214 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



the sons of Hippocrates and Galen now deign to have recourse. At the 

 same time I cannot help observing that their proscription of the remainder 

 may have been too indiscriminate. Mankind are apt to run from one 

 extreme to the other. From having ascribed too much efficacy to insect- 

 remedies, we may now ascribe too little. Many insects emit very powerful 

 odors, and some produce extraordinary effects upon the human frame ; 

 and it is an idea not altogether to be rejected, that they may concentrate 

 into a smaller compass the properties and virtues of the plants upon which 

 they feed, and thus aftbrd medicines more powerful in operation than the 

 plants themselves. It is at least worth while to institute a set of experi- 

 ments with this view. 



Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant (^Formica hispinosa 

 Oliv., fungosa F.) for a kind of lint collected by that insect from the 

 Bombax or silk cotton-tree, which as a styptic is preferable to the puff- 

 ball, and at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the blood in the most 

 violent haemorrhages^ ; and gum ammoniac, according to Mr. Jackson^, 

 oozes out of a plant like fennel, from incisions made in the bark by a 

 beetle with a large horn. But, with these exceptions (in which the remedy 

 is rather collected than produced by insects), and that of spiders' webs, 

 which are said to have been recently administered with success in ague, 

 the only insects which directly supply us with medicine are some species 

 of Cantharis and Mylabris. These beetles however amply make up in 

 efficacy for their numerical insignificance ; and almost any article could 

 be better spared from the Materia Medica than one of the former usually 

 known under the name of Cantharides, which is not only of incalculable 

 importance as a vesicatory, but is now administered internally in many 

 cases with very good effect. In Europe, the insect chiefly used with this 

 view is the Cantharis vesicatoria^ ; but in America the C. cinerea and 

 vittata (which are extremely common and noxious insects, while the C. 

 vesicatoria is sold there at sixteen dollars the pound) have been substi- 

 tuted with great success, and are said to vesicate more speedily, and with 

 less pain, at the same time that they cause no strangury"*: and in China 

 they have long employed the Mylabris cichorei, which seems to have been 

 considered the most powerful vesicatory amongst the ancients, who however 

 appear to have been acquainted with the common Cantharis vesicatoria 

 also, and to have made use of it, as well as of Cetonia aurata and some 

 other insects mentioned by Pliny. ^ Another species of Mylabris has been 

 described by Major-General Hardwicke in the Asiatic Transactions^, 

 plentiful in all parts of Bengal, Bahar, and Oude, which is fully as effica- 

 cious as the common Spanish fly ; and in other parts of India Cantharis 

 gigas and Violacca are employed, as is C. rujiceps in Sumatra and Java ; 

 C. atomnria in Brazil ; C. Syriaca in Arabia ; and in some parts of 

 Europe Lydus (^Mylabris Fab.) irimaculatus? 



1 Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 



' Jackson's Marncco, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this statement, from the cir- 

 cumstance of the figure which Mr. Jackson gives of his beetle (Dibbeii Fashook), being 

 clear) V a mere copy of that of Mr. Bruce's Zimb. 



3 This insect, generally so rare in England, appeared in the summer of 1837 in great 

 numbers in Essex, Suffolk, and the Isle of Wight. {Ent. Mag. v. 208. 516.) 



* Jlliger, Mag. i. 256. a jji^t, Nat. 1. xix. c. 4. « Vol. v. 213. 



'' Westwood's Mod. Class, of Ins. i. 297. See also Burmeister's Manual of Ent. p. 562., 

 who says that the species used by the ancients appears to have been Mylabris Fileslini 



