HARD WICKE' S S CIENCE- G O SSI P. 



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decided to consult a doctor who, having made his 

 interrogations and examinations, declared her at- 

 tacked with angina, and treated her for this affection. 

 In spite of all the remedies administered, far from 

 the pains abating, they on the contrary augmented in 

 intensity, and her mother, justly alarmed by the state 

 of the young invalid, who got worse from day to day, 

 wrote to her son to consult another practitioner at 

 Cordova. M. Augustus Ortiz immediately called on 

 Dr. Lesbini, and gave him the details of the malady 

 contained in the letter. On the relation of the 

 sufferings the sick girl experienced Dr. Lesbini 

 recognised the same indications and the various 

 symptoms which he had observed in Ramona March- 

 land, whom he had previously attended and cured. 

 The analogy of the pains experienced by the two, 

 did not leave any doubt but that the malady was 

 myiasis in the nasal fosse and frontal sinus, and he 

 ^consequently ordered injections to be made through 

 the nostrils with a decoction of basil and a solution 

 of salic acid. He also recommended that the invalid 

 should be brought immediately to Cordova, in order 

 that she might be more under the instant remedies 

 and care of the faculty. 



" The letter which led Dr. Lesbini to these con- 

 clusions, ran as follows :— Sunday, the 5th January, 

 1878, Josefa Ortiz commenced to complain of in- 

 supportable itchings in the right nostril, and the same 

 day she experienced several bleedings at the nose. 

 The following days she suffered violent pains in the 

 face, in the nape of the neck and in the throat. The 

 town doctors' conclusions in regard to the condition 

 of the poor sufferer proved only too painfully true, 

 and might serve as a protest against all country prac- 

 titioners. 



"On Tuesday the 14th January, nine days after 

 her palate was perforated, and two maggots, suffi- 

 ciently developed, escaped by the right nostril. Her 

 pains now became more and more violent, and her 

 brother Augustus Ortiz, being warned, set out for 

 Totoral. Arrived at home, the state of his sister 

 appeared so grave that he resolved to take her with 

 him to Cordova. He gave a minute narration of 

 the consultation he had had with Dr. Lesbini, 

 according to whose opinion the illness of Josefa was 

 produced by the maggots, which had been deposited 

 by a fly as eggs in her nose. Her parent;., in spite 

 of the eighty- two maggots that had issued, could not 

 be brought to believe in such an assertion, in their 

 ignorance it appeared an impossibility, that these 

 worms that they had seen could be the young of a 

 fly ; they could not comprehend how any relation 

 could exist between them and a fly, and they doubted 

 it the more when the invalid girl affirmed that no fly 

 had introduced itself into her nose. 



" Struck, however, with the narration, Elisa, a 

 younger sister of the invalid, related that the fore- 

 vigil, a fly had entered into her right nostril, and 

 that during the afternoon she had experienced the 



same symptoms as Josefa had at the commencement 

 of her illness. On hearing this the family com- 

 menced to persuade themselves that Dr. Lesbini was 

 in the right. The departure being resolved upon, 

 it was decided that they should leave by the first 

 train, and that they would take Elisa with them on 

 the journey, a decision to which the maiden indubit- 

 ably owed her life. 



" On Saturday, the 18th January, at ten minutes 

 after nocn, they entered the train at the station of 

 Jesus Naria. At half-past one Josefa got down from 

 the carriage and walked a moment ; at fifty minutes 

 past two the train drew up at the station of General 

 Paz, and already her condition is so aggravated that 

 her family, plunged into the greatest anxiety, believes 

 she will never arrive at her destination. At three 

 o'clock when the train again starts, Josefa is 

 deprived of her senses, and shortly after leaving the 

 station of General Paz, she expires in the arms of her 

 forlorn mother. 



"Her body, transported to the house of her 

 brother Augustus, was immediately examined by 

 Dr. Lesbini, who forthwith summoned two fellow- 

 •practitioners, the first of whom desired to make an 

 autopsyj an operation to which the family made 

 formal opposition. The next day, Sunday, January 

 19th, the body of Josefa Ortiz is carried to its last 

 resting-place, or as ber historian pathetically re- 

 counts it, 1 Josefa is carried to her last abode ; truly, 

 as the patriarch has it, the bloom of the morning has 

 been crushed before the worms.' 



" Let us now turn to her sister. Wednesday the 

 15th January, at the hour of the siesta, Elisa Ortiz, 

 aged fifteen, Josefa being already very ill, was 

 reclining upon her bed engaged in reading ; the heat 

 was quite suffocating, and Elisa lay in that state of 

 unconsciousness neither asleep or awake. We know 

 not what delusive fancy charmed or what harmony 

 floated around, when suddenly she felt something 

 introduce itself into her right nostril. She im- 

 mediately rose, and, having at hand a sneezing 

 powder, she inhaled one or two pinches repeatedly. 

 In one of the sneezes provoked by this powder she 

 saw, she affirmed, a golden fly fall from her /lostril, 

 which could not have remained there but from one- 

 and-a-half to two minutes at the most. She at first 

 took no account of this circumstance, not supposing 

 that lamentable consequences would result to her, 

 and being very far from imagining that the fly in 

 question had come to deposit its progeny in the nasal 

 fosse, and give birth to a population which would 

 shortly occasion her atrocious suffering. 



"It was on Friday, the 17th, towards noon, that 

 Elisa, hearing her brother Augustus relate the 

 opinion Dr. Lesbini had pronounced on the cause of 

 the malady of her sister, recollected what had taken 

 place on the fore-vigil of St. Marcellus, and told it 

 to her family. That very evening she had frequent 

 sneezings and bleedings at the nose, and she com- 



