DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 87 



These cases I hope will satisfy you that mites, as well as lice, are the 

 cause of diseases in the human frame. This, indeed, as has been before 

 observed, is allowed on all hands with respect to that of the itch ; and it is, 

 certainly, not more improbable that man should be exposed to the attack 

 of several species of this genus, than that three or four kinds of Pediculus 

 should infest him. If you are convinced by what I have written, you 

 will concur with me in thinking that the one are as much entitled to give 

 their name to the disease which they produce as the other; and the term 

 Acariasis, by which, with due reference to medical men, I propose to 

 distinguish generically all acarine diseases, will not be refused its place 

 amongst your Genera Morhonim.. 



I shall now proceed to the remaining class of diseases mistaken for 

 Phthiriasis ; those, namely, which are produced by larva. There are 

 two terms employed by ancient authors, EuIce (Ev^«t) and Scolex 

 (j'xwAi^l), which seem properly to denote larvae ; but there is often such 

 a want of precision in the language of writers unacquainted with Natural 

 History, that it is very difficult to make out what objects they mean ; and 

 expressions which, strictly taken, should be understood of larvae, may 

 probably have sometimes been used to denote the cause of either the pedi- 

 cular or acarine disease. Eulce, which term, though given by Hesychius 

 as synonymous with Scolex, is by Plutarch used as of different import^, 

 seems properly to mean those larvae which are generated in dead carcases, 

 at least so Homer has more than once applied it^ : it is therefore a word 

 of a much more restricted sense than Scolex, which probably belongs to 

 the larvae of every order of insects : for so Aristotle employs it, when he 

 says that all insects produce a Scolex, or are larviparous.^ Yet when 

 Homer compares Harpalion stretched dead upon the ground to a Scolex*, 

 it should seem as if he used the word for an earth-worm, which Aristotle 

 commonly calls by a figurative periphrasis, " Entrails of the earth."^ In 

 the Holy Scriptures this word is used to signify larvae which prey upon 

 and are the torment of living bodies.^ It may on this account, perhaps, be 

 regarded as generally meaning such larvs, to whatever order or genus 

 they belong. 



Dr. Mead, therefore, is most probably right when he considers the dis- 

 ease stated by the ancients to be caused by Eula or Scoleches, commonly 

 translated worms, as distinct from Phthiriasis ; and if so, the inhuman 

 Pheretima, who swarmed with Eulce, and Herod Agrippa, who was eaten 

 of Scoleches'', were probably neither of them destroyed either by Pediculi 

 or Acari, but by larvae or maggots. And when Galen prescribed a remedy 

 for ulcers inhabited by Scoleches, observing that animals similar to those 

 generated by putrid substances are often found in abscesses, he probably 

 meant the same thing. The proper appellation of this genus of diseases 

 would be Scolechiasis.^ 



This dissertation may perhaps appear to you rather prolix and tedious ; 



» In Artaxerx. 2 U. ^. \. 599. o). 1. 414. 



^ Trt it cvTOfta vavra (rita>Xii(coro(tt«. De General. Animal. 1. 2. c. 1. 



* 11. V. 1. 654, 655. 



* Ttti tvrcpa. De Animal. Incessu, c. 9. De General. Animal. 1. 3. c. 11. 



« Mark. ix. 44. 46. 48. r Y,Ko\nKo6p<^TOi. Acts, xii. 23. 



« See Memoir by the Rev. F. W. Hope, containing a great number of cases of Scolechi- 

 asis, in the 2d volume of the Trans, of Ike Enl. Soc. of London. 



