DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 135 



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 — per- 

 haps the eggs may have been swallowed in some prepa- 

 ration of flour. But that the animal should be able to 

 sustain the heat of this organ, so far exceeding the tem- 

 perature 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 pro- 

 found knowledge of nature, mentions an instance, com- 

 municated to him by Mr. Jessop, of a girl who voided 

 three hexapod larvsB similar to what are found in the 

 carcases of birds'", probably belonging either to the ge- 

 nus Dermestes, F., or Byrrhus, L. : and in the German 

 Ephevieiides the case also of a girl is recorded, from an 

 abscess in the calf of whose leg crept black worms re- 

 sembling beetles'^. 



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

 scription, 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 pulmonary disease ; and similar larvse 

 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 Avith alive in 

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



* Tulpius, Obs. Med. 1. ii. c. 51. t. 7. f. 3. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Jottrn. 

 n. 35. 42-48. Derham, Physic. Theol. 378. note h. Lowth, Philos. 

 Trans, iii. 135. " Philos. Trans. 1665. x. 391 . Shaw's Jbridg. ii. 224. 



" Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. " London Medical Review^ v. 340. 



