394 ANIMAL PARASITES. 



As regards the cure, which Moses contrived, we can expect 

 nothing else but that from its direction it must have been a 

 theosophical, mystical one. " And Jehovah commanded him to 

 make a Saraj/h, and he made a Nachasch Nechoscheth (a brazen 

 serpent) which he commanded the Israelites to look upon, if 

 they would live." This comes to the same thing as the 

 mode of serpent-charming still in use in the East, and, perhaps, 

 the method still employed, if I am not mistaken, at the Cape of 

 Good Hope, to drive away certain snakes by the sight of other 

 serpents. It is possible that Moses had a similar idea, but also 

 possible that another therapeutical signification lies hidden in the 

 background. Thus, we may suppose either that Moses wished 

 by the figure of the serpent to give warning against the perilous 

 breaking of the worm, and to indicate that only those could 

 become sound, who had extracted or got extracted a creature like 

 the uninjured serpent, or it is an indication that in this case a 

 brazen instrument, perhaps a sort of circumcising knife (which 

 even then was formed of metal, whilst the Egyptians used 

 knives of flint) or a hot iron, which is still in use amongst 

 the people in Abyssinia for opening the boils of Filarice, 

 might be of use, and that, by means of the brazen serpent, 

 Moses desired to make his countrymen more patient under 

 the operation. 



I think, therefore, that there is great probability that the fiery 

 serpents of Moses were the Filarice, and that Bartholin, the only 

 commentator who has seemed to understand the Filarice thereby , 

 is in the right. No importance is to be attached to Sennert's 

 opinion that the fiery serpents fell upon the Jews from without, 

 and did not grow in them, after what I have said above with 

 regard to Mealenn. The worm may grow for a long time upon 

 and in the individual, before it becomes large enough to produce 

 pain, and break up with inflammation and dangerous symptoms. 



If we return once more to Agatharchides, we find, in the first 

 certain traces of acquaintance with the worm, after him, amongst 

 the Arabian surgeons, who, according to Bremser, call it Ark, 

 Aerk or Irk Almedini, which is rendered Vena sen Nervus medi- 

 nensis by the Greek and Latin translators in the middle ages, 

 who, having no opportunity of seeing the w r orm, and as it was 

 not introduced into Europe even by the crusades (because the 

 crusaders at the utmost advanced to the neighbourhood of Jeru- 

 salem, and did not penetrate into the territory of the Filaria), 



