ON THE ACARUS, 
;370 
them and their manner of‘ piercing the skin, is the Arabian 
physician Avenzoar, who lived in the twelfth century. Not long 
afterwards the Englishman Moufet iTheatrum insectorumj io\. 
Lond. 1558) delineated and described them under the name of 
“ Syrones.” The Germans called them Seuren.” They were 
again described in the year 1557, by a Dresden physician, 
Hauptmann, in his work on Warm Baths, &,c., under the name 
of Acari. Sp. Cyrones : in German “ Reit liesen^' and soon 
afterwards by Hafenreffer {Nosodochium, Cutis affectusy 1660), 
but not so correctly as by Moufet. The Italian, Bonomo, de¬ 
scribed and depicted them very correctly from his own obser¬ 
vations, in a letter to the learned Rede*. The first known 
engraving certainly appeared early in the foregoing year, and with¬ 
out any name by which to discover the author of it: it was, 
however, far less accurate than the engravings in Bonomo’s 
work. 
The observations of Bonomo were in later times confirmed by 
many distinguished physicians and naturalists (namely by Ces- 
toni, Bonanni, Mead, Baker, and others), while, on the other 
hand, many doubted or denied the existence of these acari, 
because they had vainly sought for them. Wichmann, saw 
them in 1786, and completed all that was previously known of 
them in his admirable work on the Actiologie der Kr'dtze.” 
They, however, again eluded observation, for many medical 
men vainly sought for them until the year 1812, when Gales, a 
pupil at the hospital of St. Louis, pretended to have found 
them, and shewed them to many naturalists, and in a work on 
this subject described and delineated them Essai sur la diag¬ 
nostic da la gale, sur ses Causes, &c.’0‘ 
His engravings are quite different from those given by Bonomo 
and Wichmann, but perfectly agree with Geer’s delineations of 
the cheese acari. 
Finally, Raspail of Paris again saw them. He communi¬ 
cated his observations on them in his work, Naturgeschichte 
des Insekts der Kr'dtze.” He compared them with the mites of 
cheese and those of mange in the horse, and delineated them all. 
His drawino’s shew the itch mites to be in their characteristics 
o _ 
essentially the same as those depicted by Bonomo; and proved 
in the most convincing way that Gales had never seen the acari 
of the itch, but that he substituted the cheese mites for them, 
and so imposed upon the scientific men of Paris. 
Raspail describes these in the following manner:— 
Sarcoptes, or Itch Insect. —The body is round, rather com- 
* Osservazioni intorno a pcllicelli del corpo iiinano, dal G. C. Bonomo, 
etc., Fiorenz. 1683. 
