DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 73 



skin of the abdomen six months, penetrating deeper, if it be disturbed, and 

 becoming so dangerous as sometimes to occasion death. The imago he 

 describes as being of a brown colour, and about the size of the common 

 house-fly ; so that it is a small species compared with the rest of the 

 genus. 1 Even the gad-fly of the ox, leaving its proper food, has been 

 known to oviposit in the jaw of a woman, and the bots produced from 

 the eggs finally caused her death. 2 Other flies also of various kinds thus 

 penetrate into us, either preying upon our flesh, or getting into our intes- 

 tines. Leeuwenhoek mentions the case of a woman whose leg had been 

 enlarging with glandular bodies for some years. Her surgeon gave him 

 one that he had cut from it, in which were many small maggots : these he 

 fed with flesh till they assumed the pupa, when they produced a fly as 

 large as the flesh-fly. 3 A patient of Dr. Reeve of Norwich, after suffering 

 for some time great pain, was at last relieved by voiding a considerable 

 number of maggots, which agree precisely with those described by De 

 Geer as the larvae of his Musca domestica minor (Anthomyia canicularis 

 Meig.), a fly which he speaks of as very common in apartments. 4 In 

 Paraguay the flesh-flies are said to be uncommonly numerous and noxious. 

 Azara relates 5 that, after a storm, when the heat was excessive, he was 

 assailed by such an army of them, that in less than half an hour his clothes 

 were quite white with their eggs, so that he was forced to scrape them off 

 with a knife ; adding, that he has known instances of persons, who, after 

 having bled at the nose in their sleep, were attacked by the most violent 

 headaches ; when at length several great maggots, the offspring of these 

 flies, issuing from their nostrils, gave them relief. In Jamaica a large blue 

 fly buzzes about the sick in the last stages of fever ; and when they sleep 

 or doze with their mouths open, the nurses find it very difficult to prevent 

 these flies from laying their eggs in the nose, mouth, or gums. An instance 

 is recorded of a lady, who, after recovering from a fever, fell a victim to 

 the maggots of this fly, which from the nose found their way through the 

 os cribriforme into the cavity of the skull, and afterwards into the brain. 6 

 One of the most shocking cases of Scholechiasis I ever met with is related 

 in Bell's Weekly Messenger in the following words : " On Thursday 

 June 25. died at Asbornby (Lincolnshire), John Page, a pauper belonging 



1 For an investigation of the question, whether man is attacked by a distinct 

 species of (Estrus, see a report on the statements of M.M. Roulin, Howship, 

 Say, Guerin, &c., made to V Academic des Sciences, 1833, by MM. Isidore, 

 Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, and Dumeril (copied in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ii. 

 518.), -who, on the whole, though with some hesitation, pronounce for the affirm- 

 ative. Yet most of the facts passed in review seem rather to support the idea 

 that species of (Estrus, whose proper abode is in other animals, occasionally attack 

 man. 



2 Clark, in Linn. Trans, iii. 323. note. 



3 Leeuw. Epist. Oct. 17. 1687, ubi supra. De Geer, vi. 26, 27. 



4 Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. 5 p. 216. 



G Lempriere, On the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, ii. 182. See Trans. Ent. 

 Soc. Lond. i. proc. xlvi. in which various cases are recorded by W. Sells, Esq. (an 

 acute observer, whose untimely death Entomology has recently had to deplore), as 

 coming under his own observation in Jamaica, of flies being hatched in the human 

 body ; in one instance, in a neglected blister on the chest ; in another, in the gums 

 and inside of the cheek ; in a third, in the ear ; and in a fourth, in the passages of 

 the nostrils, out of which the negro who was the sufferer counted not fewer than 235 

 larvae (of, Mr. Sells believes, the blue-bottle-fly), which in a fortnight dropped out by 

 applications of oil and tobacco smoke. 



