DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 107 



enemies have been long celebrated. The Coya may, in the western 

 world, have furnished the poison for this purpose. An author quoted in 

 Lesser tells us that an ant as big as a bee is sometimes used, and that 

 the wound inflicted by weapons tinctured with their venom is incurable. 

 Patterson also gives a recipe by which the natives of the southern extre- 

 mity of Africa prepare what they reckon the most effectual poison for the 

 point of their arrows. They mix the juice of a species of Euphorbia, 

 and a caterpillar that feeds on a kind of sumach (^Rhus L.), and when the 

 mixture is dried it is fit for use.^ 



And now I think you will allow that I have made out a tolerable list 

 of insects that attack or annoy man's body externally, and a sufficiently 

 doleful history of them. That the subject, however, may be complete, I 

 shall next enumerate those that, not content with afflicting him with ex- 

 terior pain or evil, whether on the surface or under the skin, bore into his 

 flesh, descend even into his stomach and viscera, derange his whole system, 

 and thus often occasion his death. The punitive insects here employed 

 are usually larvae of the various orders, and they are the cause of that 

 genus of diseases I before noticed, and proposed to call Scolechiasis. 



I shall begin my account with the first order of Linne, because people 

 in general seem not aware that any beetles make their way into the human 

 stomach. Yet there is abundant evidence, which proves beyond contro- 

 versy that the meal-worm {Tenebrio Molitor), although its usual food is 

 flour, has often been voided both by male and female patients ; and in one 

 instance is stated to have occasioned death. ^ How these grubs should get 

 into the stomach it is difficult to say — perhaps the eggs may have been 

 swallowed in some preparation of flour. But that the animal should be 

 able to sustain the heat of this organ, so far exceeding the temperature to 

 which it is usually accustomed, is the most extraordinary 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^, probably belonging either to the genus 

 Dermestes, or Anthrenus : and in the German Ephemerides the case also 

 of a girl is recorded, from an abscess in the calf oi whose leg crept black 

 worms resembling beetles."* 



The larvae of some beetle, as appears from the description, seem to have 

 been ejected even from the lungs. 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 pulmona- 

 ry disease ; and similar larvae of a smaller size were once afterwards dis- 

 charged in the same way.^ 



No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed upon vegetable 



' Waterton (Wanderings in S. America, 53.) gives the recipe by which the Macousho 

 Indians prepare the poison, in which they dip their arrows. It consists of a vine called the 

 Woiirali, which is the principal ingredient ; the roots and stalks of some other plants ; two 

 species of ants, the sting of one of which is so venomous that it produces a fever ; a quan- 

 tity of the strongest Indian pepper (CapsjcMwi), and the pounded fangs of two kinds of 

 serpents. 



« Tulpius, Obs. Med. 1. ii. c. 51. t. 7. f. 3. Edivb. Med. and Surg. Journ. n. 35. 42—48. 

 Derham, Physic. Theol. 378. note b. Lowthrop, Philos. Trans, iii. 135. 



3 Philos. Trans. 1665, x. 391. Shaw's Abndg. ii. 224. 



* Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. » London Medical Review, V. 340. 



