The Journal of a Disappointed Man

August12. Suffering from indigestion. The symptoms include: Excessive pandiculation, Excessive oscitation, Excessive eructation, Dyspnœa, Sphygmic flutters, Abnormal porrigo, A desiccated epidermis. August 16. Lice or "Creeping Ferlies"[5] I probably know more about Lice than was ever before stored together within the compass of a single human mind! I know the Greek for Louse, the Latin, the French, the German, the Italian. I can reel off all the best remedies for Pediculosis: I am acquainted with the measures adopted for dealing with the nuisance in the field by the German Imperial Board of Health, by the British R.A.M.C., by the armies of the Russians, the French, the Austrians, the Italians. I know its life history and structure, how many eggs it lays and how often, the anatomy of its brain and stomach and the physiology of all its little parts. I have even pursued the Louse into ancient literature and have read old medical treatises about it, as, for example, the De Phthiriasi of Gilbert de Frankenau. Mucius the lawgiver died of this disease so also did the Dictator Scylla, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Emperor Maximilian, the philosopher Pherecydes, Philip II. of Spain, the fugitive Ennius, Callisthenes, Alcman and many other distinguished people including the Emperor Arnauld in 899. In 955, the Bishop of Noyon had to be sewn up in a leather sack before he could be buried. (See Des Insectes reputés venimeux, par M. Amoureux Fils, Doctor of Medicine in the University of Montpellier, Paris, 1789.) In Mexico and Peru, a poll-tax of Lice was exacted and bags of these treasures were found in the Palace of Montezuma (see Bingley, Animal Biog., first edition, iii.). In the United Service Magazine for 1842 (clix., 169) is an account of the wreck of the Wager, a vessel found adrift, the crew in dire straits and Captain Cheap lying on the deck--"like an ant-hill."