Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/739

 out for the other eye, travelling thither under the skin of the bridge of the nose, looking while in transit like the bridge of a pair of spectacles. A similar, but not identical, worm is fairly common on the Ogowé, and is liable to get under the epidermis of any part of the body. Like the one affecting the eye it is very active in its movements, passing rapidly about under the skin and producing terrible pricking and itching, but very trifling inflammation in those cases which I have seen. The treatment consists of getting the thing out, and the thing to be careful of is to get it out whole, for if any part of it is left in, suppuration sets in, so even if you are personally convinced you have got it out successfully it is just as well to wash out the wound with carbolic of Condy’s fluid. The most frequent sufferers from these filariæ are the natives, but white people do get them. I hear there is an account in the Lancet, October 17th, 1894, of one that was extracted from the eye of a European. This case came from Calabar, but the disease is more frequent on the South-West Coast.

Do not confuse this filaria with the Guinea worm, Filaria medinensis, which runs up to ten and twelve feet in length, and whose habits are different. It is more sedentary, but it is in the drinking water inside small crustacea (cyclops). It appears commonly in its human host’s leg, and rapidly grows, curled round and round like a watch-spring, showing raised under the skin. The native treatment of this pest is very cautiously to open the skin over the head of the worm and secure it between a little cleft bit of bamboo and then gradually wind the rest of the affair out. Only a small portion can be wound out at a time, as the wound is very liable to inflame, and should the worm break, it is certain to inflame badly, and a terrible wound will result. You cannot wind it out by the tail because you are then, so to speak, turning its fur the wrong way, and it catches in the wound.

I should, I may remark, strongly advise any one who likes to start early on a canoe journey to see that no native member of the party has a Filaria medinensis on hand; for winding it up is always reserved for a morning job and as many other jobs are similarly reserved it makes for delay.

I know, my friends, that you one and all say that the drinking water at your particular place is of singular beauty and purity, and that you always tell the boys to filter it; but I am convinced that that water is no more to be trusted than the boys, and I am lost in amazement at people of your intelligence trusting the trio of water, boys, and filter, in the way you do. One favourite haunt of mine gets its drinking water from a