156 VEGETABLE PARASITES. 



pustules are most frequently seen here and there on the moustache 

 or whiskers, which grow and suppurate a little, and the evil seems 

 to have subsided for a time. At last these pustules get closer 

 together and form groups, though each single hair is attacked 

 individually. The eruption is preceded by a burning sensation, 

 pain, and stiffness of the skin, which becomes red and swells. 

 Near the insertion of the hair small pointed, whitish, or slightly 

 yellowish pustules arise, which increase after the lapse of a few 

 days. In some the pustules are scratched open with the nails, 

 whilst in others the matter recedes and dries up in the interior 

 of the pustule. Small yellowish crusts, most frequently isolated, 

 cover then the prominences of the follicle, or a single firm adherent 

 crust is formed which turns brownish or blackish iri the course 

 of time. If the inflammation of the follicle does not go on to 

 suppuration, small, hardened, reddish, or brownish crusts, rather 

 papulous than pustulous, and covered with epidermidal scales, 

 are found. The inflammation spreads sometimes to other parts 

 of the skin, as, for instance, to the sebaceous follicles, and swellings 

 as large as a cherry (tubercles) are seen, especially on the lips 

 and chin. The fungus spreads soon and very rapidly from the 

 upper lip ; sometimes it remains restricted to the line parting the 

 moustache. The action of emollients and resolvents helps to 

 reduce the inflammation, and the eruption ceases for a time, but 

 only in order to break out with more virulence and to spread 

 further. The disease may thus last for years with alternating 

 changes for better or worse. When it has once become chronic 

 a fungous state of the follicles, which bleed at the slightest touch, 

 comes on, and a badly-smelling, sanious matter is discharged, 

 a thorough change of the hair takes place, which becomes 

 yellowish, ash-gray, whitish, and atrophied, and falls off spon- 

 taneously. It may even lead to a permanent alopascia. There 

 is no doubt that the mentagrum of Martial (Epigramm., lib. xi, 

 98) and the pudeudagrum of Pliny, with its formation of little 

 knots and tubercles, was nothing more than the consequence of 

 the Microsporon mentagrophytes, which Roman " libertines" called 

 Cunnilingi and Basiatores, and which was carried from the chin 

 to the genitals, and from the genitals again to the chin of a third 

 person. 



Treatment. Bazin considers that mentagra renders an imme- 

 diate removal of the hair necessary, without any further prepara- 

 tion, by means of a pair of pincers; this may be done in partial 



