72 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



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 1 , probably belonging either to the genus 

 Dermestes, or Anthrenus : and in the German Ephemerides the case also of 

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

 worms resembling beetles. 2 



The larva? of some beetle, as appears from the description, 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 ex- 

 pelled after a severe fit of coughing by a lady afflicted with a pulmonary 

 disease ; and similar larvae of a smaller size were once afterwards dis- 

 charged in the same way. 3 



No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed upon vegetable sub- 

 stances, 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. 4 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 pinguinalis), 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 cater- 

 pillar of the almost incredible length of the middle finger is said to have 

 been voided from the nostrils of a young man long afflicted with dreadful 

 pains in his head. 5 But the most extraordinary account with respect to 

 lepidopterous larvae (unless he has mistaken his insects) is given by Azara, 

 the Spanish traveller before quoted ; who says that in South America 

 there is a large brown moth, which deposits its young in a kind of saliva 

 upon the flesh of persons who sleep naked : these introduce themselves 

 under the skin without being perceived, where they occasion swelling 

 attended by inflammation and violent pain. When the natives discover it, 

 they squeeze out the larvae, which usually amount to five or six. 6 



But amongst all the orders, none is more fruitful in devourers of man 

 than the Dipiera. The Bot-fly (CEstrus L.) you have, doubtless, often 

 heard of, and how sorely it annoys our cattle and other quadrupeds ; but 

 I suspect have no notion that there is a species appropriated to man. The 

 existence, indeed, of this species seems to have been overlooked by ento- 

 mologists (though it stands in Gmelin's edition of the Systema Nature 7 , 

 upon the authority of the younger Linne), till Humboldt and Bonpland 

 mentioned it again. Speaking of the low regions of the torrid zone, where 

 the air is filled with those myriads of musquitos which render uninhabitable 

 a great and beautiful portion of the globe, they observe that to these may 

 be joined the CEstrus Hominis, which deposits its eggs in the skin of man, 

 causing there painful tumours. 8 Gmelin says that it remains beneath the 



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



2 Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. 3 London Medical Review, v.340. 



4 Philos. Trans, ubi supra. 



5 Fulvius Angelinus et Vincentius Alsarius, De verme admirando per nares egresso. 

 Kavennse, 1610. 



6 Azara, 217. I cannot help suspecting this to be synonymous with the CEstrus 

 Hominis next mentioned. 



7 From Pallas, N. Nord. Beytr. i. 157. 



6 Essai sur la Geoffraph. des Plantes, 136. 



