90 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



disease in question, which quickly gave way to the usual 

 remedies. Eight days after, it returned again, and was 

 as before soon removed. A third timcj at the end of the 

 same period, he was seized with it. All the while he had 

 been living like the rest of the family, who had neverthe- 

 less escaped. This, of course, occasioned no little inquiry 

 into the cause of what had happened. Linne, aware that 

 Bartholinus had attributed the dysentery to insects, which 

 he professed to have seen, recommended it to his pupil 

 to examine his feces. Rolander, following this advice, 

 discovered in them innumerable animalcules, which upon 

 a close examination proved to be mites. It was next a 

 question how he alone came to be singled out by them ; 

 and thus he accounts for it. It was his habit not to drink 

 at his meals; but in the night, growing thirsty, he often 

 sipped some liquid out of a vessel made of juniper wood. 

 Inspecting this very narrowly, he observed, in the chinks 

 between the ribs, a white line, which, when viewed under 

 a lens, he found to consist of innumerable mites, pre- 

 cisely the same with those that he had voided. Various 

 experiments were tried with them, and a preparation of 

 rhubarb was found to destroy them most effectually. He 

 afterwards discovered them in vessels containing acids, 

 and often under the bung of casks ^. In the instance 

 here recorded, the dysentery, or diarrhoea, was evidently 

 produced by a species of mite, which Linne hence called 

 Acarus Dijscntcriac ; but it would be going too far, I ap- 

 prehend, to assert that they are invariably the cause of 

 that disease. 



That Scabies, or the itch, is occasioned by a mite, is 

 not a doctrine peculiar to the moderns. Mouffet men- 



Aman. Ac. v. 1)4-98. 



