, 
DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 51 
fatal result, it seems to have been a different and much more terrific animal. 
He supposes in this instance the insect to have been generated by drink- 
ing goat’s milk too copiously. This, if correct, would lead to a conjecture 
that it might have been the 4. Lactis L.* 
These cases I hope will satisfy you that mites, as well as lice, are the 
cause of diseases in the human frame. ‘This, indeed, as has been before 
observed, is allowed on all hands with respect to that of the itch; and it 
is, certainly, not more improbable that man should be exposed to the 
attack of several species of this genus, than that three or four kinds of 
Pediculus should infest him. If you are convinced by what I have written, 
you will concur with me in thinking that the one are as much entitled to 
give their name to the disease which they produce as the other; and the 
term Acariasis, by which, with due reverence to medical men, I propose to 
distinguish generically all acarine diseases, will not be refused its place 
amongst your Genera Morborum. 
I shall now proceed to the remaining class of diseases mistaken for 
Phthiriasis ; those, namely, which are produced by /arve. There are two 
terms employed by ancient authors, Hule (Buda), and Scolew (SkwAné), 
which seem properly to denote larvee; but there is often such a want of 
precision in the language of writers unacquainted with Natural History, 
that it is very difficult to make out what objects they mean; and ex- 
pressions which, strictly taken, should be understood of larva, may pro- 
bably have sometimes been used to denote the cause of either the pedicular 
or acarine disease. Mule, which term, though given by Hesychius as 
synonymous with Scolex, is by Plutarch used as of different import?, seems 
properly to mean those larvae which are generated in dead carcases, at 
least so Homer has more than once applied it*: it is therefore a word of 
amuch more restricted sense than Sco/ex, which probably belongs to the 
larvee of every order of insects : for so Aristotle employs it, when he says 
that all insects produce a Scolew, or are larviparous.4 Yet when Homer 
‘compares Harpalion stretched dead upon the ground to a Scolew®, it should 
seem as if he used the word for an earth-worm, which Aristotle commonly 
alls by a figurative peviphrasis, “ Entrails of the earth.’® Inthe Holy 
Scriptures this word is used to signify larvee which prey upon and are the 
torment of living bodies.? It may on this account, perhaps, be regarded 
as generally meaning such laryee, to whatever order or genus they belong. 
_Dr. Mead, therefore, is most probably right when he considers the 
disease stated by the ancients to be caused by Lule or Scoleches, com- 
monly translated worms, as distinct from Phthiriasis; and if so, the in- 
human Pheretima, who swarmed with Bude, and Herod Agrippa, who 
was eaten of Scoleches®, were probably neither of them destroyed either by 
Pediculi or Acari, but by larvee or maggots. And when Galen prescribed 
a remedy for ulcers inhabited by Scoleches, observing that animals similar 
to those generated by putrid substances are often found in abscesses, he 
_| Anew species of mite has just been described by M. Simon, which lives in the 
diseased and normal hair-sacs of man. Miiller’s Archiv. 1842, p. 278. 
2 In Artaverx, 5 hy x. 1.599. w. 1. dtd, 
4 Ta ds evrena mavra cxwAyxoroxer. De Generat. Animal. |. 2. c. 1. 
5 Tl. v. 1.654, 655. 
Is evrepa. De Animal Incessu, c.9, De Generat. Animal. 1, 3. c. 11, 
Mark, ix. 44, 46, 48. 
SxoAyxoBcwroe, Acts, xii, 28. 
ons 
B2 
