DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 135 



circumstance of all. — Dr. Martin Lister, who to the skill 

 of the physician added the most profound knowledge of 

 nature, mentions an instance, communicated to him by 

 Mr. Jessop, of a girl who voided three hexapod larvae 

 similar to what are found in the carcases of birds ^, pro- 

 bably belonging either to the genus Dermestes^ or An- 

 threniis : and in the German Ephemerides the case also 

 of a girl is recorded, from an abscess in the calfo^ whose 

 leg crept black worms resembling beetles^. 



The larvae of some beetle, as appears from the de- 

 scription, seem to have been ejected even from the lim<^s. 

 Four of these, of which the largest was nearly three 

 quarters of an inch long, were discovered in the mucus 

 expelled after a severe fit of coughing by a lady afflicted 

 with a pulmonary disease ; and similar larvfe of a smaller 

 size were once afterwards discharged in the same way*^. 



No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed 

 upon vegetable substances, could be met with alive in 

 the stomach ; yet Dr. Lister gives an account of a boy 

 who vomited up sevex'al, which, he observes, had sixteen 

 legs'*. The eggs perhaps might have been swallowed 

 in salad ; and, as vegetables make a part of most people's 

 daily diet, enough might have passed into the stomach 

 to support them when hatched. — Linne tells us that the 

 caterpillar of a moth {Aglossa pingumalis), common in 

 houses, has also been found in a similar situation, and is 

 one of the worst of our insect infesters. — In a very old 

 tract, which gives a figure of the insect, a caterpillar of 

 the almost incredible lennjth of the middle finoer is said 



» Pkilos. Trans. 1()G5. x. 391. Shaw's Abridg. ii. 224. 



b Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. ^ London Medical Review, v. ;?4(). 



'' Pkilos. Trans, ubi supra. 



