FILARIA MED1NENSIS. 153 
panied them on this unfortunate journey, excited my curiosity, 
and the desire to know something alike of the place, where, 
and the mode of infection of the two brothers Oliveira and 
their companions, and I asked the first of them to give me 
in writing some information on these subjects. 
Antonio Oliveira wrote me in 1852 to the effect that, in 
April of 1849, he set out from Bahia for Joazeiro with a 
number of mules laden with merchandise, being accompanied 
by his brother Manoel and seven other people, including 
slaves and drivers; that a year after six of the company, 
including himself and his brother, showed symptoms of the 
existence in them of the guinea-worm, which some of them 
had expelled, either whole or in part, while others still 
retained it entire; that, from information obtained from 
others long and well acquainted with the road, he learned 
that the guinea-worm was said to exist in a dam at Pojuca, 
near the Fiera de Santa Anna; and that in his opinion it 
was there he and his companions had caught the disease, for 
there they had rested for some time, and there they had 
drank the water from a small stream, occasioned by an over¬ 
flow of the dam, from the heavy rains that had fallen shortly 
before. 
This is all the information I possess, written by Antonio 
Oliveira, three years after his passing through Pojuca, 
where he and his companions became infected with the 
guinea-worm; nor did 1 ask for any more explanation, as 
at that time I had no intention of publishing the case; later 
on, however (in 1869), after the death of Antonio Oliveira 
and his brother Manoel’s return to Portugal I resolved once 
more to open up the whole question, and, as far as possible, 
arrive at some definite conclusion, firstly, as to where, and 
secondly as to how, these travellers had become infected. 
For myself, from Joazeiro, where there still existed some 
of the patients and other eyewitnesses of the occurrence, I 
commissioned a brother of the two Oliveiras, Mr. Joaquin 
Jose Barboza, himself a man of much prudence and intelli¬ 
gence, to make a strict examination of the whole occurrence 
and the circumstances attending it, forming, as it did, a 
story even up to that time often talked of in the village. 
This commission my friend willingly undertook, and con¬ 
ducted with a strictness of inquiry that would have done 
honour to a judge. At the risk of being wearisome I shall 
here give, at least, a summary of this very lengthy inquiry, 
which, I am sure, will be pardoned me, seeing it undertakes 
verifying a very important fact in our medical history, viz. 
the endemic existence of the dracunculus in Brazil, and one, 
