NO. 10 COCKROACHES—ROTH AND WILLIS 31 
my feet blistered and sodden, I was put to sleep in a room swarming 
with cockroaches (the small species). The night was intensely hot, 
and my feet were exposed. I had slept soundly for some hours, when 
an intolerable itching and irritation about my feet awoke me. I felt 
these objectionable insects running over and gnawing at my feet. 
On striking a light, I found they had attacked the skin and entirely 
eaten it away from a large blister, leaving a raw place as large as a 
shilling. I slept again, and in the morning found they had completed 
the work, and established a painful sore. The whole of the hard skin 
of the heel was also eaten down to the pink flesh. The nails were not 
attacked. I have now, at a distance of four years’ time, bluish scars 
on the skin.” Kingsley (1870) confirmed Nicols’s account, citing a 
similar experience of a friend who was “marked for life” by cock- 
roaches on board a ship from Jamaica. 
Webster (1834) also stated that cockroaches will attack the toenails 
of persons in their sleep. Smith (i Marlatt, 1902) observed that in 
Brazil the toenails were bitten off by cockroaches, and that in the 
house where he was staying cockroaches had bitten off the eyelashes 
of about a dozen children. Kellogg (1908) reported that ships came 
to San Francisco from voyages around the Horn with the sailors 
wearing gloves to protect their fingernails from being gnawed off by 
the hordes of cockroaches that infested the ships. Gates (1912) 
stated, “All of us who have been more than a short time in the naval 
service have had our troubles with roaches . . . and it is solemnly 
affirmed [that] even the toe nails of the personnel of the navy have 
long suffered from their ravages.” Heiser (1936) mentioned that 
on board ship in the Orient, cockroaches gnawed off the passengers’ 
corns. Bronson (1943) recounted the experience of a friend who was 
cook on a small West Indies schooner. This man awakened from a 
nap with his face sweating terribly. On looking into his mirror, he 
found that the cockroaches had eaten the galley grease from his face, 
taking off a layer of skin as well. Each night the cockroaches gnawed 
the calluses on the bare feet of the sleeping crew. 
Gal’kov (1926), in workers’ quarters at platinum mines in the 
Urals, saw a nursling child whose face, hands, and belly were covered 
with tiny wounds caused by cockroach bites. In another barracks a 
child’s corpse which had lain exposed overnight had its face eaten 
away by cockroaches. According to the inhabitants of the barracks, 
cockroaches very often attacked sleeping persons, especially the 
women, biting the skin of their ears, face, and other places where the 
epidermis is thin. Moiser (1945, 1946) reported that cockroaches 
bite African natives savagely at night. Although he mentioned that 
