216 INSECTS AND MAN 



Oil in which these beetles have been boiled was recom- 

 mended by Galenus for earache, deafness, and the bites of 

 scorpions, and certain Arabian doctors apply the juice of 

 scarabseus to the eye in the minutest quantity for weak- 

 ness and blindness. 



Pliny recommends decoctions of skipjack beetles for 

 ulcers and malignant growths, and a glow-worrn, Lampyris 

 noctiluca, is said to be an efficient remedy for stone. 



The Spanish flies, or Cantharidce, are the most familiar 

 of all beetles to the present-day physician. Cantharis 

 vesicatoria has earned a widespread reputation as a vesica- 

 ting agent. In Italy, an allied species, Mylabris cichorii, 

 and in China, Mylabris pustulata, are similarly employed. 

 In earlier times the blistering beetle was held in great awe, 

 and when a Dr Greenfield of London administered some 

 cantharides internally to a patient, in 1698, he was promptly 

 imprisoned, only being released on the publication of his 

 success in using the preparation in certain diseases of the 

 bladder and kidneys. Cantharides is still used medicinally, 

 and is also an ingredient of many hair washes. 



The oil beetles, so-called because, when handled, they 

 eject a drop of clear yellow oil from the joints of their legs, 

 are used in some cases as a substitute for cantharides, notably 

 in Spain. They were formerly esteemed in Germany as a 

 remedy for hydrophobia, and in Sweden the oil is expressed 

 from the beetles and used with considerable success as an 

 ointment for rheumatism. By Arabian and Hindu doctors 

 preparations of these beetles, in vinegar, are used against 

 itch and to destroy lice. 



In Egypt and the Levant the churchyard beetles, Slaps 

 sulcata and Blaps mucronata, prepared with oil, are used 

 as a remedy against earache and the bites of scorpions and, 

 externally, for all kinds of skin affections. 



The weevils appear to contribute but little to the Materia 

 Medica. Professor Gergi of Florence, writing towards the 

 close of the eighteenth century about a certain weevil, 



