Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — The Jigger. [ARTICLE]

The Jigger.

The terror of blackberry pickers south of Mason and Dixon’s line is the cheagre, popularly pronounced “jigger." Probably no one has ever seen a chegre save under a microscope, and certainly he is invisible to his victims, but ho can inflict more discomfort than the mosquito, or than any one of a dozen noxious insects twice his size. The cheagre comes like a thief in the night No one is conscious of his coming and often his presence is not detected for hofirs after his arrival, but indue time the victim is seized with an intolerable itching in a dozen spots at once, and scratchingaffords only temporary relief. Pimples rise over the itching spots and are soon scraped npvby the cheagre’s tortured victim. Meanwhile the invisible enemy keeps on burrowing and the Itching continues often for days together. When it ceases the victim has the unpleasant consciousness that all is over probably because the cheagre has died somewhere beneath the pimple.