DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. HI 



young woman who had swallowed these animals alive, as is usually done, 

 threw up a prodigious number of them of all sizes, which must have bred 

 in her stomach.^ — Another apterous species appears to have been detected 

 in a still more remarkable situation. Hermann, the author of the admira- 

 ble Mcmoire Apierologique, whose untimely death is so much to be 

 lamented, informs us that an Acarus figured and described in his work (A. 

 marginatus), was observed by his artist running on the corpus callosum 

 of the hrain of a patient in the military hospital at Strasbourg, which had 

 been opened but a zninute before, and the two hemispheres and the pia 

 ma^er just separated. He adds that this is not the first time that insects 

 have been found in the brain. Cornelius Gemma, in his Cosmocritica, p. 

 241., says that on dissecting the brain of a woman there were found in it 

 abundance of vermicles and punaises.^ 



It was customary in many countries in ancient times to punish certain 

 malefactors by exposing them to be devoured by wild beasts : but to ex- 

 pose them to insects for the same purpose was a refinement in cruelty, 

 which seems to have been peculiar to the despots of Persia. We are 

 informed that the most severe punishment amongst the Persians was that 

 of shutting up the offender between two boats of equal size ; they laid 

 him in one of them upon his back, and covered him with the other, his 

 hands, feet, and head being left bare. His face, which was placed full in 

 the sun, they moistened with honey, thus inviting the flies and wasps, 

 which tormented him no less than the swarms of maggots that were bred 

 in his excrements and body, and devoured him to the very entrails. He 

 was compelled to take as much food as was necessary to support life, and 

 thus existed sometimes for several days. Plutarch informs us, that Mithri- 

 dates, whom Artaxerxes Longimanus condemned to this punishment, lived 

 seventeen days in the utmost agony ; and that, the uppermost boat being 

 taken off at his death, they found his flesh all consumed, and myriads of 

 worms gnawing his bowels.'' Could any natural objects be made more 

 horrible and efiiectual instruments of torture than insects were in this most 

 diabolical invention of tyranny ?^ 



In this enumeration of evils derived from insects, I must not wholly 

 pass over the serious and sometimes fatal effects produced upon some per- 

 sons by eating honey, or even by drinking mead. I once knew a lady 

 upon whom these acted like poison, and have heard of instances in which 

 death was the consequence. Sometimes, when bees extract their honey 

 from poisonous plants, such results have not been confined to individuals 

 of a particular habit or constitution. A remarkable proof of this is given 



' Bonnet, v. 144. * 31em. Apierolog. 79. ^ Universal History, iv. 70. ed. 1779. 



* For numerous cases of insects occasionally found in the human body, see a very vahia- 

 ble paper in Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. ii. 257, by the Rev. F. W. Hope, F. R. S., in which the 

 whole are brought together in a tabular form, so that the kind of insect, the local affection, 

 and various other particulars, can be seen at a glance. Mr. Hope proposes to adopt the 

 term Canthariasis for those diseases which originate with coleopterous insects, whether in 

 the perfect or larva state ; that of Myasis for those caused by dipterous larvae, while he re- 

 stricts the form Sdiohchiasis to those resulting from lepidopterous larvEe. Of the first (inclu- 

 ding two cases arising from the earwig), he enumerates thirty-eight cases ; of the second, 

 siity-four ^ and of the third, seven. He suggests that the eggs of many of these larvae 

 have been introduced into the stomach with bread, butter, cheese, and even upon cooked 

 food, upon which they have been deposited by the parent beetles or flies in our larders and 

 cellars, iScc; others with ripe fruit or raw vegetables, as lettuces, watercresses, iScc, and 

 others again in impure and turbid water. 



