396 ANIMAL PARASITES. 



Unfortunately, in consequence of the revision of the royal 

 library no original was at the command of my friend, and his 

 numerous copies of Arabic manuscripts only relate to ocular 

 subjects. According to Dr. Ilille, however, our views may 

 correspond with the rendering " the Medinian biter, or the 

 Medinian bite," all translators, nevertheless, are against it. 

 Avicenna and Rhazes say, " that the worm occurs everywhere, in 

 the hands, in the sides, but especially on the lower part of the 

 thighs." The vena, as the translators say, issues from the 

 vesicle, produced with violent pain and formation of abscess. Of 

 the old translators, Christ. Godofr. Gruner, treats most circum- 

 stantially of our worm, and says : " alii earn (i. e., venam med.,) 

 pro pedesellis habent, alii negant." Moreover, it is not to be 

 confounded vitibus seu tortura vena, which are varices of the 

 crural vein, or with morbus bovinus, a common disease of 

 cattle, regarded as a worm living on the skin, or witii the 

 measles of pigs. At the same time he places this disorder with 

 the Dracunculus of the ancients. According to Dr. Hille, the 

 following passage from Gruner, page 219, of the ' Morborum 

 Antiquitates/ sectio II, x, removes the difficulty of the explana- 

 tion of the word used in the Arabic text. " Sequitur inflam- 

 matio, tumor, abscessus vesicas in modum elatus atque demum 

 hide egreditur, Alsaharavio teste, vena admodum subtilis chordie, 

 aut ut Albucasis expressit, quasi sit radix planted aut animal, aut, 

 secundum Avenzoar, aliquid ad similitudinem nervi, aut denique 

 ex Avicennse descriptione, quiddam rubeum, ad ingredinem declive 

 el quasi ramus villi nervi." Thus Dr. Hille arrives at the 

 conclusion that in the Arabic text it must mean, ~ 'i=Irk=radix 



= vena = vas ; that the worm is named from its superficial simi- 

 larity to the root of a plant, a nerve, or a vessel, and that the 

 Arabian surgeons themselves had false notions of the worm Irk. 



For my part, I willingly admit that even the old Arabians 

 may not have recognised the nature of the disease, with the 

 exception of Albucasis, who possibly suspected that it was an 

 animal. But before I can quite fall in with the opinion of my 

 learned friend, I must remark, that the Arabian surgeons may 

 have found the word already in use, and that the people might 

 have given the thing in question its name from the root Ark 

 = biting. That the word is also still employed by other peoples, 

 which have either sprung from the Arabs or come in contact 

 with them, is shown by the name of the worm in the 



