Larva in the Human Body. 233 



were attacked with the most violent head aches ; and only 

 received relief when several great maggots, the offspring of 

 the flesh-fly, issued from their nostrils. 



In Jamaica a large blue fly hovers around the sick, and is 

 with difficulty prevented by nurses from depositing eggs in 

 the nose, mouth, and gums of the invalids. Lempriere re- 

 cords* the case of a lady, who after recovering from fever, 

 fell a victim to the maggots of this fly, which from the nose, 

 found their way through the os cribiforme into the cavity of 

 the skull, and afterwards into the brain. 



The larvae of the Elophilus pendulus F. a fly peculiarly 

 formed for inhabiting fluids, has been found in the stomach 

 of a woman.! 



Bonnet relates j that he had seen the certificate of an Eng- 

 lish physician, stating that a girl, who had by prescription of 

 a quack, swallowed some sow bugs alive, threw up a prodi- 

 gious number of them, of all sizes, which must have bred in 

 her stomach. 



In a Memoire Apterologique, Hermann gives the figure of 

 an Acarus marginatus seen running on the corpus callosum 

 , of the brain of a patient, at the military hospital at Strasburgh, 

 just as the pia mater was separated. He adds, that it is not 

 the first time insects have been seen in the brain. He quotes 

 C. Gemma, who says, that, on dissecting the brain of a wo- 

 man, there were found abundance of vermicles and punaises. 



It is well known that beans and other extraneous bodies 

 often form a nucleus for stones in the bladder — and it is not 

 more wonderful that a larva should be found in that viscus 

 than that a bean should have germinated there — and that fact 

 is sufficiently established. 



The late Dr. Stringham, Professor in Columbia College, has 

 recorded in the New York Medical Repository, (Hex. I. Vol. 

 6, p. 262,) the case of a lady, whose long sufferings had so 

 "enfeebled her health that it was thought death alone could 

 alleviate her miseries, but who was relieved and cured by the 

 passage of a great number of non-descript insects. They 

 were three-fourths of an inch long ; the back covered with a 



* On the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica. 

 t Phil. Mag. IX. 

 % Vol. V. 



Vol. XIIL— No. 2. 



