Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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It Is Not, Therefore, As Some Travellers Assert, The
Thickness Of The Skin That Renders The Sting More Or Less
Painful at
the moment when it is received; nor is it owing to the particular
organization of the integuments, that
In the Indians the sting is
followed by less of swelling and inflammatory symptoms; it is on the
nervous irritability of the epidermis that the acuteness and duration
of the pain depend. This irritability is augmented by very warm
clothing, by the use of alcoholic liquors, by the habit of scratching
the wounds, and lastly, (and this physiological observation is the
result of my own experience,) that of baths repeated at too short
intervals. In places where the absence of crocodiles permits people to
enter a river, M. Bonpland and myself observed that the immoderate use
of baths, while it moderated the pain of old stings of zancudos,
rendered us more sensible to new stings. By bathing more than twice a
day, the skin is brought into a state of nervous irritability, of
which no idea can be formed in Europe. It would seem as if all feeling
were carried toward the integuments.
As the mosquitos and gnats pass two-thirds of their lives in the
water, it is not surprising that these noxious insects become less
numerous in proportion as you recede from the banks of the great
rivers which intersect the forests. They seem to prefer the spots
where their metamorphosis took place, and where they go to deposit
their eggs.
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