DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 179 



favour ; and even doubt the efficacy of a more modern specific for tooth- 

 ache, promulgated by a learned Italian professor ! , who assures us that a 

 finger once imbued with the juices of Rhinobatus antiodontalgicus (a name 

 enough to give one the toothache to pronounce it) will retain its power 

 of curing this disease for a twelvemonth ! I must content myself, there- 

 fore, with expatiating on the virtues of the very few insects to which the 

 sons of Hippocrates and Galen now deign to have recourse. At the 

 same time I cannot help observing that their proscription of the remainder 

 may have been too indiscriminate. Mankind are apt to run from one 

 extreme to the other. From having ascribed too much efficacy to insect- 

 remedies, we may now ascribe too little. Many insects emit very powerful 

 odours, and some produce extraordinary effects upon the human frame ; 

 and it is an idea not altogether to be rejected, that they may concentrate 

 into a smaller compass the properties and virtues of the plants upon which 

 they feed, and thus afford medicines more powerful in operation than the 

 plants themselves. It is at least worth while to institute a set of expe- 

 riments with this view. 



Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant (Formica bispinosa 

 Oliv., fungosa F.) for a kind of lint collected by that insect from the 

 Bombax or silk cotton-tree, which as a styptic is preferable to the puff-ball, 

 and at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the blood in the most violent 

 haemorrhages 2 ; and gum ammoniac, according to Mr. Jackson 3 , oozes out 

 of a plant like fennel, from incisions made in the bark by a beetle with a 

 large horn. But, with these exceptions (in which the remedy is rather 

 collected than produced by insects), and that of spiders' webs, which are 

 said to have been recently administered with success in ague, the only 

 insects which directly supply us with medicine are some species of Can- 

 tharis and Mylabris. These beetles however amply make up in efficacy 

 for their numerical insignificance ; and almost any article could be better 

 spared from the Materia Medica than one of the former usually known 

 under the name of Cantharides, which is not only of incalculable importance 

 as a vesicatory, but is now administered internally in many cases with very 

 good effect. In Europe, the insect chiefly used with this view is the Can" 

 tharis vesicatoria 4 ; but in America the C. "cinerea and vittata (which are ex- 

 tremely common and noxious insects, while the C. vesicatoria is sold there 

 at sixteen dollars the pound) have been substituted with great success, and 

 are said to vesicate more speedily, and with less pain, at the same time 

 that they cause no strangury 5 : and in China they have long employed the 

 Mylabris cichorei, which seems to have been considered the most powerful 

 vesicatory amongst the ancients, who however appear to have been ac- 

 quainted with the common Cantharis vesicatoria also, and to have made 

 use of it, as well as of Cetonia aurata and some other insects mentioned by 



1 Gerbi. Storia Naturali (Tun Nuov. Inset. 1794. The same virtues have been 

 ascribed to Coccinetta septempunctata, L. 



2 Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 



5 Jackson's Marocco, 83. Some doubt, however, attaches to this statement, from 

 the circumstance cf the figure which Mr. Jackson gives of his beetle (Dibben 

 Fashook) being clearly a mere copy of that of Mr. Bruce's Zimb. 



* This insect, generally so rare in England, appeared in the summer of 1837 

 in great numbers in Essex, Suffolk, and the Isle of Wight. (Ent. Mag. v. 208. 

 516.) 



5 Illiger, Mag. i. 256. 



N 2 



