Culpepper quotes from Mizaldus, perhaps sarcastically, a very wonderful property of earthworms, which is that the powder of them put in a hollow tooth makes it drop out. He gives another way of making a tooth drop out, which was to “fill an earthenware crucible full of emmets, ants, or pismires, call them by which name you will, eggs and all, and when you have burnt them keep the ashes, with which if you touch the tooth it will drop out.”
The same authority offers a drink cure which looks as if it might be effectual. “Eels being put into wine or beer and suffered to die in it, he that drinks it will never endure that sort of liquor again.” He recommends the brain of a hare roasted to help children to breed their teeth; a dead mouse, dried and powdered, one whole one to be taken each morning for three consecutive days, for diabetes; grasshoppers for colic; and hedge-sparrows salted for stone.
Deers’ fat strengthened the nerves, and relieved rheumatism and gout. Hares’ grease applied outwardly ripened swellings. Rabbits’ fat had a dispersing power. The fat of cocks and hens would soften hard swellings. Goose grease was specially good against piles, deafness, and to prevent pitting after the small-pox. Bears’ grease, still sold nominally, could be had in genuine form in this country a hundred years ago. Bears were at that time fattened and killed in this country for their grease, and until even more recent times they were imported from Russia. The principal use of bears’ grease was always to make the hair grow, but it was also used as an emollient for many purposes.
The lion had a high reputation among the Romans for its medicinal value. The fat was used as an ointment in affections of the joints, and combined with oil of roses as the best cosmetic for preserving the delicacy of the complexion. An aqueous tincture of the gall was used for weak eyes, and a mixture of the gall with the fat of the lion taken in small doses was esteemed an excellent remedy for epilepsy. Roasted lion’s heart was given in fevers. It was believed that no wild beast would attack anyone anointed with lions’ fat, and that this same treatment would prevent human treachery. These statements are found in Pliny. The lion rather fell out of use in more modern times. Its fat was prescribed in the P.L. 1618, and in James’s “Dispensatory,” 1747, is said to be successful in anointing limbs numbed with cold, and also to put in the ears for the relief of earache.
The flesh of the tiger is still eaten by the Malays to impart courage and sagacity. Marcellus quotes a prescription by Democritus of Abderos (contemporary with Hippocrates) for nervous diseases. It consisted of the spinal marrow of a hyena mixed with his gall, all boiled together in old oil.
The cat has been largely used in medicine. Galen recommends the head of a black cat to be burned in a glazed vessel, and the ashes to be used in diseases of the eye, including cataract. Pliny says that the fæces of this animal mixed with mustard cured ulcers in the head. Sylvius prescribed cats’ flesh for hæmorrhoids and lumbago. In Lemery’s “Pharmacopœia” a cat ointment is ordered. It was to be made from a newly born kitten cut up into small pieces in a pot varnished with crushed earthworms. Cats’ fæces were employed in the eighteenth century as an application for baldness, and cat’s skin was recommended to be worn over the stomach for strengthening the digestion.
Montaigne states that in his time physicians prescribed as choice remedies the left foot of a tortoise, the liver of a mole, and blood drawn from under the wing of a white pigeon.
Queen Anne’s “Oculist and Operator on the Eyes in Ordinary,” a quack named Read whom she knighted, comments in his writings on the practice of putting a louse in the eye when it is dull and obscure and wanteth humours and spirits. This, he says, “tickleth and pricketh so that it maketh the eye moist and rheumatick and quickeneth the spirits.”
Oil of ants made by pounding two ounces of live ants and macerating them in eight ounces of olive oil for forty days was used as a stimulating liniment. Oil of spiders and earthworms was prescribed by Mindererus for anointing in small-pox and plague. He recommended it as being equal to the oil of scorpions, which was a very complicated combination of drugs devised by Matthiolus. Spiders have been often employed in medicine. A live spider rolled up in butter and swallowed as a pill was a seventeenth century cure for jaundice. Spiders taste like nuts, says Lalande. Galen recommended spiders’ eggs mixed with oil of nard for toothache. Elias Ashmole in his “Diary” (1681) writes: “I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove my ague away. Deo gratias.” Spiders’ webs were frequently used as a febrifuge, and are well-known to be excellent to stop bleeding. Oil of lizards, twelve of them cooked alive in three pounds of nut oil, was esteemed a good application against hernia. Oil of frogs prepared in a similar way was applied to the temples to promote sleep.