Thus was started the general "scare," a reporter with a keen nose
for news having made a legitimate "sensation" from the repeated
entries on the hospital roster. From Washington it spread over
the country, and became the topic of the day, until any insect
bite or sting--mosquito, hornet, bedbug, or whatnot--was
magnified by the hysteria of the patient and the credulousness of
the public into a "dangerous" instance of kissing-bug poisoning.
Reports of fatal cases, however, invariably proved to be canards.
For explanation of the marked local symptoms resultant upon
attack by the insect, science has been hard put to it. The
general symptoms, observed in a few cases, where violent, may
probably be ascribed to shock and nervousness. But the marked
swelling and pain cannot be thus dismissed. Medical men believe
that the insect, in its various prowlings for food, thrusts its
exploring beak into decaying animal and vegetable matter and
thus, in a sense, so poisons it that when it comes into contact
with human blood, a rapid local infection is set up--not through
any specific poison, as in spider bite or bee sting, but by the
agency of the putrefactive germs collected on the weapon.
Not the least interesting phase of the kissing-bug scare is the
rapidity and completeness of its decadence. It is but ten years
ago that the newspapers rang with it; that victims of the bite,
in every city, were fleeing, white-faced and racked with
forebodings, to doctor or hospital. To-day, both the Melanolestes
and the "conenose" are abroad in the land. Doubtless, upon
provocation, they are "spearing" others as they speared the
outraged clergyman. But that's all. The bepunctured ones do not
seek the consolations of medical or journalistic attention. They
put a little wet mud or peroxide on the place and let it go at
that. Exit another bogy!