132 



ANIMAL PARASITES AND MESSMATES. 



Corsican by birth, had happened to see these itch-insects 

 sought for in his own country, and was the first to prove, 

 in 1834, the real cause of the disease. A resident 

 student had given, in a thesis which he sustained at 

 Paris before the faculty of medicine, a drawing of a 

 cheese-mite instead of the itch-insect, and this error 

 had caused it to be supposed that the species pecuhar to 



Fig. 23.— Sarcoptes scabiei, mnle ; the dorsal surface. 



this disease did not exist. We give in Figures 21, 22, 28, 

 representations of the male and female insect, greatly 

 magnified.* Of course, all the treatment necessary for 

 the cure consists in getting rid of the animalcules and 

 their eggs, and in cleansing the skin and the clothes of 

 the patient. Petroleum oil has been judiciously pre- 

 scribed in order to destroy the mite, but the remedy 

 which seems the most efficacious is Balsam of Peru. 



* Hardy, in his Le<pns sur les maladies de la peau (Paris 1863), 

 devotes a special chapter to parasitical diseases, and gives the complete 

 history of the itch-mite. 



