopic Filaride,’ to which he has given the name of ZTunk-worms, 
abounding in the gelatinous Algze of the tanks, ponds, and damp places generally in the 
neighbourhood of Bombay. His arguments are based upon two principal series of obser- 
vations :—In the first place, the marked prevalence of Dracunculus in those regions 
where the various species of Tank-worms are common, and where the subjects of the 
disease have been known to have exposed themselves to the circumstances favourable to 
* Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, 1837. 
T Poupée Desportes has seen a case where fifty worms were taken from the same patient. Vide Kunsemüller, 
* Sur les Maladies de Saint-Dominique.’ 
+ Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, vol. ii. (1806) p. 145. 
§ Ib. vol. xi., 1815. [| Ib. vol. xvii., 1821. 
