Source: Science Morning Flight
Having lice on the head was a nightmare for many rural people. Adults and children alike can't escape the "curse of lice", and the way to get rid of lice is even more miserable. So why don't people stop "lifting lice and changing color"?
Stubborn lice
Lice are stubborn insects that can parasitize humans and animals, with a slight and dark body, but a very fierce temperament, and like to suck blood.
Lice are more resentful than street rats, and they breed a "lice kingdom" at every turn, which appears in dark and damp places, and can easily transmit malignant diseases to humans.
The development process of lice can be divided into three stages, that is, the egg stage, the nymph stage, and the adult stage, in these three stages, the lice show a high degree of tenacious vitality. This has also created a huge obstacle for human beings to eradicate it.
In order to survive, lice will desperately search for suitable human bodies or animals as parasitic targets, and squeeze the blood of humans and animals.
From the classification of lice, it can be divided into three types: body lice, head lice, and pubic lice, all of which like to parasitize on the human body.
Some experts believe that among the three types of lice, body lice are the most common, while head lice are the most stubborn. Once a person has body lice, even personal items such as bed sheets and towels will have lice eggs or live lice attached to them.
Head lice are even more terrifying, because the cover of the hair makes it easy for lice to hide people's eyes and ears in the early stage of incubation. When lice were discovered, they had already taken over the entire "lush forest" on their heads with their superior reproductive strength. At this time, it is not easy to get rid of lice. It is not only extinguished, but also likely to rebound "in the spring breeze".
If one person gets lice, the whole family can't escape
The contagion of lice is very terrible, especially in the past when the economy was underdeveloped, under the restrictions of the rural environment and medical level, people could not take lice at all. As a result, there is a phenomenon that "if one person gets lice, the whole family can't escape".
The high frequency of lice coincides with the era when people are still struggling to make ends meet. Due to the special times, many rural people lived in dilapidated houses, wore shoes with exposed big toes, and clothes with patches everywhere. The first thing I do when I wake up every day is to think about how to feed my stomach and how to sustain my family.
Under such limited conditions, not to mention not being diligent in changing clothes, it is already good to have a decent dress to wear. In addition, domestic water was still relatively scarce at that time. Especially in a remote mountain village, you need to walk a long way to carry water home. In terms of bathing and hygiene, I don't care so much.
The restrictions of various conditions provide a breeding ground for lice breeding. Lice themselves are highly contagious insects, and even if people kill them with their bare hands, they can cause a second infection to the area that has been bitten by lice. At that time, it was an era of labor, and it was normal for a family of seven or eight people.
Crowded relationships and a lack of hygiene knowledge allow lice to multiply and infect the rest of the family.
In particular, head lice, which hide in their hair and on their scalp, like to lay their eggs at the roots of their hair and hide their tracks. Unless head lice are active in exposed areas of the hair, they can be difficult to detect even if they are parasitic. Head lice, on the other hand, are able to spread their eggs to another person by touching and sticking.
Head lice reproduce so quickly that a female can lay between 3 and 9 eggs in a single day. These eggs will grow like a "double growth rate", and on the 8th day, they will be able to grow into blood-sucking nymphs.
"土法"灭虱不可取
Lice were a nightmare for rural people 30 years ago, but to this day they still "make a comeback" from time to time. An 11-year-old girl living in Dongguan was entangled in head lice at a carefree age. You know, for 11 pairs of children, the infestation of head lice can make them scratch their scalps. This scratching caused the head lice to seep into the blood from the scalp with tiny wounds like nectar.
The girl's mother was anxious when she saw her daughter's painful appearance. In the case of "care, chaos", the girl's mother used the "pesticide baked" earthwork to deworm her daughter.
She brought a packet of a pesticide called "Jiamouxin" and applied a vigorous liquid to the girl's head. In order to completely eradicate lice in one step, the girl's mother resorted to "thunder methods" and tightly wrapped her daughter's head with thick plastic wrap for up to 3 hours.
Unexpectedly, the good intentions did bad things, and the 11-year-old girl was admitted to the intensive care unit in Dongguan that night. It turned out that in the process of waiting for the "effect" to work, the little girl gradually developed symptoms such as chest tightness, dizziness, and fatigue. After the family took the little girl to the emergency room, they found out that the child had been poisoned due to the use of unreliable soil methods. In terms of technical terms, it is called "organophosphate poisoning".
In the past, in the rural areas where lice were infested, people were unbearable, and gradually derived many methods of "sword walking" to exterminate lice. For example, use strong wine, strong vinegar and other methods to "drown" lice, and even use pesticides to eliminate stubborn head lice.
But in fact, these methods are very unsafe, especially the method of using pesticides to wrap the head, which can cause life-threatening cases in serious cases.
Compound pesticides such as methaxin can enter the human body through the penetration of the scalp and hair roots, as well as respiratory inhalation, thereby causing central nervous system symptoms. Therefore, if you are entangled by lice, do not blindly follow it.
Why are the insolent lice gone?
In rural areas 30 years ago, there were many people suffering from lice. After entering the new era, living conditions and awareness of hygiene have improved greatly. Even in rural areas, every household is very hygienic. Before the festival, people will clean the inside and outside of the house very clean, all kinds of licidicides, rodenticides, mosquito recides are all on the battlefield.
Not only that, it has entered a new era, and the originally backward countryside has also been transformed and upgraded into a new countryside. For a large-scale rural disease such as pediculosis, the township government will mobilize professional medical teams and resources to help. Compared to before, people's health and safety are highly valued.
Rural people who have entered the new era pay more attention to the home concept of frequent bathing, frequent change of clothes, and hygiene. Without the "dirty mess" of the past, there would be no breeding ground for lice to breed, and there would be no way to continue to "mutilate" humans.
Although lice are almost invisible now, it is not to be taken lightly, and it is necessary to continue to maintain personal hygiene and develop a good concept of health, thank you for reading.