298 ARACHNOIDEA, 



CASE particulars above related, its treatment is as clear as day. It is 

 produced by an insect, and all that we have to do is to kill it. 

 But what will kill it without hurting the patient or rather the 

 impatient, especially when the skin is almost scratched through to 

 the raw flesh beneath ? Fortunately we know one substance that 

 seems to be almost invariably poison to insects in whatever 

 shape it be given — sulphur. You can get rid of the green fly ; 

 you can banish the scale ; you can free your kitchen from cock- 

 roaches j you can extirpate almost every insect pest by the use of 

 sulphur. The form in which it is administered does not seem to 

 matter much. It may be powdered dry over the leaves as when 

 we attack the red spider or green fly. It may be administered in 

 smoke, it may be given in solution, it may be mixed up into a 

 soap like Gishurst Compound and various other similar prepara- 

 tions, or it may be administered in an ointment as in the case of 

 the itch, and in all it is alike effectual. It is only necessary to get 

 at the insect so as to expose it to its influence and the insect dies ; 

 and surely if there ever was a case in which it was easy to put salt 

 on a bird's tail, it must be where the creature is in a tunnel that 

 you can trace, and where there is neither opportunity nor temptation 

 for it to come out and move off. There is no doubt a little difficulty 

 in getting at it, for the tunnel in which it is lodged is sinuous and 

 too small for injection or infiltration and up which the sulphur, in 

 whatever form administered, must have difficulty in penetrating; but 

 if we cannot reach it through the tunnel, we can, by removing the 

 surface of the skin so that nothing but a thin permeable roof lies 

 between our application and the mite. By bathing and steeping 

 the parts affected in hot water or vapour, and then rubbing off the 

 skin as much as possible, the Sarcoptes is laid sufficiently bare to 

 allow the sulphur to act through the skin upon it. But although 

 it may be killed, the eggs may not, and that explains how one 

 application is rarely sufficient; but never mind, after a day or 

 two's pause, during which any surviving eggs may be hatched, let 

 the process be repeated. The newly-hatched insects will thus be 



