Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/178

Rh manufacturing establishments in Ōsaka. Formerly fireflies were used much more than at present in the manufacture of poultices and pills, and in the preparation of drugs peculiar to the practice of Chinese medicine. Even to-day some curious extracts are obtained from them; and one of these, called Hotaru-no-abura, or Firefly-grease, is still used by wood-workers for the purpose of imparting rigidity to objects made of bent bamboo.

A very curious chapter on firefly-medicine might be written by somebody learned in the old-fashioned literature. The queerest part of the subject is Chinese, and belongs much more to demonology than to therapeutics. Firefly-ointments used to be made which had power, it was alleged, to preserve a house from the attacks of robbers, to counteract the effect of any poison, and to drive away "the hundred devils." And pills were made with firefly-substance which were believed to confer invulnerability;—one kind of such pills being called Kanshōgan, or "Commander-in-Chief Pills"; and another, Buigan, or "Military Power Pills."

Firefly-catching, as a business, is comparatively 註