CHAPTER XVII. 



HUMAN PEDICULI. 



IF occasional parasites, such as fleas and bugs, creatures 

 which simply visit our bodies at intervals, and spend 

 only a small proportion of their lives actually on our 

 persons, excite repugnance and disgust, what can be 

 said of the feelings with which we contemplate those 

 hideous pests that make men's bodies their lifelong 

 home, born and bred thereon, generation after generation, 

 living there and there alone, and, as units of life, almost, 

 if not entirely unknown, apart from such association ? 

 And yet, though cleanly people nowadays hold them in 

 such utter abhorrence that they can hardly be named in 

 polite society, they were not always objects of loathing 

 and disgust. In former times people were more inclined 

 to joke about them than to shudder at them, and some, 

 it is said, even went so far as to be proud of their guests. 

 In Hooke's " Micrographia," which, as we have already 

 seen, was written some 230 years ago, there is a brief 

 account of the head-louse, accompanied with an enormous 

 figure representing a specimen magnified to the length 

 of nearly two feet. Hooke introduces his description 

 with the following highly suggestive passage : "This is 

 a creature so officious that 'twill be known to every one 

 at one time or other, so busie, and so impudent, that it 

 will be intruding itself in every one's company, and so 

 proud and aspiring withall that it fears not to trample 



on the best, and affects nothing so much as a Crown ; 



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