264 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



The unctuous dewlaps of a snail ; 

 The broke heart of a nightingale 

 O'ercome in music ; 



This done, commended 



Grace by his priest, the feast is ended. — 



Having considered insects as adding to the general stock 

 of food, I shall next request your attention while I detail to 

 you how far the medical science is indebted to them. Had 

 I addressed you a century ago, I could have made this an 

 ample history. Amongst scores of infallible panaceas, I 

 should have recommended the wood-louse as a solvent and 

 aperient ; powder of silk-worm for vertigo and convulsions ; 

 millepedes against the jaundice ; earwigs to strengthen the 

 nerves ; powdered scorpion for the stone and gravel ; fly- 

 water for disorders in the eyes ; and the tick for erysipelas. 

 I should have prescribed five gnats as an excellent purge ; 

 wasps as diuretics ; lady-birds for the colic and measles ; the 

 cock-chafer for the bite of a mad dog and the plague ; and 

 ants and their acid I should have loudly praised as incom- 

 parable against leprosy and deafness, as strengthening the 

 memory, and giving vigour and animation to the whole bodily 

 frame. ^ In short, I could have easily added to the miserably 

 meager list of modern pharmacopoeias, a catalogue of ap- 

 proved insect-remedies for every disease and evil 



" that flesh is heir to !" 



But these good times are long gone by. You would, I fear, 

 laugh at my prescriptions notwithstanding the great autho- 

 rities I could cite in their favour ; and even doubt the effi- 

 cacy of a more modern specific for toothache, promulgated 

 by a learned Italian professor^, who assures us that a finger 

 once imbued with the juices of Rliinobatus 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, therefore, with expatiating on the 

 virtues of the very few insects to which the sons of Hip- 

 pocrates and Galen now deign to have recourse. At the 



1 For this list of remedies, see Lesser, L. ii. 171 — 173. 



2 Gerbi. Storia Naturali dun Nuov. Inset. 1794. The same virtues have 

 been ascribed to Coccindla septem punctata, L. 



