134- DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



I shall begin my account with the first order of 

 Linne, because people in general seem not aware that 

 any beetles make their way into the human stomach. Yet 

 there is abundant evidence, which proves beyond con- 

 troversy that the meal-worm (Tenebrio Molitor^ L.), al- 

 though its usual food is flour, has often been voided both 

 t)y male and female patients; and in one instance is sta- 

 ted to have occasioned death 3 . How these grubs should 

 get into the stomach it is difficult to say — perhaps the 

 eggs may have been swallowed in some preparation of 

 flour. 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 

 circumstance of all. — Dr. Martin Lister, who to the skill 

 of the physician added the most profound knowledge of 

 nature, mentions an instance, communicated to him by 

 Mr. Jessop, of a girl who voided three hexapod larvae 

 similar to what are found in the carcases of birds b , pro- 

 bably belonging either to the genus Dermestes^ F., or 

 Byrrhus, L. : and in the German Ephemerides the case 

 also of a girl is recorded, from an abscess in the calf of 

 whose leg crept black worms resembling beetles . 



The larvae of some beetle, as appears from the descrip- 

 tion, seem to have been ejected even from the lungs. Four 

 of these, of which the largest was nearly three quarters 

 of an inch long, were discovered in the mucus expelled 

 after a severe fit of coughing by a lady afflicted with a 

 pulmonary disease; and similar larvae of a smaller size 

 were once afterwards discharged in the same way d . 



a Tulpius, Obs. MedA. ii.c. 51. t.7. f.3. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ. 

 n. 35. 42-48. Derham, Physic. Theol. 378. note b. Lowth, Philos. 

 Trans, iii. 1 35. b Philos. Trans. 1 665. x. 39 1 . Shaw's Abridg. ii. 224. 



c Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. ri London Medical Review, v. 340. 



