Head lice eggs cling to human hair as seen through a microscope.
- Gory Details
Delusions of Infestation Aren't as Rare as You'd Think
More people are turning to entomologists to identify parasites they believe are crawling on their bodies, but which turn out not to be real.
A few years ago, a man began telling his family members a horrifying tale: There are bugs living inside him.
These bugs, he said, have hard shells that crunch when he squashes them. He can feel them moving around in his body, especially inside his nose and private parts. At first, his family told him—gently—that it wasn’t possible, but he just tried harder to convince them.
To collect “samples,” the man would dig in his nose with tweezers, pulling out bits of tissue and cartilage until he had bored a hole through his septum; now he whistles when he breathes. After myriad tests and no sign of subcutaneous insects, his doctors seemed to have given up.
He shows the classic signs of what
