Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/59

Rh bone, about seven inches below the center of my knee-pan, an itching resembling what follows the bite of a muscheto. Upon scratching, a small tumour appeared very like a muscheto bite. The itching returned in about an hour afterwards; and, being more intent upon my reading than my leg, I scratched it till the blood came. I soon after observed something like a black spot, which had already risen considerably above the surface of the skin. All medicine proved useless; and the disease not being known at Cairo, there was nothing for it but to have recourse to the only received manner of treating it in this country. About three inches of the worm was winded out upon a piece of raw silk in the first week, without pain or fever: but it was broken afterwards through the carelessness and rashness of the surgeon when changing a poultice on board the ship in which I returned to France: a violent inflammation followed; the leg swelled so as to scarce leave appearance of knee or ancle; the skin, red and distended, seemed glazed like a mirror. The wound was now healed, and discharged nothing; and there was every appearance of mortification coming on. The great care and attention procured me in the lazaretto at Marseilles, by a nation always foremost in the acts of humanity to strangers, and the attention and skill of the surgeon, recovered me from this troublesome complaint.

days had elapsed since it first begun; thirty-five of which were spent in the greatest agony. It suppurated at last; and, by enlarging the orifice, a good quantity of matter was discharged. I had made constant use of bark, both in fomentations and inwardly; but I did not recover the strength of my leg entirely till near a year after, by