Straw plaiting

“ As the disease progresses the crusting becomes more or less confluent, forming irregular masses of thick, yellowish, mortar-like crusts or accumulations, having a peculiar, characteristic odor—that of mice, or stale, damp straw. The hairs are involved early in the disease, become brittle, lustreless, break off and fall out. In some instances, especially near the border of the crusts, are seen pustules or suppurating points. Atrophy and more or less actual scarring are sooner or later noted. ”

“ Hereabouts you would often see a whole family lying upon a filthy pallet of straw, and so huddled together for warmth that it had the appearance of some fearsome animal which had crawled from the darkness to the light. ”

“ But it is to be recollected that when forming this decision, these writers have always had in their minds an out-door apiary, for which situation, on account of their exposure to the variations of temperature and the alternations of drought and moisture, straw-hives possess advantages over wooden boxes;—they are not so soon affected by a hot and dry or by a moist atmosphere; they do not part with so much heat in winter nor admit so much in summer, straw being, in the language of the chemists, a bad conductor of heat. ”

“ The larger the specimen the thicker is the skin, and consequently the harder and more unyielding should be the material it rests upon. Do not make a manikin with hoop iron and burlap, and a little loose filling between that and the skin, for specimens so mounted nearly always come to grief. If you stuff a skin with straw, excelsior, or tow, pack the filling in a solid mass, for with the lapse of time all such materials are bound to shrink, no matter how hard you make them at first. The shrinkage of straw is often remarkable and highly disastrous. ”

“ This Straw cross is then dropped into the water, and the rising bubbles carefully counted, as they mark the number of years which will pass ere the arrival of the happy day.——In Devonshire, to charm warts away, they take a Wheat Straw with as many knots as there are warts on the hand to be dealt with, name over the Straw the person afflicted, and then bury it: as it decays, the warts will disappear.——In the county of Donegal, Ireland, a sufferer from warts procures ten Straws, ties a knot in each, throws the tenth away, and carefully rubs the warts with the other nine knotted Straws ”

“ It is taken into the lungs and through them acts upon other parts of the body by suppressing the circulation and respiration. No matter how clean the straw may be, the effect will be the same in the end. Hay is less harmful than straw, but even the use of hay should not be permitted. ”

“ In these the insects take refuge at day-break, as they depredate chiefly in the night; and any time through the day they may be blown into a bottle with a little water in it, and so be drowned. Or, a cheaper way is to burn the straw, and scatter fresh on the ground.
1047. To destroy Fleas on Dogs.—Rub the animal, when out of the house, with the common Scotch snuff, except the nose and eyes. Rub the powder well into the roots of the hair. Clear lime-water destroys the whitish flea-worm without injuring the skin or hair. Oil of turpentine will likewise do so ”

“ Another feature that bears this out is that the attack comes only in the animal that is heavily fed on a strongly nitrogenous ration. It is not the disease of the horse kept on straw, or hay, or which receives a limited amount only of grain. ”

“ Some stragglers frequently disturb you by creeping over your skin, and interrupt your sleep or your meditations by biting, which, however, give pain but for a moment; while others, though of the smallest size, with a sort of malignant vengeance, creep under your clothes, and, by means of stings invisible to the unassisted eye, inject a most acrid venom, which causes a pain as sharp as a small spark of fire, lasting for some hours, and even a day or two after being stung, the pain of which is much increased by irritating the part. ”

“ The discovery of the old blade of a cultivator among the junk of the ballast helped the boys to decide in favor of dredging a channel. For two days they worked waist deep in the water, the hot sun beating on their backs and necks, the mosquitoes humming a merry tune in their ears, and the stinging “sea nettles” or jelly fish, irritating the skin of arms and legs. Added to these discomforts was the constant danger of being stung by the “stingaree,” whose slightest touch means a poisoned wound and sometimes fearful suffering and death. ”

“ Now, the house fly has a very keen scent for filth of any kind. Whenever there is any within a hundred yards or so, the fly goes for it to smear its mouth and all the sticky hairs of its six legs with dirt and disease germs. A second or two suffices to gather up many thousands of these disease germs, and then off goes the fly to the nearest kitchen or dining room. There the fly crawls over the meat, butter, bread, cake, anything it can find in fact, and often gets into the milk pitcher, depositing large numbers of disease germs at every step. The house fly is as disgusting as it is dangerous. ”

“ Then, the amount of ophthalmia is something frightful. It is due chiefly to the intense dryness of the atmosphere and the subtle, impalpable dust which for ever floats in the air above the crowded city. Exceeding dirt also does its part; while the swarms of flies which cluster on the sores, and there revel undisturbed, are a sight to fill you with disgust. ”

“ But you can’t have the plague without rats, and you can’t have rats without dirt. So, therefore, every civilized government in the world keeps men at work in its seaports, killing the rats that come in the ships, lest they bring the plague from China or India, where they don’t mind a little dirt.
There is another animal, dirtier even than the rat, and on the whole rather more dangerous—and that is the fly. Wherever there is dirt, there are pretty sure to be the germs of various diseases. If there is anything the fly likes, it is dirt. ”

“ The fly lays her eggs in the manure-pile or some other filthy place. All the germs—all the microbes—fasten themselves on the spongy feet. The fly brings them into the house and wipes them off. The fly that you see walking over your food is covered with filth and germs.
TRACKS OF A FLY, SHOWING THE WAY IN WHICH THEY SPREAD DISEASE GERMS
If there is any dirt in your house, or about your premises, or those of your neighbors, he has just come from it. ”

“ Damp seasons sometimes bring the germ to the surface of the soil by the gradual elevation of the water level, or by causing inundations and the deposition of the bacillus on areas of pasture or forage that were previously free, or finally by bringing the earth worms to the surface and leading to the deposition in their casts of the bacillus brought from the infected graves or retentive subsoils. Dry seasons are, however, the anthrax seasons par excellence, as they dry up swamps, fens, ponds, lakes, basins, deltas and bottom lands, and render them available for pasture. ”

“ The structure of these stings is very simple, and can be made out with an ordinary microscope, or even a good pocket lens. Each of these stings is, in fact, a rather elaborately constructed hair, hollow throughout its length, coming to a point at the tip, and having the base swollen into a receptacle containing the poisonous juice. When any object—such, for example, as the human hand—touches a nettle, the points of the stings slightly penetrate the skin, and the hair is pressed downwards against the base, so that the poison is forced through the hole. ”

“ Then again, if the day be wet, the slug works by day as well as by night. It is the sun and drought that he shuns, and not the light. Therefore the only effectual way to destroy slugs is to sow lime, in dust, and not slaked. The slug is wet, he has hardly any skin, his slime is his covering; the smallest dust of hot lime kills him; and a few bushels to the acre are sufficient. You must sow the lime at dusk; for then the slugs are sure to be out. Slugs come after a crop that has long afforded a great deal of shelter from the sun; such as peas and vetches. ”

“ A characteristic feature in this animal is the peculiar odour it produces, like many others in the same group of insects. This odour comes from a clear, oily volatile liquid secreted by glands in various parts of the body. Although the normal food is man’s blood, the bed bug can subsist upon moist wood, dust and dirt that collects in crevices in floors, walls, furniture, etc. ”

“ These organic, poisonous matters ooze through the soil into wells and springs, and as before said, may not show any bad effect for sometime, but sooner or later disease and death will surely visit the unsuspecting household and the physician’s aid be sought in vain, for with every draught of water which passes the fevered lips, the sufferer imbibes new poison and hastens the inevitable end. ”

“ Grasping her prey with her legs and jaws, in another moment the wriggling body is passive in her grasp, subdued by the potent anæsthetic of her sting—a hypodermic injection which instantly produces the semblance of death in its insect victim, reducing all the vital functions to the point of dissolution, and then holds them suspended—literally prolongs life, it would sometimes seem, even beyond its normal duration—by a process which I might call ductile equation. ”

“ As direct inoculators, biting or piercing species may take up from a diseased man or animal, germs which, clinging to the mouth parts, are inoculated directly into the blood of the insect's next victim. It it thus that horse-flies may occasionally transmit anthrax. ”

“ In a dense swarm, blackening gray clothes, giving dark ones a strange spotted appearance, they settle down and creep slowly about, looking for an unappropriated spot from which to suck blood. They creep noiselessly and without being felt to the unprotected face and neck, the bare hands and the feet covered only with stockings, and a moment later they slowly sink their sting into the skin, and pour the irritant poison into the wound. ”

“ This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of worms; even in the hard rock the crystal is forming. ”

“ I have met with individuals, upon whom a sting produced the singular effect of causing their breath to smell like the venom of the enraged insect! The smell of the poison resembles almost perfectly that of a ripe banana. It produces a very irritating effect upon the bees themselves; for if a minute drop of it is extended to them, on a stick, they at once manifest the most decided anger. ”

“ In certain cases there develops from one such single bite an urticaria that extends over a large part of the body. The manner by which an irritating substance is introduced into the skin upon biting by the bed bug and also by the flea is clear. The bite is followed by a feeling of itching, which is liable to rob nervous persons of their sleep. Sensitive individuals are upset even by the fleas moving over the surface of the skin during their rest at night.
Treatment consists in extreme cleanliness, capture of the parasites, sprinkling the body and bed-linen with insect powders. ”

“ Hydrophobia is usually contracted from the bite of the dog, and it is a well-known fact that this animal often harbors a minute tapeworm, a single egg of which, when swallowed by the human being, is often followed by death. ”

“ Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest. ”

“ Some call the bleak the water swallow, on account of its nimbleness in catching flies; they are very restless, their haunts being sometimes in deep still water, at the sides and tails of streams, where the water shelves off, and makes a gentle eddy; at others in the streams, which may be observed by their swimming near the surface, and their very active manner of taking and diverting themselves with small flies, and insects. ”

“ The victim is in possession of its full power of sensation; and it expresses the pain experienced as best it may, by contractions. Embarrassed by these tremors, these twitches of suffering flesh, incommoded at every mouthful, the grub chews away at random and kills the larva almost as soon as it has started on it. In a victim paralysed by the regulation sting, the conditions would be very different. There are no external movements, nor any internal movements either, when the mandibles bite, because the victim is insensible. ”

“ That the pain also caused by the stinging of a Flea, a Gnat, a Flie, a Wasp, and the like, proceeds much from the very same cause, I elsewhere in their proper places endeavour to manifest. The stinging also of shred Hors-hair, which in meriment is often strew'd between the sheets of a Bed, seems to proceed from the same cause. ”

“ At first the parasites invade the upper lip and the tissues about the nostrils, sometimes, but more rarely, the eyes and ears. They cause the formation of vesicular papules, accompanied by violent itching. The animal, in rubbing itself, excoriates these papules, which discharge a fluid and soon become covered with yellowish-brown crusts.
The disease afterwards invades the face, forehead, jaws, and entire head. The skin becomes wrinkled and the brownish crusts thicker and more abundant. These are fissured and bleeding, and they give the face the appearance of one vast sore. ”