was likewise harassed with a frequent urging to go to stool. These symptoms had succeeded a pain in the loins, of long standing. Thirty drops of the muriatic acid were taken in water, three times a day, and he was directed to collect daily, in one vessel, all the urine which could be obtained in twenty-four hours. The clear urine was then poured off, and the sediment collected upon a paper filter. The acid was gradually increased to fifty drops, and continued till two ounces were taken, when the complaint was removed. One hundred and four grains of a buffcoloured sediment, in an impalpable powder, were collected from the filter. Analysis. To one hundred grains of this sediment, a solution of pure potass, in distilled water, was gradually added, and the vessel shaken till the solution was completed, and it had an alka line taste. On applying a gentle heat, a strong smell of ammonia was perceived. The filtered solution was precipitated with muriatic acid; and the precipitate, when washed and dried, was of a yellowish colour, and dissolved in nitric acid, with the production of red fumes, and the evolution of caloric. A few drops of this solution, evaporated from glass, left a pink residuum, evincing the precipitate from potass to be uric acid. The residuum after potass was added to dilute acetic acid, which produced a slow effervescence. The filtered solution, with carbonate of potass, gave a white precipitate, which, when saturated with sulphuric acid, was insoluble in sixty times its weight of water, assisted by heat, proving the substance dissolved in dilute acetic acid, to be carbonate of lime. With the residuum after dilute acetic acid, muriatic acid produced no effervescence; but on adding a solution of pure ammonia to part of the filtered acid, a white precipitation took place, and the other part, on the addition of sulphuric acid, gave also a white precipitate, indicating the substance soluble in muriatic acid to be phosphate of lime. The loss consisted of woollen fibres, which, in the collecting, had fallen into the vessel containing the urine, and had subsided with the calculous matter. The subject of the above case having lived about eleven years after, without any return of the disease, was frequently referred to, for the satisfaction of others labouring under the same complaint; and, in every case that afterwards occurred, till the 8th of June 1804, the muriatic acid gave equal satisfaction. At that date, a man, upwards of seventy years old, who for many years had been distressed with the symptoms of lithiasis, had taken five ounces of the muriatic acid without any relief. Happening, at length, to void a small stone, which exhibited no appearance of decomposition, it was placed in sulphuric acid. This acid acted feebly upon it; but on placing it, after washing, in nitrous acid, a rapid solution took place. Forty drops of the diluted nitrous acid, of the pharmacopoeia of that time, were, therefore, taken in water four times a day. Soon after this, a discharge of a light brown powder took place with his urine, giving such relief, as to induce him to continue the medicine occasionally, until the 7th of June 1805, during which time he took two pints of the diluted acid. As he lived at a distance, I heard no more of him till his death, which happened a considerable time afterwards. Nov. 12th, 1805.-I was sent for to Simon Kelly, of Colsterworth, aged twenty-nine. He informed me that, from the age of nine years, he had been troubled occasionally with a pain in his loins, which, after strong exercise, was sometimes accompanied with bloody urine, and a difficulty in making water. At this time, he complained of a dull pain, with a sense of weight in the region of the bladder, and a constant desire to make water, which was voided in small quantities, with great pain. Forty drops of the diluted nitrcus acid were directed to be taken in water every two hours, till a sediment appeared in his urine, and afterwards continued four times a-day, while neces-sary. A sediment soon appeared, and by persevering with the medicine to the 20th of April 1806, six hundred grains of a light brick-coloured powder were collected; in which, towards the conclusion, a few fragments of calculus were found partially decomposed. Twenty-seven ounces of the diluted acid were used. He has had a return of the complaint; but on taking the acid again, a sediment appeared in his urine, with some small fragments, which relieved him as before. One hundred grains of the sediment, collected from this person, and submitted to the analysis described, gave the following result. Since the discovery of the superior lithontriptic power of the nitrous acid, it has been employed in several cases of lithiasis; and in no instance hath it failed to procure a discharge of sediment with the urine; and, where it hath been duly persevered in, a consequent removal of the symptoms. It is necessary to add here, what would have been tiresome repetition in the cases, that, in every instance where pain required it, a sufficient quantity of opium was given, and repeated as often as it was necessary; and that costiveness was prevented by mild laxatives. The oppression of the stomach, which sometimes occurred from the frequent doses of the acid, was relieved by taking any convenient spirit, properly diluted with water. To prevent the teeth from being affected by the acid, the doses were mostly sucked through a large goose-quill, and the mouth was immediately rinsed with water. Little-Bytham, near Stamford, XI. An Account of the Larvae of two Species of Insects discharged from the Human Body. By T. BATEMAN, M. D. F. L. S. &c. (with an Engraving). THE HE cases which I have to relate, do not possess any practical importance; and the only degree of interest, that may be attached to them, must be derived from the uncertainty of medical records on the subject in question. This uncertainty induces me to bring them forward. For whether we consider, on the one hand, the difficulty of accounting for the origin of many of those animals, which make their nidus in the human body; or the variety of indistinct and fabulous histories of such animals, which have been detailed on the other; every instance of the existence of those which are not usually found there, but the species of which can be ascertained, and therefore, the probable origin pointed out, seems to be worthy of being recorded. Besides the varieties of the tænia, the lumbricus, and the ascaris, which are the most common inhabitants of the alimentary canal in man, a considerable number of living creatures, most frequently those belonging to the tribe of insects, have been described by medical writers, as occasionally making their abode in different parts of the human body. The writers of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries, indeed, have related instances of the discharge of various animals, as well as insects, from the body; such as frogs, lizards, serpents, &c. which may be found on consulting the collections of Schenkius, Marcellus Donatus, Borelli, and others; and the microscopic philosophers not only peopled every organ of the body, even the blood-vessels themselves, with worms and animalcula, * but believed that all contagion consisted of the same beings, which, according to the varieties of their nature, communicated scabies, and syphilis, small-pox, dysentery, the plague, and every infectious distemper. But even after the experiments of Redi had elucidated the physiology of the insect tribes, and the observations of Vallisneri, and others, had proved the fallacy and absurdity of many of the tales, just alluded to, a sufficient degree of ignorance or inattention still prevailed among medical observers, to leave us in the dark, respecting the nature and origin of most of the living beings, generated or nurtured in the body; so that every production of this kind is still considered as a sort of anomaly; and the various facts remain too indefinite, or too imperfectly discriminated, to admit of any practical arrangement. There is reason to believe, however, that the species of insects, about to be described, are not very uncommon parasites of the human frame. For an account of the first species, I am indebted to my friend Mr Oswald Allan, of York, who favoured me with a specimen, and with his notes of the first case, which I shall mention. The symptoms of these cases, however, are not so much the object of this paper, as the appearance of the insects; especially as a considerable degree of irritation and pain seems to have been common to them all, and as it is impossible to ascertain how much of the distress was attributable to the presence of the insects, and how much to other sources, where other disease existed. * See the learned dissertations of Dan. Le Clerc, entitled Hist. Lator. Lumbric. p. 271, et seq. + See Amonit. Academ. Vol. V. Diss. 82. The first case was that of a young woman, aged 24, of an emaciated frame, and sallow complexion, who had been sickly from the ninth year of her age, and had especially suffered several attacks of acute rheumatism. For three months, she had been affected with severe griping pains in the abdomen, attacking her suddenly about the umbilicus, which were accompanied with sickness, and were generally relieved by an evacuation by stool, sometimes by a discharge of flatus from the stomach. These pains were usually worse in the night, and were much aggravated by the impulse of cold air on any part of the body, and by moving herself in bed. After an extraordinary attack of the pain in the belly, she passed by the anus a worm or grub, after which the pain was immediately relieved, and she continued easy during the remainder of the day. The pains, however, returned as usual; and after the lapse of a month, she quitted another worm of the same form per anum, suffering the same exacerbation and speedy relief of the abdominal pain. A considerable time after this occurrence, the patient died in a very emaciated condition. Description of the Insects. These insects were preserved alive by Mr Allen, in a phial containing only air, the one living about a month, the other upwards of a fortnight. They possessed extreme agility, especially in the evening, and moved as quickly in a retrograde as in the contrary direction. They were about 14 inch in length, (see Fig. 1.) and equal to a large crow quill in circumference: the body being divided into thirteen sections, the third of which from the head was smaller than the rest. The head contained two eyes, and two short antennæ or palpi; and they had six feet attached to the three first sections of the body. In a word, they were obviously the grub or caterpillar of a winged insect, and that of the coleopterous order: and I have the authority of that able naturalist, Dr Shaw, for considering them as the larva of the common black beetle, the Tenebrio molitor of Linnæus.* This larva, it may be observed, is well known by the appellation of the mealworm, and was so denominated in the time of Mouffet, † who * Systemą Naturæ, Class, Coleoptera. + Insectorum Theatrum, Lond. 1634. Lib. II. Cap. 20, p. 254. "Farinarios Angli meale-wormes appellant, teredini similes, sepedes, capite parvo et spadiceo, corpore annuloso, et pro farinæ diversitate vario colore; proba enim et albissima farina, albos generat; vetustior flavos; macra et furfuribus immixta etiam fuscos. "-Linuæus observes, that this larva is the favourite food of caged nightingales. |