Biting Insects of Ireland

Crane fly I know. I always thought they couldn't pierce human skin? Midges are in my opinion the guilty party but first thing in the morning and don't they go for the scalp?

Mothman wrote: »

Crane flies don't bite

I'm the one in my household that gets bitten,
Mosqutioes
Horse Flies/Clegs
Midges

I don't get too big a reaction. Mosquito bites itch for about 3 days and swells a little. I would be commited insane without my antihistamine cream

Thank God for anti-histamine Though one pint and it's nutralised and the itching comes back:(

Alun wrote: »

It's worth adding that in the flat marshy estuary areas of south eastern England (East Anglia in particular) mosquitoes and malaria (albeit a milder variant) were prevalent in the 15th century, but continued to be a problem right through to the late 1800's when steps were taken to eradicate it, although there are suggestions that some cases might still have been occurring until after the first world war.

That just reminded me of something that I recalled hearing many years ago but was never sure if it was true. That Oliver Cromwell died from Malaria contracted in Ireland. Of course this is often dimissed as something the RC Church made up but then I found this below. A rather cack-handed ortopsy was performed by a guy called Bates whose findings were that he died suffering from a number of illness but Malaria was one:

"So what killed Cromwell? Most biographers and historians have concluded that during the 1650s Cromwell suffered from a recurrent, malarial-type disease and that this was the principal or sole cause of his final illness and death in 1658. In the seventeenth century, a form of malaria was quite common in damp, lowland areas of northern Europe, including parts of Britain and Ireland; for example, it was present in the fenlands of East Anglia. This was a milder form of malaria than that still found in many hotter, tropical or sub-tropical parts of the world, and it did not cause death on such a large scale, though it could and did carry off the old and the weak. It was noted at the time that many of the troops sent over to reconquer Ireland from 1649 onwards succumbed to the ‘country sickness’ or the ‘ague’, a recurrent fever-based illness. Most biographers and historians have concluded that Cromwell was one of them, and that his illness of late 1649 while in Ireland marked the onset of the disease."