NO. 10 COCKROACHES—ROTH AND WILLIS 33 
while he was asleep. The experience was described as being extremely 
painful. The cockroach backed out of the ear canal after the man 
threw water into his ear. Baldwin (1906) described a similar occur- 
rence in which a “kitchen” cockroach, a little over an inch long, had 
wedged itself tightly into the external auditory meatus. The patient 
complained of a “tremendous buzzing” in her head. The meatus was 
considerably reddened by the scratching cockroach. Stiles and Hassall 
(1928) reported two other cases of invasion of the ear. In the first 
case (attributed to Mader [1897]), a male patient who slept in a 
kitchen complained of ringing in his ear and headache. A dead 
Blatta orientalis was removed from the ear, in which it had been 
lodged for several days. In the other case, the invasion was attributed 
to Blatiella germanica. 
Sheard (1922) reported that while he was on shipboard in the 
Mediterranean his nasal passage was entered by a cockroach. He had 
experienced a slight fullness in the left nostril for about a day. After 
blowing his nose forcibly several times, he obtained sudden and com- 
plete relief by ejecting a full-grown cockroach from his nostril. The 
insect was quite dead and was enmeshed in a film of clear, tenacious 
mucus. Presumably the cockroach had crawled into the nostril while 
Sheard was asleep, possibly two or more days earlier. 
Stiles (1918) received specimens of several nymphs and an odtheca 
of Blattella germanica purported to have come from an abscess of the 
jaw. A patient under observation in a hospital, with a large swelling 
under the angle of his left jaw, expectorated a bloody sputum. The 
ootheca and the cockroaches were apparently present in the sputum. 
However, it is extremely doubtful that the egg case was placed in the 
abscess by the female cockroach, or that the egg case and nymphs 
migrated through the abscess into the patient’s mouth. A female cock- 
roach may have dropped an egg case on the patient just before the 
eggs hatched or as they were hatching; the egg case and nymphs may 
even have been in the receptacle for the sputum before the patient spit. 
Hennicke (1761) reported an invasion of a 1-year-old child, through 
the mouth, by cockroaches similar to Blatta orientalis. The infant 
coughed up one insect that was still alive and excreted another after 
being treated with a prescribed medicine. 
Johnson (1899) reported that a nursling of 6 months, who showed 
symptoms of a toxic condition apparently of intestinal origin, had 
been invaded by cockroaches. About 2 hours after the child had taken 
a prescribed purgative by mouth, the father reported that the patient 
had passed 6 “cockroaches” and that the stools were of an extremely 
disagreeable odor. The floor of the room was overrun with cock- 
