110 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



their eggs, so that he was forced to scrape them off with a 

 knife ; adding, that he has known instances of persons, who, 

 after having bled at the nose in their sleep, were attacked 

 by the most violent headaches ; when at length several great 

 maggots, the offspring of these flies, issuing from their nos- 

 trils, gave them relief. — In Jamaica a large blue fly buzzes 

 about the sick in the last stages of fever ; and when they 

 sleep or doze with their mouths open, the nurses find it very 

 difficult to prevent these flies from laying their eggs in the 

 nose, mouth, or gums. An instance is recorded of a lady, 

 who after recovering from a fever, fell a victim to the mag- 

 gots of this fly, which from the nose found their way through 

 the OS crihriforme into the cavity of the skull, and afterwards 

 into the brain. ^ One of the most shocking cases of Scole- 

 chiasis I ever met with is related in Bell's Weekly Messenger 

 in the following words : " On Thursday, June 25. died at 

 Asbornby (Lincolnshire), John Page, a pauper belonging to 

 Silk-Willoughby, under circumstances truly singular. He 

 being of a restless disposition, and not choosing to stay in the 

 parish workhouse, was in the habit of strolling about the 

 neighbouring villages, subsisting on the pittance obtained 

 from door to door : the support he usually received from the 

 benevolent was bread and meat; and after satisfying the 

 cravings of nature, it was his custom to deposit the surplus 

 provision, particularly the meat, betwixt his shirt and skin. 

 Having a considerable portion of this provision in store, so 

 deposited, he was taken rather unwell, and laid himself down 

 in a field in the parish of Scredington — when from the heat 

 of the season at that time, the meat speedily became putrid 

 and was of course struck by the flies : these not only pro- 

 ceeded to devour the inanimate pieces of flesh, but also 

 literally to prey upon the living substance; and when the 



1 Lempriere, On the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, ii. 182. See Trans. 

 Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. xlvi. in which various cases are recorded by W. Sells, 

 Esq. (an acute observer, whose untimely death entomology has recently had to 

 deplore), as coming under his own observation in Jamaica, of flies being hatched 

 in thehuman body ; in one instance, in a neglected blister on the chest; in another, 

 in the gums and inside of the cheek ; in a third, in the ear; and in a fourth, in the 

 passages of the nostrils, out of which the negro who was the sufferer counted not 

 fewer than 235 larvae (of, Mr. Sell believes, the blue-bottle-fly), which in a fort- 

 night dropped out by applications of oil and tobacco smoke. 



