T2 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS, 
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 careases of birds, probably belonging either to the genus 
—* Dermestes, or Anthrenus: and in the German Ephemerides the case also of 
a girl is recorded, from an abscess in the ca/f of whose /eg crept black 
worms resembling beetles.? 
~~ The larva of some beetle, as appears from the description, seem to have 
been ejected even from the /ungs. Four of these, of which the largest was 
nearly three quarters of an inch long, were discovered in the mucus ex- 
pelled after a severe fit of coughing by a lady afflicted with a pulmonary 
. disease ; and similar larvae of a smaller size were once afterwards dis- 
charged in the same way. : 
No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed upon vegetable sab- 
stances, could be met with alive in the stomach ; yet Dr. Lister gives an 
account of a boy who vomited up several, which, he observes, had sixteen 
legs. The eggs perhaps might have been swallowed in salad ; and, as 
vegetables make a part of most people’s daily diet, enough might have 
passed into the stomach to support them when hatched. — Linné tells us 
that the caterpillar of a moth (Aglossa pinguinalis), common in houses, has 
also been found in a similar situation, and is one of the worst of our insect 
infesters. — In a very old tract, which gives a figure of the insect, a cater- 
pillar of the almost incredible length of the middle finger is said to have 
been voided from the nostrils of a young man long afflicted with dreadful 
pains in his head. — But the most extraordinary account with respect to 
fepidopterous larva (unless he has mistaken his insects).is given by Azara, 
the Spanish traveller before quoted; who says that in South America 
there is a large brown moth, which deposits its young in a kind of saliva 
upon the flesh of persons who sleep naked: these introduce themselves 
under the skin without being perceived, where they occasion swelling 
attended by inflammation and violent pain. When the natives discover it, 
they squeeze out the larvee, which usually amount to five or six.® 
But amongst all the orders, none is more fruitful in devourers of man 
——than the Diptera. The Bot-fly (Gstrus L.) you have, doubtless, often 
heard of, and how sorely it annoys our cattle and other quadrupeds ; but 
{ suspect have no notion that there is a species appropriated to man. The 
existence, indeed, of this species seems to have been overlooked by ento- 
mologists (though it stands in Gmelin’s edition of the Systema Nature’, 
upon the authority of the younger Linné), till Humboldt and Bonpland 
mentioned it again. Speaking of the low regions of the torrid zone, where 
the air is filled with those myriads of musquitos which render uninhabitable 
a great and beautiful portion of the globe, they observe that to these may 
— be joined the istrus Hominis, which deposits its eggs in the skin of man, 
causing there painful tumours.® Gmelin says that it remains beneath the 
1 Philos, Trans. 1665, x. 891. Shaw’s Abridg, ii. 224. 
2 Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. 5 London Medical Review, v.80, 
4 Philos. Trans. wbi suprd. 
5 Fulvius Angelinus et Vincentius Alsarius, De verme admirando per nares egresso. 
Ravenna, 1610, 
® Azara, 217. I cannot help suspecting this to be synonymous with the (strus 
Hominis next mentioned. 
7 From Pallas, N. Nord. Beytr. i. 157. 
8 Essai sur la Geograph. des Plantes, 136. 
