38 ANIMAL PARASITES 



itats. Before doing this, however, it will be in- 

 teresting and instrnctive to glance at the general 

 history of this little creature, called in English the 

 itch-mite, and in Latin, sarco^tes hominis, or 

 acarus scabiei. 



There is strong evidence in support of the idea 

 that some of the diseases spoken of in the Bible 

 as prevalent among the Jews were, in reality, due 

 to the ravages of the itch-mite in the skin. 

 Probably, when mankind began to people the 

 world, these insects began to people them^ de- 

 rived, by contagion, from the lower animals 

 previously in existence. From a passage in Aris- 

 totle's "History of Animals," it has been supposed 

 that the insect was known to him as the cause of 

 itch. The old Arabian physicians, in their writ- 

 ings, mention it cjuite plainly, — Avenzoar, for 

 instance ; but apparently we must come down to 

 the twelfth century for indisputable reference to 

 the itch-mite, in a work entitled ^^ Physica" 

 written, curiously enough, by Saint Hildegard, 

 the Lady Superior of the Convent on the Rupert>- 

 Bcrg, near Bingcn. From that time downwards, 

 the insect has been seen and spoken of by the 

 medical writers of the times, as Guv de Chauliac, 



