PSYCHE 
[April-June 
pp. 6i, 72-74) and in a recent paper on host relations just mentioned (Girault 
and Strauss, 1905), and as he hopes to present elsewhere an abstracted bibli- 
ography of the whole, he considers it unnecessary to go into the subject deeper. 
Suffice it to say, that the few brief criticisms made on the literature of the bed- 
bug, showing as it does needless repetition and speculation, should serve to warn 
us, in a measure, to be more careful in compiling accounts of our common 
economic insects, and furthermore, should urge us to make at least some 
effort to add new facts. 
On account of the interest now being shown in the role of various insects 
in the transmission of diseases, and in order to attract the attention of ento- 
mologists to the bedbug’s role in transmission, a brief history of its pathogenic 
relations follows. 
In 1887, the famous Metschnikoff, in an article on certrin phases of 
relapsing fever published in a well-known medical journal of Berlin, made general 
references to the bedbug as a carrier of diseases. 'I’his is believed to be the first 
time that the idea was definitely mentioned, and Metschnikoff may be held to 
be the originator of it. 
period of about five years then elapsed before anything more was said 
about the question, when in 1892 a Dr. Dewevre published in Paris an account 
of a supposed case of the transmission of tuberculosis, which he discussed at 
length, and tried to establish. His evidence was quite insufficient, and the 
whole case did no more than to throw grave suspicions on the bedbug. This 
article was reprinted in the Medical Record of New York, and in the year follow- 
ing it was reviewetl in Insect Life, a periodical published by the then Division of 
Entomology, U. S. Department of .\griculture, and in the American Monthly 
Microscopical Journal of Washington. Since then the case has been quoted and 
reviewed from time to time in medical journals and general treatises on medi- 
cine. It was founded on suspicious circumstances only. 
In 1895. M. Morau, a Frenchman, published in the Revue Scientifque of 
Paris, an article on the contagiousness of cancer, in which he tried to establish, 
by means of experiments, that bedbugs carried the causitive agent of that 
disease. The experiments were entirely negative. 
Two years later, articles ascribing to the bedbug means of spreading 
diseases became more or less common. Dr. George H. I*'. Nuttall, formerly of 
Johns Hopkins Gniversity, Baltimore, then began his series of important experi- 
ments on the rule of insects in the spread of diseases, which were continued over 
