DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 47 
by men acquainted with Entomology as well as the science of diseases. 
Considerable deference and attention, however, are certainly due to the 
sentiments of so great a naturalist, in whom these necessary qualifications 
were united in no common degree. With respect to the dysentery and 
the itch, he affirms that this had been manifested to his eyes. You will 
wish probably to know the arguments that may be adduced in confirma- 
tion of this opinion ; | will therefore endeavour to satisfy you as well as I 
am able. The following history given by Linné seems to prove the dysen- 
tery connected with these animals. 
Rolander, a student in Entomology, while he resided in the house of the 
illustrious Swede, was attacked by the disease in question, which quickly 
gave way to the usual remedies. Hight days after it returned again, and 
was as before soon removed. A third time, at the end of the same period, 
he was seized with it. All the while he had been living like the rest of 
the family, who had nevertheless escaped. This, of course, occasioned no 
little inquiry into the cause of what had happened. Linné, aware that 
Bartholinus had attributed the dysentery to insects, which he professed to 
have seen, recommended it to his pupil to examine his feeces. Rolander, 
following this advice, discovered in them innumerable animalcules, which 
upon a close examination proved to be mites. It wasnext a question how 
he alone came to be singled out by them ; and thus he accounts for it. It 
was his habit not to drink at his meals ; but in the night, growing thirsty, 
he often sipped some liquid out of a vessel made of juniper wood. In- 
specting this very narrowly, he observed, in the chinks between the ribs, a 
white line, which, when viewed under a lens, he found to consist of innu- 
merable mites, precisely the same with those that he had yoided. Various 
experiments were tried with them, and a preparation of rhubarb was found 
to destroy them most effectually. He afterwards discovered them in 
vessels containing acids, and often under the bungs of casks.‘ In the in- 
stance here recorded, the dysentery, or diarrhea, was evidently produced 
by a species of mite, which Linné hence called Acarus Dysenterie ; but it 
would be going too far, I apprehend, to assert that they are invariably the 
cause of that disease. 
That Scadies, or the itch, is occasioned by a mite, is not a doctrine 
peculiar to the moderns. Mouffet mentions Abinzoar, called also Aven- 
zoar, a celebrated Hispano- Arabian physician of Seville, who flourished in 
the twelfth century, as the most ancient author that notices it. He calls 
these mites little lice that ereep under the skin of the hands, legs, and feet, 
exciting pustules full of fluid. Joubert, quoted by the same author, de- 
scribes them under the name of Sirones, as always being concealed beneath 
the epidermis, under which they creep like moles, gnawing it, and causing a 
most troublesome itching. It appears that Mouffet, or whoever was the 
author of that part of the Dheatrum Insectorum, was himself also well ac- 
uainted with these animals, since he remarks that their habitation is not in 
the pustule but near it; a remark afterwards confirmed by Linné$, and more 
recently by Dr. Adams. In common with the former of these authors, 
1 Amen, Ac. v. 94—98, 2 Mouffet, 266. 
* Acarus sub ipsa pustula minime querendus est, sed longius recessit, sequendo 
Tugamn cuticule observatur, Aman. Ac, vy. 95. not. **. ; 
Observations, &c. 296, 
