MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A MAN-KILLING CENTIPEDE DOWN OLD MEXICO WAY (NOT FOR THE SQUEEMISH!)

This is a very sad story about an unfortunate French musician in Mexico killed by the grip or bite of a centipede. What the French army was doing in Mexico in 1867 I don`t know. (Anyone?) . This story was in the Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser ( Grafton, New South Wales) 23^rd April 1867;


“ A musician belonging to one of the French regiments has just met with an extraordinary death at Vera Cruz. He was engaged to play at the ball, and being very thirsty went out into the garden, and finding a water-bottle on the terrace, took it up and drank freely. Suddenly he raised cries of agony, and upon assistance arriving it was found that an enormous centipede had fixed its mandibles in his throat. The animal had taken up its abode in the neck of the bottle, and  was washed into his mouth in the act of drinking. A surgeon who was called was obliged to cut it to pieces , but the poison from the bite caused death in a few hours.” (1)

Now I ain`t no expert on arthropods, but Wikipedia suggests that although poisonous, centipede poison is not thought to be potent enough to kill a human (“except those who are allergic to the toxins.” 2)  However, Dale Drinnon tells me that indeed,  giant centipedes could definetely kill a man and that Eberhart said that there were reports of giant centipedes in the S. U.S.A. What strikes me about this case is did the musician die of shock or did the poison kill him? Or both?. Or if there is something more than the usual giant centipede here was it that his windpipe was pierced?

Apparently in the Solomon Islands there is a species of centipede so deadly that victims have been known to plunge their hands into boiling water in order to aleviate the pain, the intended cure being worse than the bite!(3) Wood says (see ref 3 below) that bites are NOT inflicted by the jaws but by the curved horny claws of the front pairs of legs which serve as fangs.

In my magazine Flying Snake no. 1  I examined, with Mike Hardcastle,  giant centipedes in Hong Kong which can grow up to 60cm long according to anecdotal reports(4) Christopher Columbus`s gold assayer, the Spaniard Ulloa, saw centipedes 91.4 cm long apparently.(5)

1. Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser April 23^rd 1867.
2. Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scolopendra_gigantea#Venom
3. Wood`s Guiness Book of Animal Facts and Feats 3^rd ed 1982 p. 134
4. R.Muirhead and M.Hardcastle The Giant Centipedes of Hong Kong . Flying Snake 1 April 2011 pp 24-30
5. Wood op cit p. 133