PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 103 
LUCILIA MACELLARIA INFESTING IAN. 
By FRED. HUMBERT, M. D., F. €. S. 
ALTON, ILL., October 7, 1882. 
I send you herewith a gag or screw fly?, as known here; they are in 
alcohol or alive in a green bottle; some of the maggots are also in 
alcohol. I wish you would hand this species to your entomologist for 
a minute examination and its proper name, as I cannot find a full 
description of this insect and its habits in any books in my possession. 
The following is part of an essay penned in 1876 but not published, 
which, with the history of this fly, will explain itself: 
A farmer’s wife, thirty-five years of age, was attacked on Monday, 
September 27, 1875, with a headache and a flushed face. She staid at 
work, expecting a malarial chill, an affection prevailing at that time in 
the neighborhood. From this time the pains in the region of the frontal 
cavity at the base of the nose and below the eye, extending to the right 
ear, increased. At times the pain was more severe than at others, but 
it never entirely left. This pain was described as preventing hearing 
and breathing, and so excruciating that at intervals, day and night, her 
cries could be heard at a great distance from the house. Tuesday even- 
ing blood mucus began to run from the right nostril, which was some- 
what swollen, the swelling extending on Tuesday over the whole right 
side of the face. On this day, the fifth of the complaint, four large 
maggots dropped out of the right nostril. When I was first called to 
the patient, Monday, October 4, only the right lip and nostril were 
swollen, the acrid discharge having somewhat blistered the lips below, 
After each discharge the maggot dropped from the nostril, until the 
twelfth day, one hundred and forty or more maggots having escaped. 
The majority of the maggots were three-fourths of an inch in length, 
there being only a few which seemed a line or two shorter; they were 
of a yellow hue, conical shape, and having attached to one end two 
horn-like hooks. The patient recovered fully. 
Monday, September 18, 1882, 1 saw a patient, in the same neighbor- 
hvod as the first, suffering from the same malady. At that time two 
hundred and eighty maggots had been discharged, and at the close of 
the illness over three hundred. There was a swelling on each side of 
the nose, with a small opening to each. I lanced these openings and 
more maggots came out. 
In the Indian Territory the so-called screw-fly laid its eggs in the 
nose of man. In 1847 I heard of several deaths of men and children in 
Texas, near Dallas. The gad-fly was common in the American Bottom 
forty years ago. It laid its eggs in the noses of cattle and in the ears 
of horses and deer, but never in the human nose. The fly that I send 
is about four times as large as the common fly. Head a dark, glisten- 
