Chap. 17.] 
EEMEDIES DERIVED TROM BUGS. 
393 
are recommended by authors with such a degree of assurance, 
that it would be improper to omit them, the more particularly 
as it is to the sympathy or antipathy of objects that remedies 
owe their existence. Thus the bug, for instance, a most filthy 
insect, and one the very name of which inspires us with loath- 
ing, is said to be a neutralizer of the venom of serpents, asps in 
particular, and to be a preservative against all kinds of poisons. 
As a proof of this, they tell us that the sting of an asp is never 
fatal to poultry, if they have eaten bugs that day ; and that, 
if such is the case, their flesh is remarkably beneficial to persons 
who have been stung by serpents. Of the various recipes^^ 
given in reference to these insects, the least revolting are the 
application of them externally to the wound, with the blood of 
a tortoise ; the employment of them as a fumigation to make 
leeches loose their hold ; and the administering of them to ani- 
mals in drink when a leech has been accidentally swallowed. 
Some persons, however, go so far as to crush bugs with salt 
and woman's milk, and anoint the eyes with the mixture ; in 
combination, too, with honey and oil of roses, they use them 
as an injection for the ears. Field-bugs, again, and those found 
upon the mallow, are burnt, and the ashes mixed with oil 
of roses as an injection for the ears. 
As to the other remedial virtues attributed to bugs, for the 
cure of vomiting, quartan fevers, and other diseases, although 
we find recommendations given to swallow them in an egg, 
some wax, or in a bean, I look upon them as utterly unfounded, 
and not worthy of further notice. They are employed, how- 
ever, for the treatment of lethargy, and with some fair reason, 
as they successfully neutralize the narcotic effects of the poison 
of the asp : for this purpose seven of them are administered 
in a cyathus of water, but in the case of children only four. 
In cases, too, of strangury, they have been injected into the 
urinary channel so true it is that Nature, that universal 
parent, has engendered nothing without some powerful reason 
or other. In addition to these particulars, a couple of bugs, 
1^ Guettard, a French commentator on Pliny, recommends bugs to be 
taken internally for hysteria ! 
^3 Perhaps the Cimex pratensis is meant here. Neither this nor the 
Cimex juniperinus, the Cimex brassicse, or the Lygaeus hyoscami has the 
offensive smell of the house bug. 
1* An excellent method, Ajasson remarks, of adding to the tortures of 
the patient. 
