Birmingham.
It would be well if every popular error were hunted down, as your
correspondents have done in the case of the snake-vomiting at Portsmouth.
The public need to be told, that no animal can live in the alimentary canal
but the parasites which belong to that part of the animal economy. Of these
the _Lumbricus intestinalis_ is the largest, and is discharged by children
even of the size mentioned in the case of Jonathan Smith.
Two years ago I met with a curious illustration of the popular ignorance of
that branch of natural history which treats of our own reptiles, as well as
of the mode of growth of a popular marvel. During the hot weather of the
summer before last, I was asked by a respectable farmer, if I had seen the
"serpent" which was lately killed in an adjoining parish. "Serpent!" I
replied; "I suppose you mean some overgrown common snake--perhaps a female
full of eggs?" "Well, it might have been a snake at first, but it was grown
into a serpent; and pursued a boy through the hedge, but was fortunately
encountered and killed by the father."
It is a moot point, whether the parasites of animals are engendered or not
within the body. In the case of the bots of horses, they are known to be
the larvæ of a fly which deposits its eggs on the skin; from whence they
are licked off, and conveyed into the animal's stomach, where they are
hatched and prepared for their other metamorphoses.
I believe the only parasite taken in with water in tropical climates is the
Guinea Worm; an animal which burrows under the skin of the arms or legs,
and is extremely difficult of extraction, and often productive of great
inconvenience. But whether the egg of this worm be taken into the stomach,
and conveyed by the blood into the limbs, there to be hatched into life, or
whether it enter through the pores of the skin, I believe is not
determined.
The popular delusion respecting the swallowing of young snakes, and of
their continuance in the stomach, is a very old one, and is still frequent.
A medical friend of mine, not long since, was called on to treat a poor
hysterical woman, who had exhausted the skill of many medical men (as she
asserted) to rid her of "a snake or some such living creature, which she
felt confident was and had been for a long time gnawing in her stomach." I
suggested the expediency of working on the imagination of this poor
hypochondriac, as was done in the well-known facetious story of the man who
fancied he had swallowed a cobbler; and who was cured by the apparent
discharge first of the awls and strap, then of the lapstone, and, finally,
of Crispin himself.