The dangers of the exhumation are not the only ones; the Bluebottle must
be acquainted with others. Life, when all is said, is a knacker's yard
wherein the devourer of today becomes the devoured of tomorrow; and the
robber of the dead cannot fail to be robbed of her own life when the
time comes. I know that she has one exterminator in the person of the
tiny Saprinus beetle, a fisher of fat sausages on the edge of the pools
formed by liquescent corpses. Here swarm in common the grubs of the
greenbottle, the flesh fly and the bluebottle. The Saprinus draws them
to him from the bank and gobbles them indiscriminately. They represent
to him morsels of equal value.
This banquet can be observed only in the open country, under the rays
of a hot sun. Saprini and greenbottles never enter our houses; the flesh
fly visits us but discreetly, does not feel at home with us; the only
one who comes fussing along is the bluebottle, who thus escapes the
tribute due to the consumer of plump sausages. But, in the fields, where
she readily lays her eggs upon any carcass that she finds, she, as well
as the others, sees her vermin swept away by the gluttonous Saprinus.
In addition, graver disasters decimate her family, if, as I do not
doubt, we can apply to the bluebottle what I have seen happen in the
case of her rival, the flesh fly. So far, I have had no opportunity of
actually perceiving with the first what I have to tell of the second;
still, I do not hesitate to repeat about the one what observation has
taught me about the other, for the larval analogies between the two
flies are very close.
Here are the facts. I have gathered a number of pupae of the flesh fly
in one of my vermin jars. Wishing to examine the pupa's hinder end,
which is hollowed into a cup and scalloped into a coronet, I stave in
one of the little barrels and force open the last segments with the
point of my pocketknife. The horny keg does not contain what I expected
to find: it is full of tiny grubs packed one atop the other with the
same economy of space as anchovies in a bottle. Save for the skin,
which has hardened into a brown shell, the substance of the maggot has
disappeared, changed into a restless swarm.
There are thirty-five occupants. I replace them in their casket.
The rest of my harvest, wherein, no doubt, are other pupae similarly
stocked, is arranged in tubes that will easily show me what happens. The
thing to discover is what genus of parasites the grubs enclosed belong
to. But it is not difficult, without waiting for the hatching of the
adults, to recognize their nature merely by their mode of life. They
form part of the family of Chalcididae, who are microscopic ravagers of
living entrails.
Not long ago, in winter, I took from the chrysalis of a great peacock
moth four hundred and forty-nine parasites belonging to the same group.
The whole substance of the future moth had disappeared, all but the
nymphal wrapper, which was intact and formed a handsome Russia-leather
wallet. The worm grubs were here heaped up and squeezed together to
the point of sticking to one another. The hair pencil extracts them in
bundles and cannot separate them without some difficulty. The holding
capacity is strained to the utmost; the substance of the vanished Moth
would not fill it better. That which died has been replaced by a living
mass of equal dimensions, but subdivided. The price of this colony's
existence is the conversion of the chrysalis into a sort of milk food of
doubtful constitution. The enormous udder has been drained outright.
You shudder when you think of that budding flesh nibbled bit by bit by
four or five hundred gormandizers; the horrified imagination refuses to
picture the anguish suffered by the tortured wretch. But is there really
any pain? We have leave to doubt it. Pain is a patent of nobility; it is
more pronounced in proportion as the sufferer belongs to a higher order.
In the lower ranks of animal life, it must be greatly reduced, perhaps
even nil, especially when life, in the throes of evolution, has not yet
acquired a stable equilibrium. The white of an egg is living matter, but
endures the prick of a needle without a quiver. Would it not be the
same with the chrysalis of the great peacock, dissected cell by cell by
hundreds of infinitesimal anatomists? Would it not be the same with the
pupa of the flesh fly? These are organisms put back into the crucible,
reverting to the egg state for a second birth. There is reason to
believe, therefore, that their destruction crumb by crumb is merciful.
Towards the end of August, the parasite of the flesh fly's grubs makes
her appearance out of doors in the adult form. She is a Chalcidid, as
I expected. She issues from the barrel through one or two little round
holes which the prisoners have pierced with a patient tooth. I count
some thirty to each pupa. There would not be enough room in the abode if
the family were larger.
The imp is a slim and elegant creature, but oh, how small! She measures
hardly two millimeters. Her garb is bronzed black, with pale legs and a
heart shaped, pointed, slightly pedunculate abdomen, with never a trace
of a probe for inoculating the eggs. The head is transversal, the width
exceeding the length.
The male is only half the size of the female; he is also very much less
numerous. Perhaps pairing is here, as we see elsewhere, a secondary
matter from which it is possible to abstain, in part, without injuring
the prospects of the race. Nevertheless, in the tube wherein I have
housed the swarm, the few males lost among the crowd ardently woo the
passing fair. There is much to be done outside, as long as the flesh
fly's season lasts; things are urgent; and each pigmy hurries as fast as
she can to take up her part as an exterminator.
How is the parasite's inroad into the flesh fly's pupae effected? Truth
is always veiled in a certain mystery. The good fortune that secured
me the ravaged pupa taught me nothing concerning the tactics of the
ravager. I have never seen the Chalcidid explore the contents of
my appliances; my attention was engaged elsewhere and nothing is so
difficult to see as a thing not yet suspected. But, though direct
observation be lacking, logic will tell us approximately what we want to
know.
It is evident, to begin with, that the invasion cannot have been made
through the sturdy amour of the pupae. This is too hard to be penetrated
by the means at the pigmy's disposal. Naught but the delicate skin of
the maggots lends itself to the introduction of the germs. An egg laying
mother, therefore, appears, inspects the surface of the pool of sanies
swarming with grubs, selects the one that suits her and perches on
it; then, with the tip of her pointed abdomen, whence emerges, for
an instant, a short probe kept hidden until then, she operates on the
patient, perforating his paunch with a dexterous wound into which the
germs are inserted. Probably, a number of pricks are administered, as
the presence of thirty parasites seems to demand.
Anyway, the maggot's skin is pierced at either one point or many; and
this happens while the grub is swimming in the pools formed by the
putrid flesh. Having said this, we are faced with a question of serious
interest. To set it forth necessitates a digression which seems to have
nothing to do with the subject in hand and is nevertheless connected
with it in the closest fashion. Without certain preliminaries, the
remainder would be unintelligible. So now for the preliminaries.
I was in those days busy with the poison of the Languedocian scorpion
and its action upon insects. To direct the sting toward this or the
other part of the victim and moreover to regulate its emission would be
absolutely impossible and also very dangerous, as long as the scorpions
were allowed to act as they pleased. I wished to be able myself to
choose the part to be wounded; I likewise wished to vary the dose
of poison at will. How to set about it? The scorpion has no jarlike
receptacle in which the venom is accumulated and stored, like that
possessed, for instance, by the wasp and the bee. The last segment of
the tail, gourd shaped and surmounted by the sting, contains only a
powerful mass of muscles along which lie the delicate vessels that
secrete the poison.
In default of a poison jar which I would have placed on one side and
drawn upon at my convenience, I detach the last segment, forming
the base of the sting. I obtain it from a dead and already withered
scorpion. A watch glass serves as a basin. Here, I tear and crush the
piece in a few drops of water and leave it to steep for four-and-twenty
hours. The result is the liquid which I propose to use for the
inoculation. If any poison remained in my animal's caudal gourd, there
must be at least some traces of it in the infusion in the watch glass.
My hypodermic syringe is of the simplest. It consists of a little glass
tube, tapering sharply at one end. By drawing in my breath, I fill it
with the liquid to be tested; I expel the contents by blowing. Its point
is almost as fine as a hair and enables me to regulate the dose to
the degree which I want. A cubic millimeter is the usual charge. The
injection has to be made at parts that are generally covered with horn.
So as not to break the point of my fragile instrument, I prepare the
way with a needle, with which I prick the victim at the spot required. I
insert the tip of the loaded injector in the hole thus made and I blow.
The thing is done in a moment, very neatly and in an orthodox fashion,
favorable to delicate experiments. I am delighted with my modest
apparatus.
I am equally delighted with the results. The scorpion himself, when
wounding with his sting, in which the poison is not diluted as mine is
in the watch glass, would not produce effects like those of my pricks.
Here is something more brutal, producing more convulsion in the
sufferer. The virus of my contriving excels the scorpion's.
The test is several times repeated, always with the same mixture, which,
drying up by spontaneous evaporation, then made to serve again by
the addition of a few drops of water, once more drained and once more
moistened, does duty for an indefinite length of time. Instead of
abating, the virulence increases. Moreover, the corpses of the
insects operated upon undergo a curious change, unknown in my earlier
observations. Then the suspicion comes to me that the actual poison of
the scorpion does not enter into the matter at all. What I obtain with
the end joint of the tail, with the gland at the base of the sting, I
ought to obtain with any other part of the animal.
I crush in a few drops of water a joint of the tail taken from the front
portion, far from the poison glands. After soaking it for twenty-four
hours, I obtain a liquid whose effects are absolutely the same as those
before, when I used the joint that bears the sting. I try again with the
scorpion's claws, the contents of which consist solely of muscle. The
results are just the same. The whole of the animal's body, therefore, no
matter which fragment be submitted to the steeping process, yields the
virus that so greatly pricks my curiosity.
Every part of the Spanish fly [Cantharis or blistering beetle], inside
and out, is saturated with the blistering element; but there is nothing
like this in the scorpion, who localizes his venom in his caudal gland
and has none of it elsewhere. The cause of the effects which I observe
is therefore connected with general properties which I ought to find in
any insect, even the most harmless.
I consult Oryctes nasicornis, the peaceable rhinoceros beetle, on
this subject. To get at the exact nature of the materials, instead of
pulverizing the whole insect in a mortar, I use merely the muscular
tissue obtained by scraping the inside of the dried Oryctes' corselet.
Or else I extract the dry contents of the hind legs. I do the same with
the desiccated corpses of the cockchafer, the Capricorn, or Cerambyx
beetle, and the Cetonia, or rosechafer. Each of my gleanings, with a
little water added, is left to soften for a couple of days in a watch
glass and yields to the liquid whatever can be extracted from it by
crushing and dissolving.
This time, we take a great step forward. All my preparations, without
distinction, are horribly virulent. Let the reader judge. I select as
my first patient the sacred beetle, Scarabaeus sacer, who thanks to his
size and sturdiness, lends himself admirably to an experiment of this
kind. I operate upon a dozen, in the corselet, on the breast, on the
belly and, by preference, on one of the hind legs, far removed from the
impressionable nervous centers. No matter what part my injector attacks,
the effect produced is the same, or nearly. The insect falls as
though struck by lightning. It lies on its back and wriggles its legs,
especially the hind legs. If I set it on its feet again, I behold a sort
of St. Vitus' dance. Scarabaeus lowers his head, arches his back, draws
himself up on his twitching legs. He marks time with his feet on the
ground, moves forward a little, moves as much backward, leans to the
right, leans to the left, in wild disorder, incapable of keeping his
balance or making progress. And this happens with sudden jerks and
jolts, with a vigor no whit inferior to that of the animal in perfect
health. It is a displacement of all the works, a storm that uproots the
mutual relations of the muscles.
Seldom have I witnessed such sufferings, in my career as a
cross-examiner of animals and, therefore, as a torturer. I should feel a
scruple, did I not foresee that the grain of sand shifted today may one
day help us by taking its place in the edifice of knowledge. Life is
everywhere the same, in the Dung beetle's body as in man's. To consult
it in the insect means consulting it in ourselves, means moving towards
vistas which we cannot afford to neglect. That hope justifies my cruel
studies, which, though apparently so puerile, are in reality worthy of
serious consideration.
Of my dozen sufferers, some rapidly succumb, others linger for a few
hours. They are all dead by tomorrow. I leave the corpses on the
table, exposed to the air. Instead of drying and stiffening, like the
asphyxiated insects intended for our collections, my patients, on the
contrary, turn soft and slacken in the joints, notwithstanding the
dryness of the surrounding air; they become disjointed and separate into
loose pieces, which are easily removed.
The results are the same with the Capricorn, the cockchafer, the
Procrustes [a large ground beetle], the Carabus [the true ground beetle,
including the gold beetle]. In all of them there is a sudden break-up,
followed by speedy death, a slackening of the joints and swift
putrefaction. In a non-horny victim, the quick chemical changes of
the tissues are even more striking. A Cetonia grub, which resists the
scorpion's sting, even though repeatedly administered, dies in a very
short time if I inject a tiny drop of my terrible fluid into any part
of its body. Moreover, it turns very brown and, in a couple of days,
becomes a mass of black putrescence.
The great peacock, that large moth who recks little of the scorpion's
poison, is no more able to resist my inoculations than the sacred beetle
and the others. I prick two in the belly, a male and a female. At first,
they seem to bear the operation without distress. They grip the trellis
work of the cage and hang without moving, as though indifferent. But
soon the disease has them in its grip. What we see is not the tumultuous
ending of the sacred beetle; it is the calm advent of death. With wings
slackly quivering, softly they die and drop from the wires. Next day,
both corpses are remarkably lax; the segments of the abdomen separate
and gape at the least touch. Remove the hairs and you shall see that
the skin, which was white, has turned brown and is changing to black.
Corruption is quickly doing its work.
This would be a good opportunity to speak of bacteria and cultures. I
shall do nothing of the sort. On the hazy borderland of the visible and
the invisible, the microscope inspires me with suspicion. It so easily
replaces the eye of reality by the eye of imagination; it is so ready to
oblige the theorists with just what they want to see. Besides, supposing
the microbe to be found, if that were possible, the question would be
changed, not solved. For the problem of the collapse of the structure
through the fact of a prick there would be substituted another no less
obscure: how does the said microbe bring about that collapse? In what
way does it go to work? Where lies its power?
Then what explanation shall I give of the facts which I have just set
forth? Why, none, absolutely none, seeing that I do not know of any. As
I am unable to do better, I will confine myself to a pair of comparisons
or images, which may serve as a brief resting place for the mind on the
dark billows of the unknown.
All of us, as children, have amused ourselves with the game of "card
friars." A number of cards, as many as possible, are bent lengthwise
into a semi-cylinder. They are placed on a table, one behind the
other, in a winding row, the spaces in which are suitably disposed.
The performance pleases the eye by its curved lines and its regular
arrangement. It possesses order, which is a condition of all animated
matter. You give a little tap to the first card. It falls and overturns
the second, which, in the same way, topsy-turvies the third; and so on,
right to the end of the row. In less than no time, the capsizing wave
spreads and the handsome edifice is shattered. Order is succeeded by
disorder, I might almost say, by death. What was needed thus to upset
the procession of friars? A very, very slight first push, out of all
proportion to the toppled mass.
Again, take a glass balloon containing a solution of alum supersaturated
by heat. It is closed, during the process of boiling, with a cork and
is then allowed to cool. The contents remain fluid and limpid for an
indefinite period. Mobility is here represented by a faint semblance
of life. Remove the cork and drop in a solid particle of alum, however
infinitesimal. Suddenly, the liquid thickens into a solid lump and gives
off heat. What has happened? This: crystallization has set in at the
first contact of the particle of alum, the center of attraction;
next, it has spread bit by bit, each solidified particle producing the
solidification of those around. The impulse comes from an atom; the mass
impelled is boundless. The very small has revolutionized the immense.
Of course, in the comparison between these two instances and the effects
of my injections, the reader must see no more than a figure of speech,
which, without explaining anything, tries to throw a glimmer of light
upon it. The long procession of card friars is knocked down by the mere
touch of the little finger to the first; the voluminous solution of alum
suddenly turns solid under the influence of an invisible particle.
In the same way, the victims of my operations succumb, thrown
into convulsions by a tiny drop of insignificant size and harmless
appearance.
Then what is there in that terrible liquid? First of all, there is
water, inactive in itself and simply a vehicle of the active agent. If
a proof were needed of its innocuousness, here is one: I inject into the
thigh of any one of the sacred beetle's six legs a drop of pure water
larger than that of the fatal inoculations. As soon as he is released,
he makes off and trots about as nimbly as usual. He is quite firm on
his legs. When put back to his pellet, he rolls it with the same zeal as
before the experiment. My injection of water makes no difference to him.
What else is there in the mixture in my watch glasses? There is the
disintegrated matter of the corpse, especially shreds of dried muscles.
Do these substances yield certain soluble elements to water? Or are they
simply reduced to a fine dust in the crushing? I will not decide this
question, nor is it really of importance. The fact remains that the
poison proceeds from those substances and from them alone. Animal
matter, therefore, which has ceased to live is an agent of destruction
within the organism. The dead cell kills the living cell; in the
delicate statics of life, it is the grain of sand which, refusing its
support, entails the collapse of the whole edifice.
In this connection, we may recall those dreadful dissecting room
accidents. Through awkwardness, a student of anatomy pricks himself with
his scalpel in the course of his work; or else, by inadvertence, he
has an insignificant scratch on his hand. A cut which one would hardly
notice, produced by the point of a pocket knife, a scratch of no
account, from a thorn or otherwise, now becomes a mortal wound, if
powerful antiseptics do not speedily remedy the ill. The scalpel is
soiled by its contact with the flesh of the corpse; so are the hands.
That is quite enough. The virus of corruption is introduced; and, if not
treated in time, the wound proves fatal. The dead has killed the living.
This also reminds us of the so-called carbuncle flies, the lancet of
whose mouth parts, contaminated with the sanies of corpses, produces
such terrible accidents.
My dealings as against insects are, when all is said, nothing but
dissecting room wounds and carbuncle flies' stings. In addition to
the gangrene that soon impairs and blackens the tissues, I obtain
convulsions similar to those produced by the scorpion's sting. In its
convulsive effects, the venomous fluid emitted by the sting bears
a close resemblance to the muscular infusions with which I fill my
injector. We are entitled, therefore, to ask ourselves if poisons,
generally speaking, are not themselves a produce of demolition, a
casting of the organism perpetually renewed, waste matter, in short,
which, instead of being gradually expelled, is stored for purposes of
attack and defense. The animal, in that case, would arm itself with its
own refuse in the same way as it sometimes builds itself a home with
its intestinal recrement. Nothing is wasted; life's detritus is used for
self defense.
All things considered, my preparations are meat extracts. If I replace
the flesh of the insect by that of another animal, the ox, for instance,
shall I obtain the same results? Logic says yes; and logic is right.
I dilute with a few drops of water a little Liebig's extract, that
precious standby of the kitchen. I operate with this fluid on six
Cetoniae or rosechafers, four in the grub stage, two in the adult stage.
At first, the patients move about as usual. Next day, the two Cetoniae
are dead. The larvae resist longer and do not die until the second day.
All show the same relaxed muscles, the same blackened flesh, signs of
putrefaction. It is probable, therefore, that, if injected into our own
veins, the same fluid would likewise prove fatal. What is excellent in
the digestive tubes would be appalling in the arteries. What is food in
one case is poison in the other.
A Liebig's extract of a different kind, the broth in which the liquefier
puddles, is of a virulence equal, if not superior, to that of my
products. All those operated upon, Capricorns, sacred beetles, ground
beetles, die in convulsions. This brings us back, after a long way
round, to our starting point, the maggot of the flesh fly. Can the worm,
constantly floundering in the sanies of a carcass, be itself in danger
of inoculation by that whereon it grows fat? I dare not rely upon
experiments conducted by myself: my clumsy implements and my shaky hand
make me fear that, with subjects so small and delicate, I might inflict
deep wounds which of themselves would bring about death.
Fortunately, I have a collaborator of incomparable skill in the
parasitic Chalcidid. Let us apply to her. To introduce her germs, she
has perforated the maggot's paunch, has even done so several times over.
The holes are extremely small, but the poison all around is excessively
subtle and has thus been able, in certain cases, to penetrate. Now what
has happened? The pupae, all from the same apparatus, are numerous. They
can be divided into three not very unequal classes, according to the
results supplied. Some give me the adult flesh fly, others the parasite.
The rest, nearly a third, give me nothing, neither this year nor next.
In the first two cases, things have taken their normal course: the grub
has developed into a fly, or else the parasite has devoured the grub. In
the third case, an accident has occurred. I open the barren pupae. They
are coated inside with a dark glaze, the remains of the dead maggot
converted into black rottenness. The grub, therefore, has undergone
inoculation by the virus through the fine openings effected by the
Chalcidid. The skin has had time to harden into a shell; but it was too
late, the tissues being already infected.
There you see it: in its broth of putrefaction, the worm is exposed
to grave dangers. Now there is a need for maggots in this world, for
maggots many and voracious, to purge the soil as quickly as possible
of death's impurities. Linnaeus tells us that 'Tres muscae consumunt
cadaver equi aeque cito ac leo.' [Three flies consume the carcass of a
horse as quickly as a lion could do it.] There is no exaggeration about
the statement. Yes, of a certainty, the offspring of the flesh fly and
the bluebottle are expeditious workers. They swarm in a heap, always
seeking, always snuffling with their pointed mouths. In those tumultuous
crowds, mutual scratches would be inevitable if the worms, like the
other flesh eaters, possessed mandibles, jaws, clippers adapted for
cutting, tearing and chopping; and those scratches, poisoned by the
dreadful gruel lapping them, would all be fatal.
How are the worms protected in their horrible work yard? They do not
eat: they drink their fill; by means of a pepsin which they disgorge,
they first turn their foodstuffs into soup; they practice a strange and
exceptional art of feeding, wherein those dangerous carving implements,
the scalpels with their dissecting room perils, are superfluous. Here
ends, for the present, the little that I know or suspect of the maggot,
the sanitary inspector in the service of the public health.