MEDICINAL MOLLUSCA. 77 



with white of eggs and quick-lime to make a cement strong 

 enough for their purposes. " Fractured marble and china 

 are put together with the greatest expedition and firmness 

 with this composition. The statuary, the pictorist, and 

 medalist, also apply the sanies of this reptile to their moulds, 

 before they take off their impressions with wax, making the 

 waxen figures come off with more ease, and with a finer 

 skin."* 



Amongst the Mollusca there is not one which gives any 

 essential aid to the physician, in his work of ministering to 

 our ailments. In the Natural History of Pliny, indeed, 

 there is a catalogue of medicines furnished by these animals 

 sufficiently extensive and varied, but their reputation has 

 passed away ; for if oyster-shells and the bone of the cuttle- 

 fish (Sepia officinalis) still hold a precarious place in some 

 pharmacopoeias, it is more from respect to ancient usage than 

 from a conviction of their utility. Pearls long maintained a 

 great medicinal reputation, descending from the testimony of 

 the Arabian physicians ; and who in the least acquainted 

 with medicine has not heard of the virtues of the Unguis 

 odoratus and Blatta Byzantina over vapours and epilepsy ? 

 The latter was the operculum of a species of Strombus, or, 

 according to some, of a Turbo, and seems to have succeeded 

 the Unguis odoratus in practice, when this ceased to be 

 brought into Europe. The Unguis itself was a fresh-water 

 bivalve shell, "gathered in the nardiferous lakes upon the 

 river Ganges," and something like our own fluviatile bivalves 

 (Cyclas). " I lament its loss," says the learned Dr. Lister, 

 " which I have reason to believe was a good medicine, from 

 its strong aromatic smell, which is much wanting in our tes- 

 taceous powders, of which this was one of the number, so 

 much used, and that not without good reason now-a-days, 

 which are all very flat and insipid, "f 



Discarded from the service of the physician, a few Mol- 

 lusca have found a resting-place in the Materia Medica of 

 the common people, who inherit to the full their wise ances- 

 tors' faith in their virtues, which are enhanced by some 

 superstitious traditions and observances. Slugs and snails 

 were anciently, and are to this day, a popular remedy in con- 

 sumptive complaints. J They are sometimes made into a 

 mucilaginous broth, sometimes swallowed in a raw state, and 



* Wallis, Hist. Northumb. i. 368 ; Barbut. Gen. Verm. 74. 

 t Phil. Trans, xvii. 643-644. Adanson, Senegal, Coq. 141. 

 J " Aqua ex limacibus distillata hepar imbecillum mire roborat, et 

 phthisicis remedium est, et hecticis." SIB. Scot. 111. ii. lib. 3, p. 34. 



