to be split roughly equally between males and females, and can occur in all age groups. Within a given place, dracunculiasis risk is linked to occupation; people who farm or fetch drinking water are most likely to be infected. Cases of dracunculiasis have a seasonal cycle, though the timing varies by location. Along the Sahara desert's southern edge, cases peak during the mid-year rainy season (May–October) when stagnant water sources are more abundant. Along the Gulf of Guinea, cases are more common during the dry season (October–March) when flowing water sources dry up. History Dracunculiasis has been with humans for at least 3,000 years, as the remnants of a guinea worm infection have been found in the mummy of a girl entombed in Egypt around 1,000 BCE. Diseases consistent with the effects of dracunculiasis are referenced by writers throughout antiquity. The disease of "fiery serpents" that plagues the Hebrews in the Old Testament (around 1250 BCE) is often attributed to dracunculiasis. Plutarch's Symposiacon refers to a (now lost) description of a similar disease by the 2nd century BCE writer Agatharchides concerning a "hitherto unheard of disease" in which "small worms issue from [people's] arms and legs ... insinuating themselves between the muscles [to] give rise to horrible sufferings". Many of antiquity's famous physicians also write of diseases consistent with dracunculiasis, including Galen, Rhazes, and Avicenna; though there was some disagreement as to the nature of the disease, with some attributing it to a worm, while others considered it to be a corrupted part of the body emerging. In his 1674 treatise on dracunculiasis, Georg Hieronymous Velschius first proposed that the Rod of Asclepius, a common symbol of the medical profession, depicts a recently extracted guinea worm. Carl Linnaeus included the guinea worm in his 1758 edition of Systema Naturae, naming it Gordius medinensis. In Johann Friedrich Gmelin's 13th edition of Systema Naturae (1788), he renamed the worm Filaria medinensis, leaving Gordius for free-living worms. Henry Bastian authored the first detailed description of the worm itself, published in 1863. The following year, in his book Entozoa, Thomas Spencer Cobbold used the name Dracunculus medinensis, which was enshrined as the official name by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature in 1915. Despite longstanding knowledge that the worm was associated with water, the lifecycle of D. medinensis was the topic of protracted debate. Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko filled a major gap with his 1870