20 
straw, the mites enter and kill them before they are able to enlarge 
the opening sufficiently to enable them to make their escape; indeed, 
not more than 5 per cent succeeded in escaping. 
As this represents fairly well the conditions of straw inspring and early 
summer when it is used for the manufacture of mattresses and on the 
farms for the filling of straw ticks and as a substitute for felting under 
carpets, the great number of cases of this dermatitis occurring over the 
country is not at all surprising, and the indications for the season 
of 1910 are more favorable for an increase than a decrease in the trouble. 
OBSCURITY SURROUNDING THE OCCURRENCE OF THIS SKIN DISEASE. 
The exact nature of this eruptive disease was not at all understood 
by the medical profession throughout the country. In southwestern 
Virginia thrashermen suffered from the same disorder, but attributed 
it to ‘‘chiggers”’ (fig. 12), and local physicians, though skeptical, were 
themselves unable to correctly diagnose or to account for the trou- 
ble. As the disease is not serious and passes away in the course 
of time without leaving 
Z 
the patient in any way 
/ 
i 
permanently injured, 
= 
it seems to have been 
passed over by medical 
men without investiga- 
tion, excepting by the 
physicians whose publi- 
cations have just been 
cited. Among the peo- 
ple themselves the erup- 
Fig. 12.—Leptus americanus at left; Leptus irritans at right. Highly tion was probably more 
magnified. (After Riley.) % 
frequently attributed to 
attacks of ‘‘ chiggers”’ ora ‘‘rash”’ than to any other cause, and it is quite 
likely that this common erroneous interpretation of the origin of the 
eruption has prevailed generally throughout the country, including the 
upper Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where the jointworm was abun- 
dant as far back as 1904. It was, consequently, rather unfortunate 
that, with the beginning of this disorder, an institution in one of the 
States involved should publish a newspaper bulletin crediting the epi- 
demics of this eruption to the attack of “‘chiggers,” and, furthermore, 
that a second press: bulletin, accentuating the first, should have been 
issued and sent to every newspaper in the State and from these copied 
into other newspapers throughout the country. Thus it was that an 
entirely erroneous impression was magnified and still further diffused. 
In order to determine the likelihood that those handling straw in 
the wheat field will be attacked by the small red mites often mistaken 
for “‘chiggers”’ that abound in the harvested grain at this time, 
[Cir. 118] 
