BENEFICIAL INSECTS 221 



all civilised communities. Not so well known, however, is 

 the fact that Cimex lectularius, man's most undesirable 

 bed-fellow, constitutes a medicine of some repute. Pliny 

 says that the bed bug is a neutraliser of the venom of 

 serpents ; Guettard, his French commentator, recommends 

 them to be taken internally for hysteria. According to a 

 later authority, their smell relieves those under hysterical 

 suffocation ; and also, if given to the number of seven, as 

 food with beans, they help those that are afflicted with 

 quartan ague, if they be eaten before the accession of the 

 fit. Quintus Serenus, in his verses, says they are good for 

 tertian agues, a statement which is confirmed by Gesner, 

 who tried the remedy "among the common and meaner 

 sort of people." The Ancients gave seven to adults and 

 four to children when they were overcome by lethargy. 

 During the later part of the last century the bed bug was 

 given by country people, in certain parts of America, as 

 a cure for fever and ague, and it is highly praised for its 

 remedial properties in homoeopathic circles. 



Baldness was evidently as common an infliction in 

 ancient times as at the present day, and the remedies, 

 though distinctly quaint, were probably quite as efficacious 

 as some of the much-advertised modern nostrums. Pliny 

 says : " Varro affirmeth that the heads of flies applied fresh 

 to the bald places is a convenient medicine for the said 

 infirmity and defect." Another authority says that gnats, 

 rubbed into the bald places of one's head, will promote the 

 growth of hair, and, curiously enough, the bodies of the 

 same insects rubbed on the eyelids were said to cure in- 

 grown lashes. The larvae of bot flies have been used as 

 a remedy for epilepsy. 



Of lice, the most disgusting remedial agents imaginable, 

 Schroeder, in his History of Anivnals that are Useful in 

 Physic, says: "They are swallowed by country people 

 against jaundice." Of them, too, Beaumont and Fletcher 

 write : " Die of the jaundice, yet have the cure about you : 



