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.
