Tick

“ It is called bibo in Uganda, moubata in Angola, and tampan on the Lower Zambesi. It feeds on animals and birds as well as man. Its bite is very painful. This tick is found in native huts, living in cracks and crevices and in the thatch roofs.
The female tick infected with the spirillum transmits the infection to the eggs and the next generation. They appear to be able to live without food a long time, and probably live for years. They lay their eggs in masses on the ground or in crevices, and when they hatch they are in the nymph stage with four pairs of legs. ”

“ This form of tick disease is manifestly different from Rocky Mountain fever, as it is non-febrile, is unattended with eruption, and is not communicable by inoculation. Possibly it is produced by a poison instilled by the'tick during haustellation. The wound it makes is very painful, is attended with œdema and, on forcible removal of the tick, with free bleeding as if some anticoagulin had been introduced. In sheep the favourite points of attachment of the tick are on the back along the course of the spine; in man, the nape of the neck. ”

“ The wood ticks are familiar to inhabitants of uncultivated lands, and prove troublesome parasites to man and beast alike. The tick lives on bushes, and attaches itself to the mammal only to secure a feast of blood, for when gorged it drops off to sleep off its debauch on the soil. The tick produces great irritation by boring into the skin with its armed proboscis. If pulled out, the head and thorax are often left in the skin. They may be covered with oil to shut out the air from their breathing pores, or by touching them with a hot penknife they will be impelled to let go their hold. ”

“ After a varying time it also drops to the ground, undergoes a metamorphosis, and gives rise to the eight-legged adult tick. Here at last we reach the infective stage; the adult tick is alone capable of giving the disease to the animal upon which she feeds, and then only when she is descended from a tick which has bitten an infected host. ”

“ These sores were often produced by the irritating bite of an insect known under the name of the tick (ixodes) , of which there are different species, and also by the bite of the mosquito.
Specimens of the larger species of tick having fastened upon animals in such places as the ear, mane, etc., where they could not be rubbed off, become gorged with blood to the size of haricot beans. Those which attack men are much smaller. ”

“ While given species of ticks show a preference for particular genera of animals, yet ticks generally in their vagabond life will leave the long grass and brush where they have been hatched to become temporarily the guests of any passing animal. It is, therefore, premature to seek to identify any single species of tick as the only bearer of the infection, and it is quite possible that any one of several species may contribute to its propagation. ”

“ If the mother tick had been feeding on an animal that was infected with the Texas fever parasite, her body was filled with the minute organisms of which some found their way into the eggs so that the young ticks hatching from them were already infected and ready to carry the infection to the first animal they fed upon. ”

“ They have ticks, jiggers, and gnats, all doing a nice conservative business at once. You never had a tick on you, did you, Jim? Well, a tick is a very busy little cup of tea. First, he'll crawl all over you, and then select a spot on the back directly between the shoulder blades, where you can't reach him. I talked to a man who was up on ticks, and he said a tick was wiser than a bedbug. Now, you take a bedbug whose head is perfectly clear, and who hasn't been drinking or smoking too much, and there won't be many men on Wall Street much wiser than he is. ”

“ Seed tick, and red worms are small insects, that annoy the people by day, as musquitoes and chinches do by night; but both these keep out of your way, if you keep out of theirs; for seed ticks are no where to be met with, but in the track of cattle, upon which the great ticks fatten, and fill their skins so full of blood, that they drop off, and wherever they happen to fall, they produce a kind of egg, which lies about a fortnight before the seedlings are hatched. ”

“ But the tick is an inhabitant of the dust, a dry horny insect without any apparent moisture in its composition; it lives in hot sand and dust, where it cannot possibly obtain nourishment, until some wretched animal lies down upon the spot, when it becomes covered with these horrible vermin. I have frequently seen dry desert places so infested with ticks that the ground was perfectly alive with them, and it would have been impossible to rest on the earth. ”

“ The infection is not direct, that is, the tick does not feed on one host then pass to another carrying the disease germs with it. Unlike many other ticks the Texas fever tick does not leave its host until it is fully developed. When the female is full grown and gorged she drops to the ground and lays from 2,000 to 4,000 eggs which soon hatch into the minute "seed-ticks" which make their way to the nearest blade of grass or weed or shrub and patiently wait for the cattle to come along. ”

“ The legs of most species are comparatively short, and the head is small so that they are often hardly noticeable when the body is distended. The sucking beak which is thrust into the host when the tick is feeding is furnished with many strong recurved teeth which hold on so firmly that when one attempts to pull the tick away the head is often torn from the body and left in the skin. ”

“ Hooker, Bishopp and Wood (Bull. 106, U.S. Dept. Agric., Div. Ent., 1912, p. 189) state that a number of cases have been brought to their notice where the bite of this tick has caused considerable local inflammation, which in some cases required physicians’ attention. It has been supposed to be connected with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but it is doubtful if it is concerned in its transmission. The engorged female is steel grey, the dorsum with an olive-green surface colour, which covers the grey except in small spots, giving a mottled appearance. ”

“ Oil is the only means of loosening the hold of a tick; this suffocates him and he dies; but he leaves an amount of inflammation in the wound which is perfectly surprising in so minute an insect. The bite of the smallest species is far more severe than that of the large buffalo or the deer tick, both of which are varieties. ”

“ General measures along the line of tick eradication must be carried out if the disease is to be controlled. That such measures are feasible has been shown by the work which has been done in controlling the tick-borne Texas fever of cattle, and by such work as has already been done against the spotted fever tick, which occurs on both wild and domestic animals. ”

“ Ticks should also be carefully exterminated, as they are sometimes responsible for such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African tick fever, and other infections. The bedbug is also by no means the harmless creature which it is generally regarded. ”

“ I once picked up a tick that was like a piece of petrified stone. I hit it with a stick, and it just clicked like a piece of stone. I turned away and pretended to be busy with something else. It took about three or four minutes before it gave any sign of life. The tick knows instinctively that safety lies in pretending to be petrified. ”

“ Cultivation of a tick-infested soil for one year or more, with complete exclusion of cattle from November or December until March or April of the second year thereafter, will exterminate the ticks. During the intervening summer there may be plenty of young live ticks on this land, but, in the absence of the bovine host, and blood, these cannot reach maturity, lay their eggs and thus leave new generations. ”

“ This tick seems to prefer the crevices and open joints of bamboo beds, laying its eggs and moulting in the hiding places. It comes out at night to feed on the occupants of the bed. Two white rats were inoculated with an emulsion made from ticks taken from a suspected bed. Both rats developed a spirochaete infection. A man inoculated with blood of one of these rats developed relapsing fever on the sixth day. A second man was inoculated subcutaneously with an emulsion of ticks collected from a bed and showed spirochaetes in his blood on the eleventh day. ”

“ All infective disease of sheep, inoculated by ticks, and producing a meningo-myelitis, with drowsiness, hyperæsthesia, irritability, paresis and other nervous disorders.
Animals susceptible. This is almost exclusively a disease of sheep, yet Meek and Greig-Smith claim to have seen it in swine that have eaten the raw carcasses of louping-ill sheep, or that have ranged the tick infested pastures, and in rabbits inoculated with the microbe from the wound caused by the tick. W. Williams claims to have seen well marked cases in cattle, and heard of cases in horses and swine. ”

“ A fossil rhinoceros with a vertical bony medial septum supporting the nose; the hairy rhinoceros.
Tick (?) , n. [Abbrev. from ticket.] Credit; trust; as, to buy on, or upon, tick.
Tick, v. i. 1. To go on trust, or credit.
2. To give tick; to trust.
Tick, n. [OE. tike, teke; akin to D. teek, G. zecke. Cf. Tike a tick.] (Zoöl.) (a) Any one of numerous species of large parasitic mites which attach themselves to, and suck the blood of, cattle, dogs, and many other animals. When filled with blood they become ovate, much swollen, and usually livid red in color. ”

“ If a pillow tick becomes soiled, the feathers may be transferred to a clean tick by making an opening about six inches long in the end of each pillow, sewing the ticks together, and then shaking the feathers from one tick to the other. The soiled tick can then be washed. If the feathers themselves have become soiled they should be renovated by a cleaner. Pillows, like mattresses, should be frequently brushed, sunned, and aired. ”

“ Owing to the fact that it frequently attacks man as well as occurring in great abundance in Oregon and California, it is of considerable economic importance. It is spoken of as the wood tick, and in the regions where found is the most common tick to attack man. ”

“ Here, by scraping, you may discover hundreds of these loathsome beasts in every foot of wall. But they are fortunately different from the grass ticks that, though unpleasant, are not dangerous to man. For the tick that carries the spirillum is blind and cannot climb any smooth surface. ”

“ Prevention: destruction of ticks; picking; dipping or smearing with tick killing preparation, paraffin or extradynamo oil and sulphur, danger with shipping; dressing of all cattle at intervals during warm season; cultivation of tick-infected land; exclusion of cattle for one summer and two winters; soil cattle for three weeks in each of two tick free pens, to let ticks drop; danger of nonimmunized cattle in infested area; suggestions for extinction by States. Immunization: Infection of sucking calf; infecting by a few ticks: by graduated injections of piroplasma blood ”

“ In these countries there is a minute tick, which covers you by millions, burrowing into your flesh; you cannot extract it, and it maddens you. At night you derive an inexpressible relief from having the grog bath. ”

“ Infection of another person may then occur from a subsequent bite by the infected tick, the virus not passing into the body from the salivary glands or mouth, but entering the wound after having been excreted by the attached tick. As occurs with the tsetse-fly carriers of sleeping sickness, only a part, in this case about one third, of the ticks feeding upon a person with relapsing fever become infected themselves. Of those which do, however, some may transmit the infection to their offspring, which are then capable of infecting man with the virus thus received. ”

“ A club-shaped organism is next formed. This may represent an oökinete stage. The club-shaped bodies are motile and gregarine-like, and are about four times the size of the blood forms. These club-shaped bodies and subsequent stages were described by Christophers in the development of B. canis in the dog-tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus.
(4) The club-shaped bodies pass from the gut of the tick into the ovary, and so get into the ova. There they become globular, and later are found in the cells of the developing tick-embryo. The parasites are, then, transmitted hereditarily. ”

“ Ticks are quite common at the beach, but only the tourist who ventures into the woods will encounter them. From the tip of a blade of grass they hook on to a warm-blooded animal passing by. In removing a Tick some care is necessary so that the tiny head will not remain embedded in the victim. ”

“ These horrible little pests are one of the biggest scourges of the desert. They are a species of tick that breed in the droppings of animals, and burrow in the sand of the immediate vicinity, lying low till some juicy, full-blooded victim comes along for [Page 32] them to perform upon. For this reason they are always plentiful under certain shady trees, favoured by oxen and big game as a resting-place in the heat of the day. Choose one of these spots and sit down in the pleasant shade and watch the sand around you. ”

“ Because Lyme disease can pose a significant health threat, and because no completely reliable test for detection of the infection has been developed, prevention is very important. Hikers, outdoor workers, and other individuals who enter wooded, tick-infested areas should take precautions to avoid being bitten by the deer tick. These include staying away from long grass or brush, covering up well with light-colored slacks and long-sleeved shirts, using tick repellents, and carefully examining oneself afterwards for ticks. ”