428 
USES — MEDICINAL. 
all ulcers of the foot, aiul Marcellas Empiricus recomuieiuled the same 
as a remedy for hydrocephalus in children, while Kiraiiides prescribed 
the application of a slug pounded, with incense, to arrest bleeding at 
the nose. 
Snails prepared in various ways used to be highly esteemed as a 
cure for various injuries and diseases, ancient physicians regarding 
snails pounded up with their shells as a remedy endowed with discu- 
tient and resolvent properties, and the shell alone, when powdered, 
as a diuretic. 
Pliny, the elder, recommended snails for a cough or for pains in 
the stomach, but it was considered essential that an uneven number 
should be taken. 
It is, however, in the treatment of pulmonary complaints that the 
greatest cclehrity has been attained and in consumption the use of 
preparations of Ueli.r and Ilelir pomat'm are said on good 
evidence to be strikingly effectual. Lovell Reeve, in his “British 
Land and Freshwater Shells,” published in 1862, says: “Mr. Barlow, 
of the firm of John Dickinson and Co., paper-makers, informs me 
that he has a brother who was in the last stage of consumption, 
when their father resolved to try the experiment of a diet of Apple 
Snails. The expressed mucilaginous juice of the snail was admin- 
istered to the patient, without his knowledge, in every conceivable 
form. It was taken in jellies and conserves, in gi-avies and with 
entremets of meats. In the course of a twelvemonth the invalid was 
entirely cured ami went to the Crimea, ami is living at this moment 
a strong hearty man.” 
Slugs have com})aratively recently been recommended in cases of 
consumption by medical men. A relative (jf my own, who in his youth 
was considered to have consumptive tendencies, by advice made 
Ayrldlima.r a regular article of diet for some time, and in his 
later years certainly showed no evidence of consumptive taint. 
In this country when medicinally used for jndmonary complaints 
or consumption they may be boiled in milk or made into a muci- 
laginous broth, but may also be eaten alive or, if a shelled species, 
the shell pricked through with a large pin to enable the patient to 
suck the oozing liciuor. 
Snail syrup, ])repared by i)assiug a stout thread through the shell 
and body of a number of snails, and suspending them over a dish 
of coarse brown sugar, upon which their mucilaginous exudations are 
