MEDICINES FEOM ANIMALS. 



(Sept. 17, 1892.) 



THAT ' ( divers medicines arise out of every part of 

 every beast almost " was universally believed from 

 the earliest times of which we have any record, 

 until comparatively quite recently, so recently 

 indeed, that Dr. Brookes, in his " History of 

 Quadrupedes," speaks of their properties and uses 

 in medicine, and he wrote late enough to quote 

 " Mr. Buffon" and " Linnaeus." This belief is now, 

 however, except among the uneducated classes, 

 nearly extinct, and happily so for those unfortunate 

 enough to require medicine. Although, as has 

 been pointed out by Mr. Hudson in his delightful 

 book ' ' The Naturalist in La Plata/' some of the 

 animal specifics used by the vulgar, and formerly 

 laughed at by learned physicians, now have 

 honourable places in the pharmacopoeia pepsine 

 for example, of which he says, " The Gauchos 

 were accustomed to take the lining of the rhea's 

 stomach, dried and powdered, for ailments caused 

 by impaired digestion . . . science has gone over 

 to them, and the ostrich-hunter now makes a 

 double profit, one from the feathers, and the other 

 from the dried stomachs which he supplies to the 



