Years ago the United States Bureau of Entomology received from an
exasperated clergyman in Georgia a dead insect, enclosed in this
note:
"Prof. Riley: What is this devil? He sailed down on my hedge. I
took hold of his lone front leg, and as quick as lightning he
speared me under my thumb nail and I dropped him. My thumb and
whole arm are still paining me . . . "
The miscreant was a fine specimen of Reduvius personatus, the
cone-nosed blood-sucker, soon thereafter to achieve heights of
newspaper notoriety together with its cousin, Melanolestes
picipes, as the "kissing-bug." How many persons died (in type)
from kissing-bug bites in the year of enlightened civilization,
1899, will never be known. But from far and near, from California
and Connecticut and the Carolinas, from Minnesota and Maryland
and Maine, came startling reports of this hitherto unfamed
creature's depredations upon the human countenance. Thereby the
spider family was relieved of much unmerited odium, for it is
more than suspected by entomologists that a large proportion of
so-called spider bites are really the work of the more vicious
but less formidable-appearing kissing-bug, as is often evidenced
by the nature of the puncture.
The kissing-bug is about half an inch in length, flat-backed,
shaped in geometrically regular angles, and armed with a large,
hard beak. It is this beak which does the damage, for the
kissing-bug is a fighter and will risk a prod at anything that
gives it cause of offense. Testimony is not lacking that it
sometimes punctures the human epidermis with a view to obtaining
blood at first hand instead of from its natural prey.
But the curious feature of the kissing-bug's bite is its after
effect. Neither the southern Reduvius nor the northern
Melanolestes possesses any venom apparatus. Now, an insect
without fangs (or sting), duct, and poison gland, can no more
envenom the object of its attack than a fish can kick a man to
death. Yet we find such authorities as Dr. L. O. Howard, the
United States Entomologist, Professor Le Conte, Mr. Charles
Drury, of Cincinnati, and others, including a mass of medical
witnesses, declaring from first-hand observation that the
kissing-bug bite causes much swelling and severe pain. Le Conte,
indeed, compares the effect to snake bite, and states that people
are seriously affected for a week. A case is recorded from
Holland, South Carolina, where there were vomiting and marked
weakness. Mr. Schwartz, an expert of the Bureau of Entomology at
Washington, was bitten twice upon the hand and testifies to the
painful effects. In 1899, when the species was very common in
Washington, the Emergency Hospital had a long list of patients
who appeared on the records under the heading, "Insect Bite."