The Very Rare Book On Bedbugs, From 1730

by Stephen J. Gertz

Image courtesy of Bonhams.

Bedbugs. Lately, there's been no way to avoid them. The media is completely infested with the little suckers; Google News has indexed over 700 articles since the beginning of this month alone. The stories are spawning almost as fast as Cimex lectularius itself; individual females can lay up to twelve eggs a day.

(But getting there is an ordeal. Bedbugs reproduce via traumatic insemination - the female, without genital orifice, is stabbed by the male's hollow-needle penis, which ejaculates into her body cavity. Ladies, how often has this happened to you?).

We are in the midst of a nationwide infestation. The National Guard, alas,  is preoccupied with other matters.

It is c. 1670 when England experienced its first invasion by bedbugs. By 1730, Britannia may have ruled the waves but bedbugs ruled Britannia. Something had to be done.

Enter John Southall, and the first book (as far as I've been able to determine) in the English language to solely concern itself with the tiny mattress vampire.

A
TREATISE
OF
BUGGS:

Shewing

When and How they were first brought in England. How they are brought into and infect Houses.

Their Nature, several Foods, Times, and Manner of Spawning and Propagating in this Climate.

Their great Increase accounted for, by Proof of the Numbers each Pair produce in a Season.

REASONS given why all Attempts hitherto made for their Destruction have proved ineffectual.

Vulgar Errors concerning them refuted.

That from September to March is the best Season for their total Destruction, demonstrated by Reason, and proved by Facts.

Concluding with

DIRECTIONS for such as have them not already, how to avoid them; and for those that have them, how to destroy them.

By John Southall,

Maker of the Nonpareil Liquor for Destroying Buggs and Nits.

Frontispiece to A Treatise of Buggs
Note that full-grown American bedbugs are king-sized
compared to their European cousins.
The result of good ol' American bodybuilding blood?

Southall, 215 years prior to J. Robert Oppenheimer post-Trinity, paraphrases the Bhagavad Gita -

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of Bedbugs

- in so many words:

"As Buggs have been known to be in England above sixty years, and every season increasing upon us, as to become terrible to almost every Inhabitant in and about this Metropolis, it were greatly to be wished that some more learned Person than my self, studious for the Good of Human Kind, and the Improvement of natural Knowledge, would have oblig'd the Town with some Treatise, Discourse or Lecture on that nauseous venomous Insect.

"But as none such have  attempted it, and I have ever since my return from America made their destruction my Profession, and was at first much baffled in my Attempts for want, (as I then believ'd, and have since found) of truly knowing the Nature of those intolerable Vermin; I determin'd by all means possible to try if I could discover and find out as much of their Nature, Feeding, and Breeding, as might be conducive to my being better able to destroy them" (Preface).

Would that bedbugs were as rare as this book. Though represented in institutional holdings, ABPC reports only two copies at auction in the last thirty-five years, the most recent in 1997.

So we are fortunate that Bonhams is offering a copy in  their October 12, 2010 Printed Books and Maps sale at Oxford. The estimate is a paltry $150 - $300 (obvious major condition issues). Considering, however, the current bedbug crisis and the acute need for this book right now, the bitten may bid the book up to the sky.

Losing bidders may drown their sorrows in drink followed by traumatic insemination - on any surface other than a bed, home sweet home to these villainous varmints.

•••

Note that this book not only addresses the current bedbug brouhaha but product placement in books as well. Mr. Southall purveys the Nonpareil Liquor for destroying buggs and lice and brazenly advertises it on the title page.

__________

SOUTHALL, John. A Treatise of Buggs... London: J. Roberts, 1730. First edition. Octavo. xii, 44 pp. Frontispiece.
__________

Booktryst's Nancy Mattoon was on the cutting edge of the crisis with her September 27, 2009 feature, Beware of Bibliophiles Bearing Bedbugs.
__________
__________

Beware Of Bibliophiles Bearing Bedbugs

To avoid what amounts to a modern day version of the Trojan Horse, Denver Public Library has banned one of its most avid borrowers due to his continued introduction of vermin into the book collection.

The borrower in question, Roger Goffeney, is actually uninterested in reading the books he takes out. Rather he reviews the books, comparing them to online versions scanned into the Project Gutenberg database of archived materials. Unfortunately, this review process takes place in Goffeney 's home, an apartment in downtown Denver owned by the Catholic Archdiocese. This apartment is infested with bedbugs, and therein the rub, or rather the itch.

On three separate occasions, the main branch of the Denver library has been quarantined and fumigated due to Goffeney's returning of books with a little something extra inside: namely bedbugs, their larval offspring, and their feces. Thirty-one books have been destroyed in efforts to contain the infestation, according to Susan Greene of The Denver Post.

Many of the books Mr. Goffeney has contaminated are rare volumes of classic literature obtained via interlibrary loan. This fact led Denver Public Library's Manager of Security and Safety, Tom Scott, to point out: "It's everybody's collections and everybody's homes at risk."

Mr. Goffeney takes no responsibility for the invasion of the bedbugs. He admits that his apartment is overrun with insects that "skip, hop and jump," into the library books he stacks on the floor next to his bed. However he blames his "lousy landlord" for the problem. (No indication whether the Archdiocese actually has a lice problem, or if Goffeney is using the term "lousy" figuratively.)

Library officials have asked the erstwhile preservationist to bag any books he returns, and to refrain from returning them in the drop slot that empties directly into the building. He has refused to cooperate. The library responded by canceling Goffeney's borrowing privileges, and banning him from the premises. "At this point, it's an intentional act," says Tom Scott. Costs for fumigating the main branch have reached $6,000. This does not include the replacement cost of the books that have been damaged or destroyed.

Goffeney recently visited the offices of The Denver Post in order to protest his "unfair" treatment by the library. He's irate that the system has banned and fined him, and that he will be charged with criminal trespass should he try to access the facility. He fails to see the irony in the fact that the very books he hoped to preserve wound up being destroyed due to the blight. "Huh . . .," he says. "I guess I've never thought of it like that."

Posted by Nancy Mattoon