232 Larvcs in the Human Body. 



it is observed, might have been eaten with salad, and enough 

 of the vegetable might have been retained to support them 

 when hatched. 



Linnaeus mentions that the caterpillar of a moth (Cranibus 

 Pinguinalis F.) has also been found in the stomach. A case 

 is related by Angelinus and Alsarius,* who give the figure, of 

 a caterpillar of great length, said to have been voided from 

 the nostrils of a young man long afflicted with dreadful pains 

 in the head. 



It is well known that the gad-fly, (JEstrus L.) sorely annoys 

 cattle and other quadrupeds — but it is not generally known 

 that there is a species appropriated to man. Its existence 

 has been unnoticed by entomologists, at least in books, since 

 Gmelin's edition of the Systema Naturae, until Humboldt and 

 Bonpland mentioned, that, to the myriads of musquitos, which 

 render uninhabitable a great and beautiful portion of the tor- 

 rid zone, may be added the cestrus hominis, Which deposits its 

 eggs in the skin of man, and causes tumors.t Gmelin men- 

 tions it on the authority of the younger Linnaeus, and says that 

 it remains beneath the skin of the abdomen six months, pen- 

 etrating deeper, if disturbed, and sometimes occasioning 

 death. Even the gad-fly of the ox, leaving its proper food, 

 has been known to deposit its eggs in the jaw of a woman, 

 and the bots produced from the eggs finally caused her death.! 



Other flies of various kinds thus penetrate into us, either 

 preying upon our flesh, or getting into our intestines. Lew- 

 enhock|| mentions the case of a woman whose leg had been 

 enlarged with glandular bodies for some years. Her surgeon 

 gave him one he had cut from it, in which were several mag- 

 gots ; 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, (England,) after suf- 

 fering great pain, for some time, was at last relieved by void- 

 ing a considerable number of maggots, agreeing with the lar- 

 vae of the muscida domestica minor of De Geer.§ 



Azara mentions that in Paraguay he has known instances 

 of persons, who, after having bled from the nose in their sleep, 



* De venue adniirando per nares egresso . 

 t Essai dur le geograph. des plantes, 136. 

 j Clark in the Linnean Trans. Vol. III. 

 || Epistles, 1687. 

 § Edinb. Med. and Surg 1 . Joum. 



