MiTjr. 
463 
subject, more, curious, it must be confessed, than 
delicate, we must revert to the decline of the seven- 
teenth century, when Dr. Bononio, an Italian phy- 
sician, communicated to Redi a description, ac- 
companied by microscopic figures, of the present 
species of Mite, which he believed, from his fre- 
quently repeated observations on persons affected 
with the complaint above-mentioned, to be the 
sole cause of the disease. The account of Bononio 
was introduced by Dr, Mead into the Philosophi- 
cal Transactions, and may be found in No, 283 of 
that work. The observation seems to have been 
received, both in England and elsewhere, as a new 
and curious discovery. That what may be not 
improperly called the Acarine Itch was 'however 
known in very ancient times is sufficiently clear 
from the observations of Mouffet, who, in his 
History of Insects, has given a short abstract of 
what the older writers have said on the subject, as 
well as a convincing proof that the complaint was 
well known in his own days. lie relates the case 
of a Lady Penruddock, aged sixty, who contracted 
this disorder, as was supposed, by too long a con- 
tinuance of goat’s milk, which she took from ap- 
prehension of an approaching consumption. She 
was, says Mouffet, miserably afflicted with these 
mites, w'hich the more tliej^ were picked out with 
needles by the care of her nurses, the more their 
numbers seemed to increase ^ and at length she 
fell a victim to the disea.se. 
The above-mentioned Mite is of a .slightly round- 
ed, sublobated, and somewhat flattened shape. 
