20 MONOGRAPHIA 



from the most accurate computation I could form by the 

 microscope, that the hair was seven hundred times the size 

 of this incredibly slender piercer, which consequently by its 

 punctures must excite little or no pain, unless it happens to 

 touch a nerve. Hence I have been induced to think that 

 the pain or uneasiness those persons suffer who are infested 

 by these creatures, is not so much produced from the 

 piercer as from a real sting, which the male louse carries in 

 the hind part of his body.* This sting is the louse's weapon 

 of offence, and which it uses when pressed by the clothes, 

 or otherwise disturbed. For 1 have observed that when 

 roughly handled they protrude their sting as preparing to 

 strike. Upon exhibiting this creature before the microscope 

 to a certain great personage, he observed to me that his 

 soldiers who were infested with lice, found them more 

 troublesome in rainy than in dry weather, for which I gave 

 this reason, that the clothes when wetted shrink or compress 

 the body, so closely as to impede the louse in its motions, 

 and cause it to use the sting, whereas in dry weather the 

 clothes hanging loose on the body, the louse has room to 

 insert its piercer and suck its food, which it cannot do 

 without bending its body and raising its hind parts." 



In order to ascertain the rapidity with which a louse 

 can propagate its species, he tried the following experiment, 

 which I shall also give in his own words. " The louse is so 

 prolific an animal, that it is a common vulgar saying, that 

 it will be a grandfather in the space of twenty-four hours. 



* Dr. Burmeister states that this projecting organ is nothing more than 

 the extremity of the penis. T examined a male louse, which I may observe 

 is much more scarce than the female: and could perceive nothing but the 

 penis, which when protruded is half as long as the body, and sub-conical. I 

 do not however attempt to deny the power the animal may possess of using 

 his organ as a weapon of defence. 



