The uses of water in health and disease : a practical treatise on the bath, its history and uses / by J.H. Kellogg.

  • Kellogg, John Harvey, 1852-1943.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The uses of water in health and disease : a practical treatise on the bath, its history and uses / by J.H. Kellogg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    35/172 (page 29)
    Aristocratic Vermin,—Doubtless, not a few of those very refined and fastidious people who spend many hours in the application of all sorts of lotions and other compounds to the face and hands, for the purpose of beautifying those portions of the skin exposed to view—while neg- lecting as persistently those parts of the skin protected from observation—would be very much surprised to learn the true condition of the un- washed portions of their cutaneous covering. They instinctively shrink with disgust from the sight of a vermin-covered beggar, in whose cuticle bur- rows the acarus scabiei (itch-mite), while troops of larger insects are racing through his tangled locks and nibbling at his scaly scalp. It is quite possible that many a fair unwashed would faint with fright if apprized of the fact that her own precious covering is the home of whole herds of horrid looking parasites which so nearly resemble the itch-mite as to be at least very near relatives, perhaps half-brothers or cousins. The name of this inhabitant of skins unwashed is as formidable as the aspect of the creature, though it does not require a microscope to dis- play its proportions, as does the latter; scientists call it demodex folliculorum. The demodex makes himself at home in the sebaceous follicles, where he dwells with his fam- ily. Here the female lays her eggs and rears her numerous progeny, undisturbed by the frictions of any flesh-brush, and only suffering a very tran-