case is nearly hopeless. The Queen of Charles II was one of the instances.
Oil of Puppies was made by cutting up two newly born ones and boiling them in a varnished pot for twelve hours with one pound of live earthworms. Very good for strengthening the nerves, for sciatica, and for paralysis, says Lemery. The gall of a black puppy, says Schroder, cures epilepsy to a wonder. It had to be prepared with vinegar. Ambrose Paré says he got a recipe from a famous surgeon at Turin for a balm with which he treated gun-shot wounds with extraordinary success. It was to boil young whelps just born with earthworms, Venice turpentine, and oil of lilies.
Fox lungs were prepared for medicines by first separating them from the blood-vessels, then washing them in white wine in which hyssop and scabious had been boiled. After drying gently the lungs were kept wrapt up in hyssop, wormwood, or horehound.
Swallows, hedgehogs, toads, and frogs were prepared by cutting their throats and leaving the blood to dry on them. They were then baked in a close vessel well covered.
Snails were made into a cough syrup by hanging them in a bag with sugar and catching the droppings.
Earthworms had a great reputation for the relief of lung complaints. They were also administered with great confidence, dried and powdered, to children to drive away internal worms. Woodlice, bruised and digested in Rhine wine, made the Vinum Millepedarum given in dropsy and jaundice. Lice and bugs were also honoured remedies. The latter digested in wine or vinegar had the singular power of expelling leeches which might have been accidentally swallowed.
