DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 131 



an account. In consequence of their short stiff hairs 

 sticking in his skin, after handling them, he suffered 

 extremely for several days ; and being ignorant at first 

 of the cause of the itching, and rubbing his eyes with his 

 hands, he brought on a swelling of the eye-lids, so that 

 he could scarcely open them. Ladies were affected even 

 by going too near the nest of the animal, and found 

 their necks full of troublesome tumours, occasioned by 

 short hairs, or fragments of hair, brought by the wind a . 

 Of this nature also is the famous Pityocampa of the an- 

 cients, the moth of the fir (Lasiocampa Pityocampa}, the 

 hairs of which are said to occasion a very intense degree 

 of pain, heat, fever, itching and restlessness. It was ac- 

 counted by the Romans a very deleterious poison, as 

 is evident from the circumstance of the Cornelian law 

 " De sicariis" being extended to persons who admini- 

 stered Pityocampa 13 . 



In these cases the injury is the consequence of irrita- 

 tion produced by the hair of the animal ; but there are 

 facts on record, which prove that the juices of many in- 

 sects are equally deleterious. Amoreux, from a work of 

 Turner, an English writer on cutaneous diseases, has 

 given the following remarkable history of the ill effects 

 produced by those of spiders. When Turner was a 

 young practitioner, he was called to visit a woman, 

 whose custom it was, every time she went into the cellar 

 with a candle, to burn the spiders and their webs. She 

 had often observed, when she thus cruelly amused her- 

 self, that the odour of the burning spiders had so much 

 affected her head, that all objects seemed to turn round, 

 which was occasionally succeeded by faintings, cold 



a Reaum. ii. 191-5. 



" Mouffet, 185. Plin. Hist. Nat. 1. xxxviii. c. 9. Amoreux, 158. 

 K2 



