298 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



six \veeks before they are transformed into the perfect 

 fly. 



In former times, and even now, many country people 

 think that these maggots are the cause of giddiness in 

 sheep, and even epileptic fits, on which account the an- 

 cients recommended the maggots of the sheep bot-fly as a 

 remedy for epilepsy; and we read in Trallianus that the 

 oracle of Delphi advised a certain Democrates of Athens, 

 who was afflicted \vith epilepsy, to use these worms tied up 

 in a linen bag and worn around his neck. 



This fact certainly argues that the Homeopathic Law 

 taught by the celebrated Hahnemann, Similia similibus cu- 

 ranter, was applied to the treatment of disease in very an- 

 cient times, and those who will not acknowledge this law 

 of therapeia must have very little acquaintance with the 

 ancient history of medicine and its collateral sciences. 

 Cicero, in his epistle to Atticus, says that the Greek phy- 

 sician Craterus cured the elephantiasis of the East, caused 

 by immoderate use of reptile food, by administering small 

 quantities of the flesh of vipers ; and Antonius Musa, the 

 physician of the Emperor Octavius Augustus, cured invet- 

 erate ulcers in the same manner. 



Some years ago, when we were traveling through Hayti, 

 there lived a Frenchman named Morin in the mountains 

 of Fond des Negres, near Port-au-Prince, who was so fond 

 of liquor that he filled a bottle with whisky out of a hogs- 

 head in which we preserved snakes, lizards, toads, and 

 frogs, and of course drank it all. Three weeks afterward 

 his face and whole body were swollen, and covered with a 

 thick, leathery skin, constituting the disease called ele- 

 phantiasis. When that unfortunate man applied to us for 

 a remedy for that dreadful disease, we, remembering the 

 prescription of Craterus and Antonius Musa, advised him 

 to use the flesh of snakes, which benefited him very much, 

 and relieved his sufferings ; but whether or no our homeo- 



