Happy Monday! We’re kicking off the week with these images from Exercitatio de Vena Medinensi
Happy Monday! We’re kicking off the week with these images from Exercitatio de Vena Medinensi by Georg Hieronymous Welsch, published in Augsburg in 1674. This work focuses on dracunculiasis, or guinea worm disease. This is a parasitic infection caused by drinking water that contains water fleas infected with the larvae of the guinea worm (dracunculus medinesis). About one year after the initial infection, the female worm forms a blister on the skin and the worm emerges over the course of a few weeks, a painful process usually accompanied by a burning sensation. This affliction has historically been associated with Middle Eastern countries. For example, calcified guinea worms have been found in Egyptian mummies, and their Latin name translates to “little dragons from Medina,” referring to an outbreak in the city of Medina in modern Saudi Arabia. The illustrations in Welsch’s work refer to this association. While the frontispiece shows the Greco-Roman deities Athena and Mercury, they are depicted in an Egyptian setting decorated with palm trees and a crocodile, and the monument they are leaning against is decorated with hieroglyphics and an Arabic inscription that reads"Ibn Sīnā: fī al-‘irq al-madīnī,“ which translates to "Avicenna: On guinea worm disease.” (Thank you so much @bagdemagus for helping us!) The dragon at their feet refers to the parasite itself.The second image shows men in Middle Eastern dress removing the parasites from the legs of the infected. The bottom image indicates that people were aware that there was a connection between the parasite and water; the implication being that the man on the right was infected by bathing in infested water. -- source link
#rare books#parasites