[167] Med. Repos. vol. i, p. 171.
[168] Haygarth’s Sketch of a Plan to exterminate Casual Small Pox, vol. ii, p. 270.
[169] Med. Repos. vol. ii, p. 291.
[170] See Medical Annals, vol. iii, p 400.
[171] The following account of the poisonous insects of Russia, extracted from Dr. Guthrie’s letter to Dr. Duncan (Med. Annals vol. iii, p. 396) may be not unacceptable to the reader: “I have lately seen (says Dr. Guthrie) a woman with her hand and arm in a most violent state of irritation from the lodgement of the lumbricus melitensis, a worm not much thicker than a horse-hair which had entered her thumb whilst at work in a marshy spot, and was, when I saw her, a day after the accident, on its way up the arm, with excruciating pain. I must own that I should not have known the nature of the disease, if a fellow-peasant had not immediately declared that it was produced by the dangerous worm; which many of these people are acquainted with to their cost, as an inhabitant of the stagnant pools and marshes in that district, about sixty versts to the southwest of Petersburgh. I must farther acknowledge, that I was happy to hear the patient was to be instantly transported to another village, where a famous operator lived, well skilled in the art of extracting the venomous insect; as I should certainly have gone very awkwardly to work if I had been obliged to operate; though the simple peasants perform it with success and safety, gradually winding the worm round a quill, till the whole animal be extracted; a work of much patience and perseverance. I was very sorry that duty obliged me to be in town the same evening, a drive of sixty versts. It was therefore impossible for me to accompany the patient, though I was very desirous of witnessing this village-operation.
“But Russia is pestered with a still more dangerous worm; the furia infernalis. It is still smaller than the former, not being thicker than a human hair. This infernal insect, from its extreme lightness, is often carried up into the air, with the dust, by whirlwinds; and, if it unfortunately falls on the uncovered part of a man or beast, it enters the flesh in an instant, and soon proves mortal, if a remedy be not quickly applied.
“Our new vice-governor of Petersburg lately came down from Siberia, where he was commandant of a fort. He tells me, that in the district of Nerchinsk, where he commanded, the peasants, as well as their cattle, are often destroyed by an insect falling upon them. To prevent this accident from proving fatal, the part is instantly scarified, and rubbed with a mixture of snuff and sal ammoniac.
“This I am convinced must be the furia infernalis; more especially as he assured me, that the insect was so very minute, that none of the peasants had ever seen it when it fell upon them, and that they had no idea of its nature and form. But one circumstance of his, recited, almost staggered my belief; that the carcase of an animal killed by this insect is almost as dangerous as the insect itself. This phenomenon I cannot account for in any other way but by supposing, as the accident always happens in the hot months of the year, that a high degree of putridity is produced by the venomous worm, when the case proves fatal.
“I informed the vice-governor of the manner in which the Dalecarlian peasants in Sweden treat the accident, in order that he might communicate their mode of cure to his Siberian acquaintance, which is merely applying to the part affected a piece of sweet curd. The insect possibly prefers this to flesh, and leaves the one for the other. I am, however, much afraid that this simple remedy will seldom be at hand in Russia, as the peasants are unacquainted with the use of rennet, but prepare a sour curd by means of heat, throughout the whole empire; evidently taking its origin in the Tartar Koumis, and shewing them to be a people of Scythian extraction. They likewise separate butter from milk by heat, instead of the churn; a curious circumstance probably unknown to you before.
“These two dangerous insects are, however, not all which threaten the life of man in this empire: the southern provinces are infected with a third, the bite of which is as mortal as that of the deadly rattlesnake, if the part be not instantly scarified, and rubbed with fresh butter. This is a species of crab-spider, the phalangium acaroides, resembling the tarantula, but rather thinner and smaller. It however kills and devours that formidable spider in a few minutes, which, when compared with it, is an innocent animal.