DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 131 



wind*. Of this nature also is the famous Pityocampa 

 of the ancients, the moth of the fir (B. pityocampa, F.), 

 the hairs of which are said to occasion a very intense 

 degree of pain, heat, fever, itching and restlessness. It 

 was accounted by the Romans a very deleterious poison, 

 as is evident from the circumstance of the Cornelian law 

 " Be sicariis " being extended to persons who admini- 

 stered Pityocampa b . 



In these cases the injury is the consequence of irrita- 

 tion produced by the hair of the animal ; but there are 

 facts on record, which prove that the juices of many in- 

 sects are equally deleterious. Amoreux, from a work of 

 Turner, an English writer on cutaneous diseases, has 

 given the following remarkable history of the ill ef- 

 fects produced by those of spiders. When Turner was 

 a young practitioner, he was called to visit a woman, 

 whose custom it was, every time she went into the cellar 

 with a candle, to burn the spiders and their webs. She 

 had often observed, when she thus cruelly amused her- 

 self, that the odour of the burning spiders had so much 

 affected her head, that all objects seemed to turn round, 

 which was occasionally succeeded by faintings, cold 

 sweats, and slight vomitings : but, notwithstanding this, 

 she found so much pleasure in tormenting these poor 

 animals, that nothing could cure her of this madness, 

 till she met with the following accident : The legs of one 

 of these unhappy spiders happened to stick in the can- 

 dle, so that it could not disengage itself; and, the body 

 at length bursting, the venom was ejaculated into the 



a Reaum. ii. 191-5. b Mouffet, 185. Plin. Hist. Nat, 



xxxviii. c. 9. Amoreux, 158. 



K 2 



