DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 137 



he had cut from it, in which were many small maggots : 

 these he fed with flesh till they assumed the pupa, when 

 they produced a fly as large as the flesh-fly a . — A patient 

 of Dr. Reeve of Norwich, after suffering for some time 

 great pain, was at last relieved by voiding a considerable 

 number of maggots, which agree precisely with those 

 described by De Geer as the larva? of his Musca domes- 

 tica ?ninor, a fly which he speaks of as very common in 

 apartments b . — In Paraguay the flesh-flies are said to be 

 uncommonly numerous and noxious. Azara relates c that, 

 after a storm, when the heat was excessive, he was assailed 

 by such an army of them, that in less than half an hour 

 his clothes were quite white with their eggs, so that he 

 was forced to scrape them off with a knife ; adding, that 

 he has known instances of persons, who, after having bled 

 at the nose in their sleep, were attacked by the most violent 

 head-aches ; when at length several great maggots, the 

 offspring of these flies, issuing from their nostrils, gave 

 them relief. — In Jamaica a large blue fly buzzes about the 

 sick in the last stages of fever ; and when they sleep or doze 

 with their mouths open, the nurses find it very difficult to 

 prevent these flies from laying their eggs in the nose, 

 mouth, or gums. An instance is recorded of a lady who, 

 after recovering from a fever, fell a victim to the maggots 

 of this fly, which from the nose found their way through 

 the os cribriforme into the cavity of the skull, and after- 

 wards into the brain d . One of the most shocking cases of 

 Scolechiasis I ever met with is related in Bell's Weekly 



a Leeuw. Epist. Oct. 17, 1687- b Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ, 

 ubi supra. De Geer, vi. 26, 27. c 216. 



d Lempriere On the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, ii. 182. 



