The medical importance of cockroaches.

Cockroaches have great significance for the dermatologic finger nails, and other hard parts of the soles of the feet and palms of the hands, nibbled by [the roaches].’’3 Other community, if only because of the many reports and claims implicating the cockroach as a vector for human disease. reports, dating back to the early 1700s and continuing through the 1900s, confirm that roaches will bite humans,4 This review discusses aspects fundamental to cockroach biology and summarizes some of the basic and clinical although there do not appear to be any reports of someone actually dying from these attacks. One writer described the scientific works which contribute to the claims about roaches. roach as ‘‘a destructive insect to clothes, books, &c...it avoided the light, and was fond of warm places...it frequented mills and exuded a greasy substance from its head...it was a disgusting creature.’’5 The roach is not History and background going to make a good travel companion, but the question According to a World Health Organization report, remains whether the roach can act as a vector for human cockroaches have been in existence for about 360 million disease. years (Upper Carboniferous).1 During the intervening time, the roach has undergone very little structural change; nevertheless, there is a growing population of at least 3500 Roach oddities named species, which range in length from 5 mm to 90 mm.1 Although one is apt to think of roaches primarily as The current view of the roach appears to have come full circle from being an object of man’s longing to an object pests, far less than 1% of roach species actually cause concern for humans;1 however, some of the early records of most people’s loathing. Roaches have been used in one manner or another to treat about 30 medical conditions of human interaction with cockroaches might lead one to think otherwise. Consider these letters to Nature in 1870, of humans, ranging from boils and indigestion to warts and heart disease.4 Specifically, in the mid-1800s, a powder ‘‘A [sailor] was marked for life by [roaches] on board a ship coming home from Jamaica.’’2 The writer goes on to made from dried cockroaches was recommended as a diuretic;6 however, the efficacy of these concoctions has say, ‘‘I have known bread, &c., in the West Indies uneatable from being run over by the small dark Cockroach...while never been substantiated. While roaches are known to be found in kitchens, in the great pale species...is utterly unbearable.’’2 One might think these were great beasts with which to contend, given cabinets, or on counters, even in the most clean homes, they have also been found in other places. Specifically, the following account, ‘‘In some ships infested with these insects, sailors frequently complain of having their toe and roaches have been reported to crawl into the most incon90