“Gesner in his writings confirms this experiment, having made trial of it among the common and meaner sort of people in the country. The ancients gave seven to those that were taken with a lethargy, in a cup of water, and four to children. Pliny and Serenus consent to this in these verses:
Some men prescribe seven Wall-lice for to drink,
Mingled with water, and one cup they think
Is better than with drowsy death to sink.”[923]
Anatolius says that if an ox, or other quadruped, swallows a leech in drinking, having pounded some Bugs, let the animal smell them, and he immediately throws up the leech.[924]
Mr. Mayhew, in his work on the London poor and their labor, has an interesting chapter devoted to the Destroyers of Vermin, from which we have taken the liberty of quoting pretty largely in the course of this work. His statements can be relied on, and we give them as nearly in his own words as possible. Concerning Bugs and Fleas, and the trade carried on in the manufacture and vending of poisons to destroy these pests, we learn from him: The vending of bug-poison in the London streets is seldom followed as a regular source of living. He has met with persons who remembered to have seen men selling packets of vermin poison; but to find out the venders themselves was next to an
impossibility. The men seem to take merely to the business as a living when all other sources have failed. All, however, agree in acknowledging that there is such a street trade; but that the living it affords is so precarious that few men stop at it longer than two or three weeks.
The most eminent firm, perhaps, of the bug-destroyers in London now is that of Messrs. Tiffin and Son. They have pursued their calling in the streets, but now rejoice in the title of “Bug-Destroyers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family.”
Mr. Tiffin, the senior party in this house, kindly obliged Mr. Mayhew with the following statement. It may be as well to say that Mr. Tiffin appears to have paid much attention to the subject of Bugs, and has studied with much earnestness the natural history of this vermin. He said:
“We can trace our business back as far as 1695, when one of our ancestors first turned his attention to the destruction of bugs. He was a lady’s stay-maker—men used to make them in those days, though, as far back as that is concerned, it was a man that made my mother’s dresses. This ancestor found some bugs in his house—a young colony of them, that had introduced themselves without his permission, and he didn’t like their company, so he tried to turn them out of doors again, I have heard it said, in various ways. It is in history, and it has been handed down in my own family as well, that bugs were first introduced into England, after the fire in London, in the timber that was brought for the rebuilding of the city, thirty years after the fire, and it was about that time that my ancestor first discovered the colony of bugs in his house. I can’t say whether he studied the subject of bug-destroying, or whether he found out his stuff by accident, but he certainly did invent a compound which completely destroyed the bugs, and, having been so successful in his own house, he named it to some of his customers who were similarly plagued, and that was the commencement of the present connection, which has continued up to this time.