Before we conclude the history of septic poisons, there appears to be a species of death, particularly noticed by _Dr. Gordon Smith_,[494] which merits our attention, as having some relation to this class of agents—the fact of persons having been “_eaten to death by maggots_!” Such a death has been assigned to _Sylla_, by _Plutarch_; and to _Antiochus Epiphanes_, by _Josephus_, and the writer of the book of Maccabees. The fate of _Herod_ is ascertained by Scripture. In modern history we have similar instances in _Charles_ IX of France, and _Philip_ II of Spain. Numerous cases are recorded, in different medical works,[495] of the generation of maggots, _i. e._ the _larvæ_ of different species of fly, not only in external sores and excoriations, but in the internal cavities of the human body. _Dr. Lempriere_[496] has related the case of an officer’s lady, who had gone through an acute fever, but in whom these maggots were produced, which burrowed, and found their way by the nose through the _os cribriforme_, into the cavity of the cranium, and afterwards into the brain itself, to which she owed her death. But of all the cases of this kind, that related by _Dr. Gordon Smith_ is of the most revolting kind. “In the month of July 1809, a man was found near Finglas, in Ireland, lying under the wall of a lime-kiln, at an early hour in the evening, with his face on the ground, apparently dead. On turning him on his back to ascertain the real state of the case, it was discovered that he was yet alive, but under the most appalling circumstances. On removing his coat, the whole surface of his body appeared to be a moving mass of worms. His face was considerably injured as if from a fall, or bruises; his eyes were dissolved, and their cavities, as well as those of the ears, nose, and mouth, were filled with a white living mass, from which such innumerable quantities of maggots were continually pouring out, that the skull seemed to be filled with nothing else. After some time he recovered strength enough to walk, and regained recollection and voice sufficient to tell who he was, where he lived, and how he had been brought into that situation. It appeared that he was returning home upon a car the evening before; having drank to excess, he fell off, and remained in a state of insensibility until he was discovered. He could neither account for the wounds in his head, nor for his being so far from the road; but it appeared probable that he had received the contusion from the fall, and had insensibly crawled to the place where he lay. It was conjectured that the state of the atmosphere, as to humidity and temperature, had brought on a solution of the solids in the bruised parts, already disposed to putrescency, and now in close contact with the moist earth. In these, the eggs of innumerable insects being deposited, their generation proceeded with rapidity under circumstances so favourable. Every attention was paid to