218 Prof. J. C. Schjédte on Phthiriasis, and 
with a membrane, of a yellowish-red colour, a little protruding 
and “ resembling abscesses,” the largest of the size of a nut, the 
smallest not larger than a pea. The open cavities contained 
thousands of lice, but not a drop of pus; the membranes cover- 
ing the closed places were observed by a pocket magnifier to be 
perforated by small holes, not larger than might have been 
made by a pin. These closed places resembled shot-bags to the 
touch; and when opened, the living contents spread in all direc- 
tions; but not a drop of moisture was to be observed. Accord- 
ing to Dr. Gauike’s opinion, the lice deposit their eggs under- 
neath the epidermis, which he supposes them to perforate by 
means of the “ovipositor” (Afterstachel) at the extremity of 
their abdomen; the young, when hatched, remain under the 
skin; and thus he fancies the “ Lausenabscess” to be formed. 
Dr. Gaulke rejects most external remedies against this disease as 
ineffectual ; only benzin and the internal use of cod-liver oil 
“ effect,”’ according to him, “a radical cure.’ This patient, 
however, understood quite well how to clean his clothes on his 
wanderings from place to place—namely, by burying thei for 
a time in an ants’ nest. 
We should, no doubt, hesitate in drawing conclusions as to 
the state of public sanitary police in Prussia from these accounts 
of Susterburg and Gumbinnen, which are said to be “ mit Liusen 
uiberaus versehen ;” but, at any rate, we cannot in other re- 
spects bestow particular praise on accounts which contain such 
gross blunders in natural history and pathology, and by their 
whole style betray their author’s ignorance of what now-a-days 
is required of a scientific inquiry. No critical reader could find 
more in them than in the many earlier confused and contradic- 
tory accounts, over which those of Dr. Gaulke really have no 
other advantage than that of being dressed in modern medical 
language. Nor can it be doubted that the very bad cases which 
he describes, probably with a great deal of exaggeration, mostly 
reduce themselves to an abnormal pealing off of the epidermis, 
which in most cases had been utterly neglected. He gives not 
even the faintest shadow of a proof that the cavities of the skin, 
which he describes as exanthemata and abscesses, were formed by 
the parasites ; and the hypothesis which he puts forward in this 
respect has no other foundation than a gross blunder in natural 
history, as he has no doubt mistaken the penis of the male for 
an ovipositor*, Dr. Landois himself, who cites these com- 
* The remarkable size and free position of this organ have long before 
caused naturalists to fall into this and other errors. Some have thought 
that the males used it as a sting. This last idea is owing to Leeuwenhoek, 
who otherwise has communicated very valuable observations on the strue- 
ture and development of lice. (Arcana Nature, Contin. p. 75, Epist. 98.) 
