CAKTHABIDES 669 



CANTHARIDBS 



CANTHABIS. Blistering or Spanish Fly. The dried beetle 

 T Cantharis vesicatoria. Class Insecta. Order 

 Coleoptera. 



Cantharides flies are found in most parts of Southern 

 Europe, Germany, and Russia, and occasionally along the 

 south coast of England. They settle on such trees and 

 shrubs as the olive, lilac, privet, ash, elder, honeysuckle, and 

 rose. During May and June, after nightfall or before dawn, 

 the collectors, with their faces protected by masks and their 

 hands by gloves, shake or beat the insects from the trees 

 on which they feed, kill them by exposure to the fumes of 

 oil of turpentine, or by immersion in boiling water or vinegar, 

 and quickly dry them in the sun or by artificial heat. The 

 flies used in this country were formerly brought from Spain 

 (and hence their vernacular name of Spanish flies), but are 

 now chiefly imported from Hungary, St. Petersburg, and 

 Messina, usually packed in barrels or cases containing from 

 100 to 200 Ibs. 



PROPERTIES, etc. The insect is from three quarters of an 

 inch to an inch long, and a quarter of an inch broad, with 

 two long elytra or wing-sheaths of a shining coppery-green 

 colour, under which are two thin, brownish, gauze-like, 

 membranous wings. The body, especially along its under 

 surface, is covered with grey- white hairs ; the head is large ; 

 the antennae or horns are black and thread-like. The insect, 

 which lives eight to ten days, deposits its larvae in the earth, 

 leaving them to be hatched by the heat of the sun. 

 Powdered cantharides has a resinous, acrid taste, and a 

 disagreeable, penetrating, foetid odour. It is freely soluble 

 in boiling water, alcohol, ether, acetic acid, and fixed and 

 volatile oils. The active principle being volatile, no 

 cantharides preparation should be heated beyond 200 

 Fahr. Its distinguishing tests are its vesicant action, and 

 the brilliant green appearance of the wing-sheaths. 



Cantharides, besides animal matters, acetic and uric acids, 

 contains a bland oil, a foetid, acrid, volatile oil, and about 

 2 per cent, of a fatty cry stalli sable principle cantharidin 



