DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 135 



circumstance of all. Dr. Martin Lister, who to the skill 

 of the physician added the most profound knowledge of 

 nature, mentions an instance, communicated to him by 

 Mr. Jessop, of a girl who voided three hexapod larvae 

 similar to what are found in the carcases of birds a , pro- 

 bably belonging either to the genus Dermestes, or An- 

 threnus : and in the German Ephemerid.es the case also 

 of a girl is recorded, from an abscess in the calf of whose 

 leg crept black worms resembling beetles 5 . 



The larvae of some beetle, as appears from the de- 

 scription, seem to have been ejected even from the lungs. 

 Four of these, of which the largest was nearly three 

 quarters of an inch long, were discovered in the mucus 

 expelled after a severe fit of coughing by a lady afflicted 

 with a pulmonary disease ; and similar larvae of a smaller 

 size were once afterwards discharged in the same way c . 



No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed 

 upon vegetable substances, could be met with alive in 

 the stomach ; yet Dr. Lister gives an account of a boy 

 who vomited up several, which, he observes, had sixteen 

 legs d . The eggs perhaps might have been swallowed 

 in salad ; and, as vegetables make a part of most people's 

 daily diet, enough might have passed into the stomach 

 to support them when hatched. Linne tells us that the 

 caterpillar of a moth (Aglossa pmguinalis}, common in 

 houses, has also been found in a similar situation, and is 

 one of the worst of our insect infesters. In a very old 

 tract, which gives a figure of the insect, a caterpillar of 

 the almost incredible length of the middle finger is said 



a Philos. Trans. 1665. x. 391. Shaw's Abridg. ii. 224. 



b Mead, Mod. Sacr. 105. c London Medical Review, v. 340. 



<l Philos. Trans, ubi supra. 



