[1755.—"Common deer they have here (in Ceylon) in great abundance, and also Guinea Deer."—Ives, 57.]
GUINEA-FOWL. There seems to have been, in the 16th century, some confusion between turkeys and Guinea-fowl. See however under [TURKEY]. The Guinea-fowl is the Meleagris of Aristotle and others, the Afra avis of Horace.
GUINEA-PIG, s. This was a nickname given to midshipmen or apprentices on board Indiamen in the 18th century, when the command of such a vessel was a sure fortune, and large fees were paid to the captain with whom the youngsters embarked. Admiral Smyth, in his Sailor's Handbook, 1867, defines: 'The younger midshipmen of an Indiaman.'
[1779.—"I promise you, to me it was no slight penance to be exposed during the whole voyage to the half sneering, satirical looks of the mates and guinea-pigs."—Macintosh, Travels, quoted in Carey, Old Days, i. 73.]
GUINEA-WORM, s. A parasitic worm (Filaria Medinensis) inhabiting the subcutaneous cellular tissue of man, frequently in the leg, varying from 6 inches to 12 feet in length, and common on the Pers. Gulf, in Upper Egypt, Guinea, &c. It is found in some parts of W. India. "I have known," writes M.-Gen. Keatinge, "villages where half the people were maimed by it after the rains. Matunga, the Head Quarters of the Bombay Artillery, was abandoned, in great measure, on account of this pest." [It is the disease most common in the Damoh District (C. P. Gazetteer, 176, Sleeman, Rambles, &c., ed. V. A. Smith, i. 94). It is the rāshta, reshta of Central Asia (Schuyler, Turkistan, i. 147; Wolff, Travels, ii. 407).] The reason of the name is shown by the quotation from Purchas respecting its prevalence in Guinea. The disease is graphically described by Agatharchides in the first quotation.
B.C. c. 113.—"Those about the Red Sea who are stricken with a certain malady, as Agatharchides relates, besides being afflicted with other novel and unheard-of symptoms, of which one is that small snake-like worms (δρακόντια μικρὰ) eat through the legs and arms, and peep out, but when touched instantly shrink back again, and winding among the muscles produce intolerable burning pains."—In Dubner's ed. of Plutarch, iv. 872, viz. Table Discussions, Bk. VIII. Quest. ix. 3.
1600.—"The wormes in the legges and bodies trouble not euery one that goeth to those Countreys, but some are troubled with them and some are not"—(a full account of the disease follows).—Descn. of Guinea, in Purchas, ii. 963.
c. 1630.—"But for their water ... I may call it Aqua Mortis ... it ingenders small long worms in the legges of such as use to drink it ... by no potion, no unguent to be remedied: they have no other way to destroy them, save by rowling them about a pin or peg, not unlike the treble of Theorbo."—Sir T. Herbert, p. 128.
1664.—"... nor obliged to drink of those naughty waters ... full of nastiness of so many people and beasts ... that do cause such fevers, which are very hard to cure, and which breed also certain very dangerous worms in the legs ... they are commonly of the bigness and length of a small Vial-string ... and they must be drawn out little by little, from day to day, gently winding them about a little twig about the bigness of a needle, for fear of breaking them."—Bernier, E.T. 114; [ed. Constable, 355].
1676.—"Guinea Worms are very frequent in some Places of the West Indies ... I rather judge that they are generated by drinking bad water."—Dampier, ii. 89-90.