Dracunculiasis, also called Guinea-worm disease, is a parasitic infection by the Guinea worm, Dracunculus medinensis. A person becomes infected by drinking water contaminated with Guinea-worm larvae, which penetrate the digestive tract and escape into the body. Around a year later, the adult female migrates to an exit site – usually the lower leg – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. Eventually, the blister bursts, creating a painful wound from which the worm gradually emerges. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the affected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge. There is no medication to treat or prevent dracunculiasis. Instead, the mainstay of treatment is the careful wrapping of the emerging worm around a small stick or gauze to encourage and speed up its exit. A disease of extreme poverty, there were 14 cases reported worldwide in 2023, as efforts continue to eradicate it.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1874:

Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem was first performed in the San Marco church in Milan to commemorate the first anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni's death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28Verdi%29

1998:

In Public Prosecutor v Taw Cheng Kong, the Court of Appeal of Singapore overruled a High Court decision in the only time a statute in Singapore had been ruled unconstitutional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Prosecutor_v_Taw_Cheng_Kong

2014:

Prayut Chan-o-cha, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, launched a coup d'état against the caretaker government following six months of political crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Thai_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

zygote: (cytology, also attributive) A eukaryotic cell formed from the fusion of two gametes (“reproductive cells”) during a fertilization process. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zygote

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. But soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, at the bottom of each breath, there is a hollow place that is filled with longing. We become seekers without knowing what we seek.   --Peter Matthiessen https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Matthiessen