DTt. CHISHOLM ON THE MALIS DllACUNCULUS. 375 
and continued alive for a length of time, being constantly sup- 
plied with milk. This singular narrative gave rise to inquiry into 
the cause. The only information on this point that Mr. A 
could give, was, that the patient, his brother, had been in the 
habit of bathing and swimming in a pond of stagnant water, 
which was inhabited by myriads of frogs and tadpoles ; and that 
his friends were thence induced to attribute his disease to his 
swallowing the ova or spawn of these animals in an impregnated 
state. 
Whether it has been the obscurity of the subject itself, or the 
imperfect observation of those who have inquired into the nature 
of it, or the prejudice impressed by theory unaided by research 
on the mind ; whichever of these causes has given rise to it, cer- 
tain it is, that a singular diversity of opinion has at all times pre- 
vailed respecting the nature of the dracunculus, and the manner 
in which it is received into the human body. The original idea 
of this animal, as far as it relates to the name, more especially, 
seems to have arisen, among the Greeks, from some resemblance 
it bears to a snake. 
The same conception of the animal w 7 as entertained by the 
Romans, who gave it the same name, only modified to suit their 
language, and hence called by them dracunculus : but the phy- 
siology of the animal seems never to have become a subject of 
discussion with either the one or the other. iElius, indeed, who 
lived upwards of 400 years after the time of Galen ( Galen , a.d. 
131 ; JElius, 5th or 6th century), seems, according to Dr. Friend, 
to have formed a more accurate idea of the nature of the animal, 
and probably from his being better acquainted with it. The 
flat country and the peculiar local circumstances of Mesopotamia 
were favourable to its production ; but as to its origin and the 
manner in which it generates, and more especially in which it is 
received and propagated in the human body, he seems to have 
been ignorant of, or, at least, is silent on. ( Friend’s History of 
Physic , vol. i, 49.) 
The Arabian physicians, from the disease being endemic in 
their country, were enabled to make juster observations, and to 
acquire, consequently, a more perfect knowledge of it. One of 
the most celebrated of them, however, Avicenna, calls it a nerve, 
and did not treat it as a worm, but as an abscess. ( Friend , 1. c.) 
It is, I imagine, evident, from this short sketch of the earliest 
observations on dracunculus, that even those physicians of a 
modern date, who have collected records on the subject, have 
not been very attentive in selecting and comparing authorities, 
or have taken on trust what others had done before them. The 
instance of this, which occurs in the contrasted quotations of 
