The West Virginia medical journal
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During a five-week interval which began May 1991, 19 patients presented to a community health center in a rural West Virginia community with a painful dermatitis. The dermatitis was caused by exposure to a single species of caterpillar, Hemileuca maia, larva of the buck moth. ⋯ Epidemics of caterpillar stings rarely have been reported. No previous epidemics of stings by the buck moth caterpillar have appeared in the literature.