42 ANIMAL PAEASITES. 



3. Combinations of the first and second methods. 



I. Remedies which re-move the mites mechanically (Milben- 

 k'dmme), and methods founded upon them. 



a. Picking off the mites. This plan is still in use in Corsica ; 

 very deserving of recommendation*according to Hartwiz and Walz, 

 with the large mange-mites of animals (e.g. horse-mites), and 

 also effected by Konig with the Sarcoptes hominis, and recom- 

 mended by Schiuzinger for those perfectly fresh cases in which 

 only a few galleries are found. To effect this picking (especially 

 in the latter case) we have simply to cut out or slit up the entire 

 passage, capture the mite, and then apply caustic to the place. 

 In general, however, this method is too tedious, and in old cases 

 even dangerous as a point of medical police, from the prolonged 

 danger of infection. 



b. Rubbing off the mites with charcoal, chalk, brick-dust, fine 

 sand, pumice-stone, fyc. This plan is too tedious alone, and 

 allows too much chance of diffusion ; in combination with other 

 methods it is deserving of consideration. 



c. The removal of the passages with their inhabitants (mature 

 mites, brood, and eggs) by the cutaneous inflammation produced by 

 soft soap. This method is especially represented by the old, 

 English, Yezinian method, which has hitherto been the one 

 most in use. In this the patient is treated with soft soap 

 from top to toe, with the exception of the penis, which is care- 

 fully protected by cloths ; this treatment is continued for eight 

 days, during which he is kept at a temperature of 100 F. (30 R.). 

 He is then laid naked between woollen blankets until the in- 

 flamed epidermis breaks off in fragments. Circumstances enough 

 to render it desirable to do away with this method are to be 

 found in the great inconvenience which it inflicts upon the 

 patient, the troublesome eczema which is scarcely ever absent, 

 the injurious employment of the method only in the summer 

 time, the long duration of the treatment itself, which is still 

 further prolonged by the frequent relapses (caused, according to 

 Volz, by the penis, a principal seat of the mites, remaining 

 entirely out of treatment, and thus furnishing a fresh source of 

 infection), in the great expense caused by the soft soap, the 

 heating, arid the purchase of the blankets, in the impossibility 

 of applying the method out of the house of the patient, and in 

 the disgusting nature of the method itself. 



