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to be spreading with you there is every reason to believe that it will become seriously 
injurious unless remedial measures are undertaken. You will find the species men- 
tioned upon page 40, of Hubbard’s ‘Insects Affecting the Orange.”—[October 26, 
1891. ] 
On the Treatment of Human Patients affected with Screw Worm. 
I have delayed answering your kind communication relating to the Texas Screw 
Worm, Compsomyia (Lucilia) macellaria, until hearing from the Louisiana and 
Texas Experiment Stations, to which you referred me. Iam in receipt of their 
bulletins on the subject, and find them very complete in every detail. Yet the 
remedies which are described in the bulletins as being efficacious in the destruc- 
tion of the Screw Worm (chloroform, ether, carbolic acid, bichloride mercury, 
turpentine, etc.), are scarcely applicable to human patients, owing to the ex- 
treme sensitiveness of the parts affected. I have tried all of the enumerated mate- 
Tials for the destruction of the Screw Warm, and my experiments scarcely tally with 
those of the bulletins. For example, I have found the worm to live for four minutes 
in pure carbolic acid; in strong turpentine for fifteen minutes. Chloroform has 
proved most satisfactory, as the maggot was killed by immersion for thirty seconds. 
It is, however, unnecessary to add, that it is impossible to apply these medica- 
ments in pure form in so sensitive a locality of the delicate mucous membrane of the 
nose and pharynx; again, in a diluted form, such remedies would accomplish but 
little. Therefore, in treatment of my patients medicaments were unsuccessfully 
tried, and surgical measures had to be instituted. * * *—[M.A. Goldstein, M.D., 
Missouri, December 13, 1891. 
Bot-fly Larve burrowing under the Skin of Man. 
* * * In reference to the article in INSECT LIFE, vol. II, pp. 238, 239; ‘‘A grub 
supposed to have traveled in the human body,” I greatly regret that I have no more 
separata left of my article in the Swedish ‘‘ Entomologisk Tidskrift,” on the oceur- 
rence of Dipterous grubs under the skin of man. As pointed out in this article, we 
have known of such occurrences in some districts of our country for one hundred 
years past and up te the present time. Many of these grubs I have myself seen and 
examined, and they were all of them Hypoderma larve (sine dubio—Hyp. bovis), and 
as a rule they have undertaken longer ramblings under the skin, always in upward 
directions, previous t» their appearance through an opening in a tumor on the upper 
part of the body (head, neck, shoulders, etc.). All of them lived in this manner 
for months, and came out in the course of the winter months (February or so), but 
were always still much too young to be hatched. However, I have no doubt at all, 
that they belong to Hyp. bovis, as it is especially in those persons who take care 
of cattle in the summer months that such grubs are to be found during the winter. 
It is evidently the smell of cattle which attracts the Bot Fly tothem. Hyp. diana 
does not occur in our country. : 
The article may be found in the Entomologisk Tidskrift, Stockholm, 1886, pp. 171-187, 
and contains also a short historic résumé of all accidents of this kind observed up to 
that time, and which have been published here in Norway and elsewhere.—[W. M. 
Schoyen, Norway, November 11, 1891. 
REepLy.—* * * The facts which you give me concerning this traveling larva of 
Hypoderma are very interesting, and I will look up the article in the Entomologisk 
Tidskrift for 1886. As you will have noticed probably upon pages 201 and 207, vol. 
II, Iysecr Lire, Dr. Cooper Curtice, formerly of this Department, claims to have 
proven that Hypoderma bovis frequently hatches from the egg in the esophagus of 
cattle, pierces the esophagal walls and travels through the subcutaneous tissue until 
it reaches a point under the skin of the back where it becomes more or less encysted. 
The facts which you give have a strong bearing on this more or less theoretical 
position of Dr. Curtice.—[November 27, 1891. ] 
