SCABIES, or ITCH  , a skin disease due to an animal parasite, the Sarcoptes scabei (see MITE), which burrows under the epidermis at any part of the body, but hardly ever in the face or scalp of adults; it usually begins at the clefts of the fingers, where its presence may be inferred from several scattered pimples, which will probably have been torn at their summits by the scratching of the patient, or have been otherwise converted into vesicles or pustules . The remedy is soap and water, and sulphur ointment .