308 PULTCID^ — FLEAS. 



printed 1G50, quotes this passage from Pliny, calling it "A 

 very easie and merry conceit to keep off fleas from your beds 

 or chambers."^ 



The Hungarian shepherds grease their linen with hogs' 

 lard, and thus render themselves so disgusting even to the 

 Fleas and Lice, as to put them effectually to flight.^ 



There is still shown in the Arsenal at Stockholm a diminu- 

 tive piece of ordnance, four or five inches in length, with 

 which, report says, on the authority of Linnceus, the cele- 

 brated Queen Christiana used to cannonade Fleas. ^ 



But, seriously, if you wish for an effectual remedy, that 

 prescribed by old Tusser, in his Points of Goode Hus- 

 bandry, in the following lines, will answer your purpose : 



While wormwood hatli seed, get a handfull or twaine, 

 To save against March, to malce flea to refraine : 

 Where chamber is sweeped and wormwood is strown, 

 No flea for his life dare abide to be known. 



The inhabitants of Dalecarlia place the skins of hares in 

 their apartments, in which the Fleas willingly take refuge, 

 so that they are easily destroyed by the immersion of the 

 skin in scalding water.^ 



Pamphilius among others gives the following remedies 

 against Fleas : If a person, he says, sets a dish in the mid- 

 dle of the house, and draws a line around it with an iron 

 sword (it will be better if the sword has done execution), 

 and if he sprinkles the rest of the house, excepting the 

 place circumscribed, with an irrigation of staphisagria, or 

 of powdered leaves of the bay-tree, they having been boiled 

 in brine or in sea-water, he will bring all the Fleas together 

 into the dish. A jar also being set in the ground with its 

 edge even with the pavement, and smeared with bulls' fat, 

 will attract all the Fleas, even those that are in the ward- 

 robe. If you enter a place where there are Fleas, express 

 the usual exclamation of distress, and they will not touch 

 you. Make a small trench under a bed, and pour goats' 

 blood into it, and it will bring all the Fleas together, and it 

 will allure those from your clothing. Fleas may be removed 



1 Brand's Pop. Antiq., ii. 198. 



2 K. and S. Inlrod., i. 101. 



3 Lack. Lapp., ii. 32, note. 



* Hist, of Ins., iii. 319, Murray, 1888. 



