The interest attaching to the Abyssinian expedition has given rise
to quite an animated antiquarian discussion as to the identity of the Guinea-worm, to the attacks of which it is asserted that our soldiers will be liable in the lower parts of Abyssinia, with the " fiery serpents " of Numbers xxi., which were sent to scourge the people of Israel for their discontent in the desert. " And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people ; and much people of Israel died." Some ingenious person has discovered that this event happened exactly within that period of time after the passage of the people of Israel over the Red Sea, which it would have taken to develop the Guinea- worm in the bodies of those whom the embryo had entered in passing the low marshy soil of Suez. And still more in- genious persons have suggested that the miraculous cure effected by Moses' brazen serpent, which is narrated in the book of Numbers, was in origin a mere expedient of Moses to teach the sufferers that they must wind out the Guinea-worm whole out of their bodies, and not break it in the process of extraction, if they wished to recover. We confess we do not quite sea how the elevation of a brazen serpent on a pole, at which the sufferers were to gaze, was calculated to convey this salutary medical lesson. The theory is, apparently, that the model brazen serpent was wound round the pole in the way in which the Guinea-worm should be wound round the stick by the help of which it is day by day drawn out. But no one could have avoided more successfully any hint of this little bit of hospital practice than the author of the book of Numbers. " And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it on a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." The operation for extracting Guinea-worms is nothing to the neatness of this critical operation for extracting the wonderful element out of the Bible narrative, and conveying a clinical lesson into its place.
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