66 



DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



already I seem to hear you exclaim, Why dwell so long on 

 creatures so odious and nauseating, whose injuries are confined 

 to the profanum vulgus ? Leave them therefore to the canaille 

 — they are nothing to us." Not so fast, my friend — recollect 

 what historians and other writers have recorded concerning 

 the PhthiriasiSf or pedicular disease ; and you must own that, 

 for the quelling of human pride, and to pull down the high 

 conceits of mortal man, this most loathsome of all maladies, 

 or one equally disgusting, has been the inheritance of the 

 rich, the wise, the noble, and the mighty ; and in the list of 

 those that have fallen victims to it, you will find poets, phi- 

 losophers, prelates, princes, kings, and emperors. It seems 

 more particularly to have been a judgment of God upon op- 

 pression and tyranny, whether civil or religious. Thus the 

 inhuman Pheretima mentioned by Herodotus, Antiochus 

 Epiphanes, the Dictator Sylla, the two Herods, the Emperor 

 Maximin, and, not to mention more, the great persecutor of 

 the Protestants, Philip the Second, were carried off by it. 



I say by this malady, or one equally disgusting, because it 

 is not by any means certain, though some learned men have 

 so supposed, that all these instances, and others of a similar 

 nature, standing also upon record, are to be referred to the 

 same specific cause; since there is very sufficient reason for 

 thinking that at least three different descriptions of insects are 

 concerned in the various cases that have been handed down 

 to us under the common name of Phthiriasis, As the subject 

 of maladies connected with insects, or produced by them, is 

 both curious and interesting, although no writer, that I am 

 aware of, has given a full consideration, and at the same time 

 falls in with my general design, I hope you will not regard 

 me as guilty of presumption, and of intruding into the pro- 

 vince of medical men, if I enter rather largely into it, and 

 state to you the reasons that have induced me to embrace the 

 above hypothesis, leaving you full liberty to reject it if you 

 do not find it consonant to reason and fact. The three kinds of 

 insects to which I allude, as concerned in cases that have been 

 deemed Phthiriasis, are lice (Pediculi^ L.) mites {Acari, L.), 

 and LarvcB in general.^ 



1 The terms Acariasis and Scolechiasis have been applied to the diseases pro- 

 duced by Acari and Larvcs. 



