Larvce in the Human Body. 231 



moment in most but the unfortunate sufferer, would if thor- 

 oughly investigated, and plainly recorded, shed light, when 

 properly collected and compared, on many of the mysteries 

 that now perplex us. 



In the valuable collection which our learned member, Dr. 

 Mitchill, has just deposited in our cabinet, is a vial containing 

 six (of thirty) larvae vomited up by a girl seventeen years old. 

 She was the patient of a late respectable physician of our city, 

 and had " suffered severely, for eighteen months, from spas- 

 modic and nervous affections." 



Abundant evidence has been adduced, say Messrs. Kirby 

 and Spence, to establish the fact beyond all controversy, that 

 the meal worm, (Tenebrio Molilor L.) whose usual food is 

 flour, has frequently been voided by human beings* and in 

 one instance is stated to have caused death. How these 

 grubs got into the stomach, unless the eggs were swallowed 

 in some preparation of flour, it is difficult to say. But that the 

 animal should be able to sustain the heat of this organ, so far 

 exceeding the temperature to which it is usually accustomed, 

 is the most extraordinary fact of all. 



, Dr. Martin Lister, so well known to geologists, was also, it 

 seems, an attentive observer in his profession, and has record- 

 edt the case of a girl who voided three hexapod larvae similar 

 to what are found in the carcasses of birds. 



In the German Ephemerides| is related the case of a girl, 

 from an abscess in the calf of whose leg crept black worms re- 

 sembling beetles. 



The larvae of some beetle, it seems, have been ejected from 

 the lungs. Four, of which the largest was three fourths of an 

 inch long, were discovered in the mucus expelled after a se- 

 vere fit of coughing by a lady afflicted with a pulmonary dis- 

 ease ; and similar larvae of a smaller size were once afterwards 

 discharged in the same way.|| 



No one would suppose that caterpillars which feed upon 

 vegetable substances, could be found alive in the stomach. 

 But a case is recorded in the Phil. Trans, by Lister, of a boy 

 who vomited up several, which had sixteen legs. The eggs. 



* Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ. No. 35, 42, 48.— Phil. Trans. Vol. 3.- 

 Derham Physic Theol. 378. 



t Phil. Trans. 1665.— Shaw's Abridg. II. 



% Mead, Med. Sacr. 103. 



|| London Medical Review, Vol. v. 340. 



