Guinea-worm, which burrows in the cellular tissue under the skin, is
well known in the north of the island, but rarely found in the damper
districts of the south and west. In Ceylon, as elsewhere, the natives
attribute its occurrence to drinking the waters of particular wells; but
this belief is inconsistent with the fact that its lodgment in the human
body is almost always effected just above the ankle. This shows that the
minute parasites are transferred to the skin of the leg from the moist
vegetation bordering the footpaths leading to wells. At this period the
creatures are very small, and the process of insinuation is painless and
imperceptible. It is only when they attain to considerable size, a foot
or more in length, that the operation of extracting them is resorted to,
when exercise may have given rise to inconvenience and inflammation.

These pests in all probability received their popular name of
_Guinea-worms_, from the narrative of Bruno or Braun, a citizen and
surgeon of Basle, who about the year 1611 made several voyages to that
part of the African coast, and on his return published, amongst other
things, an account of the local diseases.[1] But Linschoten, the Dutch
navigator, had previously observed the same worms at Ormus in 1584, and
they are thus described, together with the method of removing them, in
the English version of his voyage.

[Footnote 1: In DE BRY'S, _Collect_, vol. i. p. 49.]

"There is in Ormus a sickenesse or common plague of wormes, which growe
in their legges, it is thought that they proceede of the water that they
drink. These wormes are like, unto lute strings, and about two or three
fadomes longe, which they must plucke out and winde them aboute a straw
or a feather, everie day some part thereof, so longe as they feele them
creepe; and when they hold still, letting it rest in that sort till the
next daye, they bind it fast and annoynt the hole, and the swelling from
whence it commeth foorth, with fresh butter, and so in ten or twelve
dayes, they winde them out without any let, in the meanetime they must
sit still with their legges, for if it should breake, they should not,
without great paine get it out of their legge, as I have seen some men
doe." [1]

[Footnote 1: JOHN HUIGHEN VAN LINSCHOTEN _his Discours of Voyages into
the Easte and West Indies._ London, 1599, p, 16.]

The worm is of a whitish colour, sometimes inclining to brown. Its
thickness is from a half to two-third