DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. J09 



Leeuwenhosk mentions the case of a woman whose leg had been enlarg- 

 ing with glandular bodies for some years. Her surgeon gave him one that 

 he had cut from it, in which were many small maggots : these he fed with 

 flesh till they assumed the pupa, when they produced a fly as large as the 

 flesh-fly.^ — A patient of Dr. Reeve of Norwich, after suffering for some 

 time great pain, was at last relieved by voiding a considerable number of 

 maggots, which agree precisely with those described by De Geer as the 

 larvae of his Musca domestica minor (^Anthomyia canicularis Meig.), a fly 

 which he speaks of as very common in apartments.^ — In Paraguay the 

 flesh-flies are said to be uncommonly numerous and noxious. Azara 

 relates^ that, after a storm, when the heat was excessive, he was assailed 

 by such an army of them, that in less than half an hour his clothes were 

 quite white with their eggs, so that he was forced to scrape them off with 

 a knife ; adding, that he has known instances of persons, who, after having 

 bled at the nose in their sleep, were attacked by the most violent head- 

 aches: when at length several great maggots, the offspring of these flies, 

 issuing from their nostrils, gave them relief. — In Jamaica a large blue fly 

 buzzes about the sick in the last stages of fever ; and when they sleep or 

 doze with their mouths open, the nurses find it very difficult to prevent 

 these flies from laying their eggs in the nose, mouth, or gums. An in- 

 stance is recorded of a lady, who after recovering from a fever, fell a vic- 

 tim to the maggots of this fly, which from the nose found their way 

 through the os crihriforme into the cavity of the skull, and afterwards into 

 the brain.'' One of the most shocking cases of Scolechiasis I ever met 

 with is related in Bell's Weekly Messenger in the following words : " On 

 Thursday, June 25, died at Asbornby (Lincolnshire), John Page, a pau- 

 per belonging to Silk-Willoughby, under circumstances truly singular. 

 He being of a restless disposition, and not choosing to stay in the parish 

 workhouse, was in the habit of strolling about the neighborino- villages, 

 subsisting on the pittance obtained from door to door: the support he 

 usually received from the benevolent was bread and meat ; and after sat- 

 isfying the cravings of nature, it was his custom to deposit the surplus 

 provision, particularly the meat, betwixt his shirt and skin. Having a 

 considerable portion of this provision in store, so deposited, he was taken 

 rather unwell, and laid himself down in a field in the parish of Screding-r 

 ton — when from the heat of the season at that time, the meat speedily 

 became putrid and was of course struck by the flies : these not only pro- 

 ceeded to devour the inanimate pieces of flesh, but also literally to prey 

 upon the living substance ; and when the wretched man was accidentally 

 found by some of the inhabitants, he was so eaten by the maggots that 

 his death seemed inevitable. After clearing away as well as they were 

 able these shocking vermin, those who found Page conveyed him to As- 



» Leeuw. Epist. Oct. 17, 1687, ubi supra. De Geer, vi. 26, 27. 



* Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ. 3 p 216. 



* Lempriere, On. the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, ii. 182. See Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. 

 i. proc. xlvi. in which various cases are recorded by W. Sells, Esq. (an acute observer, 

 ■whose untimely death entomology has recently had to deplore), as coming under his own 

 observation in Jamaica, of flies being hatched in the human body ; in one instance, in a 

 neglected blister on the chest ; in another, in the gums and inside of the cheek ; in a third, 

 in the ear ; and in a fourth, in the passages of the nostrils, out of which the negro who was 

 the sufferer counted not fewer than 235 larvae (of, Mr. Sell believes, the hlue-botlle-fly), 

 which in a fortnight dropped out by applications_of oil and tobacco smoke. 



10 " . 



