This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Skippen, Shaw, Decker Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/5d.2ADI/3559.1.1.1 Message Board Post: Payette Independent Payette, Idaho Thursday, August 4, 1898 Maggots in a Boy’s Ear. What appears to be a remarkable case came under the treatment of Dr. Alfred Skippen last Sunday morning. Charley Decker, the six-year-old son of Jake Decker, has been suffering for a long time with a chronic affection of the ear, which at times resulted in a mattery discharge. On Sunday morning the little fellow was almost wild with his ear and his father took him to Dr. Skippen’s office for treatment. Upon examination the doctor discovered and removed a couple of grubs or maggots, since which time eight more have been removed. The ear-drum has been destroyed by the disease and the maggots appear to have eaten away the small muscles attached to the little bones of the ear, and would very soon have worked their way through into the brain. Dr. Skippen thinks the maggots are the result of a fly which deposited its eggs while the child slept. We publish the facts connected with this case for the reason that there have been all kinds of stories in circulation. We have before us at this time an account of a similar case, published in the Hood River Glacier, which came to the notice of Dr. Shaw at The Dalles, Ore. The doctor examined the ear of a 12-year-old boy who was suffering intense agony and with delicate forceps extracted a maggot. He then blew in some vapor of chloroform and pulled out five more maggots nearly an inch in length. The boy had remembered of a big fly striking him in the ear only a few days before the pain commenced.