PHTHIRUS INGUINALIS. 189 



questionable by Wichmann in his Etiologie de la Gale (Hanovre 

 1786), a work I have not had an opportunity of consulting. From 

 all this we may regard the point as so far settled, that an animal 

 of this kind exists at least as an occasional concomitant of scabies. 



" This fact being ascertained, a more complex inquiry remains, 

 which branches out into two distinct questions. Is scabies always 

 produced by these insects ? Or, if this be not the case, Is the 

 animate scabies a distinct disease from the inanimate? 



" It is very remarkable that Linne, a physician as well as a natu- 

 ralist ; and De Geer, one of the most accurate observers that ever 

 existed ; should both assign the insect in question as the undoubted 

 cause of the common scabies of their country ; the one applying to 

 the disease he was speaking of the epithet of communissima, and 

 observing the fact to be notorious, (cuique liquet), and the other 

 designating it by the well known French name " La Gale.*" And 

 is it not equally remarkable that such men as John Hunter, Dr. 

 Heberden, Dr. Bateman, Dr. Adams, and Mr. Baker, should never, 

 in this country, have been able to meet with it? Did it indeed 

 exist in our common scabies, it seems impossible that it could have 

 escaped the observation of the two last of these gentlemen ; Dr. 

 Adams bein°- so well qualified to detect it from his observations in 

 Madeira, and Mr, Baker from his expertness in microscopical 

 researches. Dr. Bateman, in the letter above quoted, says, " I 

 have hunted it with a good magnifier, in many cases of itch, both 

 in and near the pustules, and in the red streaks or furrows, but 

 always without success." In his work on Cutaneous Diseases he 

 tells us, however, that he has seen it, in one instance, when it 

 had been taken from the diseased surface by another practitioner. 

 And though Dr. Willan in his book speaks of the Acarus as the 

 concomitant of the disease, yet his learned friend just mentioned 

 observes, that he admitted that it was not to be found in ordinary 

 cases, and indeed never seemed to have made up his mind upon 

 the subject. When I was at Norwich in 1812, Dr. Reeve very 



* I am informed by my learned friend Alexander MacLeay, Esq. late Secretary to 

 the Linuean Society, that, in the north of Scotland, the insect of the itch is well known, 

 and easily discovered and extracted. 



