DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 87 



charged in swarms from abscesses, strumous ulcers, 

 and vesications. The mode in which Pediculi are ge- 

 nerated being- now so well ascertained, no credit can 

 be given to these accounts." Thus far this great man, 

 who however supposes (in which opinion Dr. Bateman 

 concurs with him) that the authors to whom he alludes 

 had mistaken for lice some other species of insects, 

 which are not unfrequently found in putrefactive sores. 

 If these observations be allowed their due weight, it 

 will follow, that a disease produced by animals residing 

 under tlie cuticle cannot be a true Phthiriasis, and 

 therefore the death of the poet Alcman, and of Phere- 

 cydes Syrius the philosopher, mentioned by Aristotle, 

 must liave been occasioned by some other kind of in- 

 sect. For, speaking of the lice to which he attributes 

 these catastrophes, he says that " they are produced in 

 the flesh in small pustule-like tumours, wiiich have no 

 pus, and from which, when punctured, they issue*." 

 For the same reason, the disorder which Dr. Heber- 

 den has described in his Commentaries^ from the com- 

 munications of SirE. Wilmot, under the name o^ MoV' 

 hits pedicularis, must also be a diiferent disease, since, 

 with A»'istotle, he likewise represents the insects as in- 

 habiting tumours, from which they may be extracted 

 when opened by a needle. He says, indeed, that in 

 every respect they resemble the common lice, except 

 in being whiter ; but medical men, who were not at 

 the same time entomologists, might easily mistake an 

 Acarus for a Pediculus^, 



" IJist. JnLnul. I. 5. c. 31. 



'' From the (erins emplojed by Aristotle and Dr. Mead in their Ac- 

 count of these cases, it does not appear that the animal they meant could 

 foe maggots, but something bearing a more general resemblance to lice. 



