CanthariS. (Cantharides) 



"The beetle, Cantharis vesicatoria (Linne), De Geer. Thoroughly dried 

 at a temperature not exceding 40° C. (104° F.)" — U. S. P. 



The name Cantharis, or Cantharides, was applied by ancient Greek 

 writers to many coleopterous insects, their use in medicine dating back 

 to a very early period. Hippocrates speaks of their internal employ- 

 ment in dropsy and amenorrhea, while Cantharis is also mentioned in 

 the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, and Pliny. According to Mother- 

 by 's New Medical Dictionary, 177$, the remedy was once called 

 "French flies," but inasmuch as the insects were exported largely from 

 Spain as a commercial drug, they became (Motherby) generally known 

 as Spanish flies. The systematic study of the living insect is of interest 

 to the entomologist only, but it may be added that several species of 

 ,the beetle have vesicating qualities, in consequence of which fact they 

 have been known as "Blistering flies." 



As is to be expected, the early record of this remedy made of 

 it a favorite with those who believed that the art of curing disease 

 depended upon and rested in the driving out or in the drawing out 

 of "devilish secretions." Consequently, the early records of American 

 medication teem with directions for the production of blisters by means 

 of this energetic product of the insect world. 



In the days of the apprenticeship of this writer as a pharmacist, in 

 Cincinnati (four years, beginnyig 1863), the blister plaster was one 

 of the sheet anchors in "authoritative" medication. The art of cutting 

 and of spreading a Cantharides plaster for application to a designated 

 part of the body, as for example, behind the ears, over the chest, 

 along the spine, etc., was then a necessary requirement to pharma- 

 ceutical expertness. Whosoever has seen a patient tortured by the 

 excruciating process of a blister can comprehend that the barbarisms 

 practiced upon the American people during the supremacy of this drug 

 overtopped the misery endured by those who suffered in the War of 

 the Revolution. Happily the viciousness of this form of medication 

 no longer prevails in the treatment of any American physician. Ob- 

 solete, as is also true of the majority of its barbarous co-laborers of 

 the past, is Cantharides Blister, that devilish relic of Mediaeval medical 

 "authority." 



As an example: About the middle of the last century, in Peters- 

 burg, Ky., the writer's brother, N. Ashley Lloyd, then eight years 

 of age, was overcome by the heat while fishing, and carried to his 

 home. Good old Dr. Graves (well named) was called, and as the first 



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