Diseases of the Bible / by Risdon Bennett.

  • James Risdon Bennett
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the Bible / by Risdon Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

    105/152 (page 101)
    and, after suffering severe and tormenting pains in the bowels, in five days died. The two accounts considered together leave scarcely any room for doubt that the cause of death was perforation of the bowels by intestinal worms, inducing ulceration and acute peritonitis. Medical records contain such cases, and the condition of the stomach and bowels after indulgence at a feast would favour the occurrence of the fatal termination at such a time. Any abnormal distension of the bowels, especially if associated with bodily exertion, would be sufficient to account for rupture of the intestines at spots previously eroded and thinned by ulcerative disease. And there is scarcely any suffering more severe than that which attends peritoneal inflammation thus induced. The term used by Luke the physician to describe the disease leaves no doubt, I think, that it was occasioned by worms ((rK(x)Xr]K6(3pcoTos), and that there is no foundation for the notion that it was what the Greeks call phthiriasis, morbus pediadaris. In other parts of Scripture a-KwKr]^ is the word used to denote worms, as in Exod. xvi. 20, their manna bred worms and stank ; in Deut. xxviii. 39, of the grapes, 'the worms shall eat them;' Job vii. 5,' My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust.' Herodotus^ speaks of the mother of Arcesilaus being destroyed alive by worms, possibly in the same way as Herod was ; but he uses another word, evk-^, which, however, also means worm or maggot, such as are bred in decaying flesh, and not the word whence the Greek term for morbus pedi- adaris is derived, which means ' louse.' The account which Josephus gives of this most im- pressive narrative, as quoted by Bengel, is so graphic that we venture to give it in full. ' Clad in a garment ^ Hist. iv. 205.