The Dante Club [antikvár]

caution to the reader A PREFACE BY C. LEWIS WATKINS, BAKER-VALERIO PROFESSOR OF THE CIVILIZATION AND LITERATURE OF ITALY AND RHETORICAL ORATION Pittsfield Daily Reporter, "Community Notebook," September 15, 1989 LEXINGTON BOY'S INSECT SCARE SPARKS "RENEWAL" Search teams safely recovered Kenneth Stanton, 10, of Lexington, in a remote corner of the Catamount Mountains on Tuesday afternoon. The fifth grader was treated at Berkshire Medical Center for swelling and discomfort resulting from the deposit of larvae by initially unidentified insects nested in his wounds. Entomologist Dr. K. L. Landsman of the Harve-Bay Institute Museum in Boston reports that the blowfly samples retrieved from the site are historically unknown to Massachusetts. More noteworthy, says Landsman, the insects and their larvae appear to represent a species that has been thought completely extinct by entomologists for nearly fifty years. Cochliomyia hominivorax, known commonly as the New World primary screwworm, was classified in 1859 by a French doctor on a South American island. By the end of the 19th century the presence of this dangerous species grew to epidemic levels, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Uvestock throughout the Western Hemisphere and reportedly some human beings. During the 19 50s, a massive American-engineered program successfully eradicated the species by introducing gamma-radiated sterile male flies into the population, ending the ability of the female flies to reproduce. Kenneth Stanton's scare may have contributed to what is known as a laboratory-assisted "renewal" of the insects for the purpose of research. "Though eradication was a wise public health initiative," says Landsman, "there is much that can be learned in a controlled setting with new observational technologies." Asked for his reaction to the taxonomic good fortune, Stanton replied, "My Science teacher thinks I'm great!" You may wonder, referring back to the title page of this volume, how the above article could possibly relate to Dante, but you will see shortly that the connection is alarming. As a recognized authority on the subject of the