76 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
—. In this enumeration of evils derived from insects, I must not wholly pass 
over the serious and sometimes fatal effects produced upon some persons by 
eating honey, or even by drinking mead. I once knew a lady upon whom 
these acted like poison, and have heard of instances in which death was 
the consequence. Sometimes, when bees extract their honey from 
poisonous plants, such results have not been confined to individuals of a 
particular habit or constitution. A remarkable proof of this is given by 
Dr. Barton in the fifth volume of The American Philosophical Transactions, 
In the autumn and winter of the year 1790 an extensive mortality was 
produced amongst those who had partaken of the honey collected in the 
neighbourhood of Philadelphia. The attention of the American govern- 
ment was excited by the general distress, a minute inquiry into the cause 
of the mortality ensued, and it was satisfactorily ascertained that the honey 
had been chiefly extracted from the flowers of Kalmia latifolia, Though the 
honey mentioned in Xenophon’s well-known account of the effect of a 
particular sort eaten by the Grecian soldiers during the celebrated retreat 
after the death of the younger Cyrus did not operate fatally, it gave those 
of the soldiers who ate it in small quantities the appearance of being intoxi- 
cated, and such as partook of it freely, of being mad or about to die, 
numbers lying on the ground as if after a defeat. A specimen of this 
honey, which still retains its deleterious properties, was sent to the Zoolo- 
gical Society in 1834, from Trebizond on the Black Sea, by Keith E, 
Abbott, Esq.* 
Amongst other direct injuries occasioned by these creatures, perhaps, 
out of regard for the ladies, I ought to notice the alarm which many of 
them occasion to the loveliest part of the creation. When some females 
retire from society to ayoid a wasp, others faint at the sight of a spider, 
and others, again, die with terror if they hear a death-watch : these ground- 
less apprehensions and superstitious alarms are as much real evils to those 
who feel them as if they were well-founded. But having already adverted 
to this subject, I shall here only quote the observation of a wise man, that 
“ Fear is a betraying of the succours that reason offereth.* The best 
remedy, therefore, in such cases, is going to reason for succour. Ina few 
instances, indeed, the evil may take root in a constitutional defect; forthere 
seems to be some foundation for the doctrine of natural antipathies : but, 
generally speaking, in consequence of the increased attention to Natural 
History, the reign of imaginary evils is ceasing amongst us, and what used 
ee 
very valuable paper in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 257. by the Rev. F. W. Hope, 
F.R.S., in which the whole are brought together in a tabular form, so that the 
kind of insect, the local affection, and various other particulars, can be seen at a 
glance. Mr. Hope proposes to adopt the term Canthariasis for those diseases which 
originate with coleopterous insects, whether in the perfect or larva state; that of 
Myasis for those caused by dipterous larve, while he restricts the term Scholechiasis 
to those resulting from lepidopterous larve. Of the first (including two cases 
arising from the earwig), he enumerates thirty-eight cases; of the second, sixty- 
four; and of the third, seven. He suggests that the eggs of many of these larvae have 
been introduced into the stomach with bread, butter, cheese, and even upon cooked 
food, upon which they have been deposited by the parent beetles or flies in our 
larders and cellars, &c,; others with ripe fruit or raw vegetables, as lettuces, water 
cresses, &c.; and others again in impure and turbid water. 
1 Xenophon, Anabas. l.iv. Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i, proc, xxxi. 
2 Wisd. xvii. 12. 
