158 SCABIES. 



whose drawings of the cheesemite are held as classical- to 

 those of the indefatigable Bourguignon and Gudden. 



The history of observations referring to scabies in the 

 domestic animals is very rich. Youatt quotes Ovid's verses 



" Lanigeris gregibus balatus dantibus aegros, 

 Sponte sua" lanaequa, cadunt et corpora tabent," 



in alluding to a pestilence that prevailed in the Island of 

 Aegina 1300 years before the Christian era. 



It is certainly doubtful whether Livy's arguments as to 

 the transmission of the disease from cattle and sheep to man 

 be just. Similar influences, however, might account for the 

 disease scabius, so prevalent amongst oxen and the woollen 

 tribe, in the neighbourhood of Rome, 4 24 years before Christ, 

 being apparently communicated to all the inhabitants of the 

 country, and ultimately to the slaves. Virgil gives a graphic 

 description of the disease. Columella mentions the scab in 

 sheep, and Vegetius Renatus wrote on the mange in horses. 

 The malady was adverted to in the veterinary and agricultu- 

 ral writings of the middle ages, but no new facts were added 

 to those ascertained by the ancients. After speaking of the 

 affection having arrested the attention of sanitary legislators 

 in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Gerlach speaks 

 of the writings of Chabert, Huzard, Wichmann, Wiedebant, 

 and Kersting, the latter, according to Hering, knowing that 

 mange in horses was due to an acarus, as far back as 1784. 

 In 1810, Walz described the scab-insect of the sheep and fox. 

 In 1812, Gohier saw the acari of horse and ox, which Didier 

 described and illustrated; and in 1814 Gohier found the 

 parasites in the Hungarian oxen which followed the Austrian 

 army into Lyons, and were affected with mange in every 

 stage. Bosc, Niemann, and Raspail have contributed by their 

 writings to this subject, and Gerlach alludes to the strange 

 and imaginative drawing of the acarus equi given by Raspail. 



