A Treatise on APIs (the Bee), Tella Araneae (Cobweb), Spongia and Cantharis (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Tela Araneae. (COBWEB.) History.?Both cobweb and spiders have been generally used, in substance, by primitive peoples as an application to bleeding wounds, for the purpose of stopping hemorrhage, as is recorded in the earliest works of medicine, as well as by travelers, and as recited in most books on domestic medication. Their use was known to the American Indians, as well as to aborigines generally. Cobweb was mentioned by Dioscorides (Aldine Edition, 1518, p. 50) as a remedial agent, as shown by the following passage, translated by Miss Margaret Stewart, M. A.: "The Spider, which some call holcus or lycos, that is, robber, or wolf, when made into a plaster and spread upon a small linen cloth and placed upon the forehead or temples, thoroughly cures tertian agues. Its web checks the flowing of blood, and heals the inflammation arising from old ulcers, which have attacked a large area of the skin. There is also another species of spider which spins a white, slender, and abundant web. This, folded in a leather pouch, and suspended from the shoulder, is said to cure quartan agues. A decoction or infusion with roses relieves pain in the ear." ?Dioscorides, II: 68. Came then the extravagances of "authoritative" Medieval medicine, as shown in the following: "The fly-catching spider, wrapt in a linen cloth, and hanged on the left arm, is good to drove away a Quotidian, saith Trallianus (sixth century, A. D.). But better if any of them be boiled with oil of bay to the consistence of a liniment; if you anoint the arteries of the wrists, the arms and temples before the fit, the fever abates and seldom comes again. Ko- ronides or Koranus. A spider bruised with a plaister and spread on a cloth and applied to the temples, cures a tertian. Dioscorides (first or second centur...