BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1217 



LINKS BETWEEN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE 



In byegone days every medical practitioner was something of a 

 naturalist. He dealt with plant "simples" and was supposed to know 

 his "herbs"; he dealt with animal "simples", and was supposed to 

 know his beasts. For many a century his pocket-companion was a 

 bottle of living leeches, and so the name of the animal became the 

 name of the profession. People said, "Send for the leech", when we 

 should say, "Send for the doctor"; though it is not to be hastily 

 inferred that horse-leech meant veterinarian. But the days of the 

 animal called leech are so largely over that even the skilled staff 

 of the hospital are not always able to decide offhand which is its 

 business end. 



Old Prescriptions. — But it may be interesting to linger for a 

 little over the old prescriptions, in which animals were so often 

 prominent. Most of them — say, 75 per cent. — were probably quite 

 superstitious, but perhaps 20 per cent, had a fairly obvious reason- 

 ableness, and another 5 per cent, an unexpected justification which 

 modern research has revealed. As to the superstitious prescriptions, 

 rheumatic patients were told to take a black cat to bed with them, 

 for it is rich in curative electricity — an intriguing situation. The 

 dust of a dried magpie was used in Germany as recently as 1880 as 

 a cure for epilepsy, and was probably as much of a cure as anything 

 else. To lay an open pickled herring on the soles of the feet on going 

 to bed was deemed a cure for swollen legs, but it was never popular 

 among thrifty Scots, who could not but think that an internal 

 application must be better. There are hundreds of these superstitious 

 prescriptions. 



The second kind of animal prescription is that with an apparent 

 reasonableness. We can understand that decoctions of ants might 

 be of some use, e.g. in weeding the flora of the intestine, for ants 

 are rich in formic acid, which is notably antiseptic. Even in these 

 enlightened days — which mean, of course, to some extent, more 

 skilfully disguised superstitions — we have known of a man with 

 bad rheumatism in his arm subject himself to a ferocious attack 

 from hive-bees, whose stings, including formic acid injection, did 

 much good. Without more data, it would be rash to stake more 

 on it than on a prescription of nettle soup, where something like 

 formic acid is said to operate, but it would be very hasty to brush 

 aside such old prescriptions as quite lacking in reasonable promise. 

 We can understand the effectiveness of a diet of snails — for the 

 snail and the toothsome periwinkle, between them "the poor man's 

 oyster", are rich in digestive ferments, which might well be useful. 

 It is not surprising that powdered pearls — a dose for the profiteer 

 of ancient days — might be of some service, for pearls are made of 



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