G. H. F. Nuttall 
423 
of men; such individuals quickly reinfest their cleaned fellows and often 
lead to billets and dug-outs being wrongly blamed as sources of infestation. 
The men shovdd be stripped for inspection, their clothing being rapidly 
removed immediately before and turned inside out. The underclothes 
and outer garments should be examined, special attention being given to 
the shirt, the seams in the clothing and the fork of the trousers as being 
the most likely places to harbour lice and nits (see pp. 91-93). Several 
observers draw particular attention to the large number of nits that may 
be present beneath the small piece of linen covering the rough seams at 
the fork. The Scotch kilt with its many deep folds is a notorious abode 
for hce. 
Head-lice whether on soldiers or civilians and children should be 
looked for at the occiput and sides of the head, above and behind the 
ears. In cases of slight infestation the nits are more readily detected 
than the active stages and they are best seen on dark hair; recently laid 
nits will be found at the hair bases. 
Phthirus will naturally be looked for most frequently in the pubic 
region, next in the axillae and lastly about the eyelashes where it but 
rarely occurs (see this vol. p. 385). 
II. LOUSING BY MECHANICAL MEANS. 
1. When the head is infested. 
(a) Pediculus, 
In mild cases of pediculosis the lice and their nits may be removed by 
hand-picking and combing with a fine comb. It is a process that has been 
employed from time immemorial and is commonly used among primitive 
peoples. Murillo, Teniers and other artists did not think it beneath their 
dignity to illustrate the process of lousing 1 . As usually employed, the 
1 The word lousing has become rare owing no doubt to the decreasing lousiness of the 
population. It can no longer be said of head-lice: “the heads of young children that are 
almost allways full of them” (Moffett, ed. 1658, p. 1091). To louse signifies “to clear of 
lice, remove lice from (a person, oneself, a garment)” according to Murray's Dictionary , 
therefore de-lousing, as frequently used to-day, is unjustified (we would not ask a person 
to de-weed a garden!). Lousing ( lowsyn ) was used in 1440 (Murray ); “ Efte was she busy 
lowsynge and kemynge” (1514, Barclay, A., The Cytezen and Uplondysman: an eclogue. 
Printed from the orig. ed. by Wynkyn de Worde. Ed. by P. W. Fairholt, London, 1847). 
“Howe handsome [convenient] it is to lye and sleejje, or to lowze themselves in the sun¬ 
shine” (Edmund Spenser (1590-1600), View of the Present State of Ireland, published 1633). 
“To York House, where the Russia Embassador do lie; and there I saw his people go up 
and down louseing themselves” (Lord Braybrooke’s ed. Pepys' Diary, vide 6 June, 1663); 
I find that the word louseing is not in shorthand in the original MS. at Magdalene College. 
Cambridge. See also Stevens’ translation of Quevedo (1707) and Hearne (1795), of which 
