BLAPSIDiE — CHURCH- YARD BEETLE, ETC. 67 



Diodorus, a renowned Physician, reporteth, that he has 

 given these foure flies inwardly with rozin and honey, for 

 the jaundise, and to those that were so streight-winded 

 that they could not draw their breath but sitting upright. 

 See what libertie and power over us have these Physicians, 

 who to practise and trie conclusions upon our bodies, may 

 exhibit unto their patients, what they list, be it never so 

 homely, so it goe under the name of a medicine."^ 



The following extraordinary case of insects introduced 

 into the human stomach, w^hich is of rare occurrence, has 

 been completely authenticated, both by medical men and 

 competent naturalists. It was first published by Dr. 

 Pickells, of Cork, in the Dublin Transactions.^ 



Mary Riordan, aged 28, had been much affected by the 

 death of her mother, and at one of her many visits to the 

 grave seems to have partially lost her senses, having been 

 found lying there on the morning of a winter's day, and 

 having been exposed to heavy rain during the night. It 

 appears that when she was about fifteen, two popular 

 Catholic priests had died, and she was told by some old 

 woman, that if she would drink daily, for a certain time, a 

 quantity of water, mixed with clay taken from their graves, 

 she would be forever secure from disease and sin. So fol- 

 lowing this absurd and disgusting prescription, she took 

 from time to time large quantities of the draught ; and, 

 some time afterward, being affected with a burning pain in 

 the stomach (cardiaJgia), she began to eat large pieces of 

 chalk, which she sometimes also mixed with water and 

 drank. In all these draughts, it is most probable, she 

 swallowed the eggs of the enormous progenies of apterous, 

 dipterous, and coleopterous insects, which she for several 

 years continued to throw up alive and moving. Dr. Pickells 

 asserts that altogether he himself saw nearly 2000 of these 

 larvae, and that there were many he did not see, for, to avoid 

 publicity, she herself destroyed a great number, and man}', 

 too, escaped immediately by running into holes in the floor. 

 Of this incredible number, the greatest proportion were 

 larvse of the Church-yard beetle, Blap,s mortisaga, and of 

 a dipterous insect, an Ascarides; and two were specimens 



iPliny, A";^ ///s^, xxix. 6. HolL, p. 370. 



' Trans, of Assoc. Phys. in Ireland, iv., vii., and v., p. 177, 8vo., 

 Dublin, 18:i4-8. 



