Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/261

Rh stomach. If one is so unfortunate as to swallow a fly, the comforting remark very apt to be offered among country people is: "Well, it'll come up; a fly won't stay on the stomach, you know."

In central Illinois pills made by rolling up spider-webs into small balls are recommended to be taken for ague. In connection with this remedy it may be interesting to.notice that Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, tells how his mother, who was much given to doctoring the poor of her parish, had great confidence in the efficacy, in ague cases, of a spider inclosed in a nutshell wrapped in silk, to be worn as an amulet by the patient. Burton himself was at first incredulous, but after some observation he came to believe that the amulet was beneficial. His own conclusion was greatly strengthened upon his finding authority for this use of the spider in the writings of Dioscorides, the famous botanist, who lived in the early part of the Christian era,' and whose Materia Medica, written in Greek, was for fifteen hundred years the highest medical authority. Carrying spiders upon the person as an ague-cure must once have been somewhat popular in England. Brand quotes from the diary of Elias Ashmole, April 11, 1681, the following: "I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove the ague away. Deo gratias!" Indeed, a vastly greater antiquity may be assigned to this absurd practice, for the use of a spider's web or the creature itself as a specific for ague can at least be traced back to the first century of our era; for Pliny, in prescribing for this disease, says: "It may be worth while to make trial whether the web of the spider called 'lycos' is of any use applied with the insect itself to the temples and forehead in a compress covered with resin and wax; or the insect itself, attached to the body in a reed—a form in which it is said to be highly beneficial for other fevers." In the medical chapters of his Natural History Pliny again and again speaks of the remedial virtues of spiders and their webs, and, among multifarious prescriptions of this kind, advises the application of a spider for three days as a cure for a boil, care being taken not to mention the animal's name before applying it; also of cobwebs wet with oil and vinegar for fracture of the skull, or of the web of a white spider for chapped lips. I have chanced upon several other spider-web remedies in our own country besides the ague-cure above mentioned. A Deerfield (Mass.) mode of treatment for felons is merely to wind the finger about with cobwebs. In northern New York cobwebs wet in hot water and applied externally are recommended for the relief of pain in diseases of the kidneys and bladder. The same application is used in parts of Vermont for acute inflammation of the breast.

A quaint custom is widely prevalent among country boys and