Note 60 — CHAPTER 2

My friend Dr. Joseph Duncan (attached to the Residency when I was Political Agent at Udaipur) was attacked by the narua in a very aggravated form. It fixed itself in the ankle-joint, and being broken in the attempt to extricate it, was attended by all the evil results I have described, ending in lameness, and generally impaired health, which obliged him to visit the Cape for recovery, where I saw him on my way home eighteen months after, but he had even then not altogether recovered from the lameness. [Guinea-worm (Dracontiasis), a disease due to the Filaria medinensis or Dracunculus, known in Persia as rīshtah, infests the Persian Gulf and many parts of India. See Curzon, Persia, ii. 234; Fryer, New Account of East India and Persia, ed. 1912, i. 175; Sleeman, Rambles, 76; Asiatic Researches, vi. 58 ff.; EB, 11th ed. xix. 361. The disease from which Job suffered (Job ii. 7) is generally believed to be elephantiasis (A. B. Davidson, The Book of Job, 13).]