apparently cantharidin is most abundant in the eggs and generative organs.
Cantharidin constitutes from 12 to 1% of cantharides. It has the formula C10H14O4, and on hydrolysis is converted into cantharinic acid, C10H14O5. It crystallizes in colourless plates and is readily soluble in alcohol, ether, &c., but not in water. The British Pharmacopeia contains a large number of preparations of cantharides, but the only one needing special mention is the tincture, which is meant for internal administration; the small dose is noteworthy, five minims being probably the maximum for safety.
The external action of cantharides or cantharidin is extremely characteristic. When it is applied to the skin there are no obvious consequences for some hours. Thereafter the part becomes warm and painful, owing to marked local vascular dilatation. This is the typical rubefacient action. Soon afterwards there is an accumulation under the epidermis of a serum derived from the dilated blood-vessels. The numerous small blisters or vesicles thus derived coalesce, forming a large sac full of “blister-fluid.” The drug is described as a counter-irritant, though the explanation of this action is very doubtful. Apparently there is an influence on the afferent nerves of the part which causes a reflex contraction—some authors say dilatation—of the vessels in the internal organs that are under the control of the same segment of the nervous system as that supplying the area of skin from which the exciting impulse comes. When applied in this fashion a certain quantity of the cantharides is absorbed.
Taken internally in any but minute doses, the drug causes the most severe gastro-intestinal irritation, the vomited and evacuated matters containing blood, and the patient suffering agonizing pain and extreme depression. The further characteristic symptoms are displayed in the genito-urinary tract. The drug circulates in the blood in the form of an albuminate and is slowly excreted by the kidneys. The effect of large doses is to cause great pain in the renal region and urgent wish to micturate. The urine is nevertheless small in amount and contains albumen and blood owing to the local inflammation produced in the kidney by the passage of the poison through that organ. The drug often has a marked aphrodisiac action, producing priapism, or in the female sex the onset of the catamenia or abortion.
Cantharides is used externally for its counter-irritant action. There are certain definite contra-indications to its use. It must not be employed in cases of renal disease, owing to the risks attendant upon absorption. It must always be employed with caution in the case of elderly persons and children; and it must not be applied to a paralysed limb (in which the power of healing is deficient), nor to parts upon which the patient lies, as otherwise a bed-sore is likely to follow its use. The drug is administered internally in certain cases of impotence and occasionally in other conditions. Its criminal employment is usually intended to heighten sexual desire, and has frequently led to death.
The toxic symptoms have already been detailed, the patient usually dying from arrest of the renal functions. The treatment is far from satisfactory, and consists in keeping up the strength and diluting the poison in the blood and in the urine by the administration of bland fluids, such as soda-water, milk and plain water, in quantities as large as possible. External warmth should also be applied to the regions specially affected by the drug.
A very large number of other insects belonging to the same family possess blistering properties, owing to their containing cantharidin. Of these the most remarkable is the Telini “fly” of India (Mylabris cichorii), the range of which extends from Italy and Greece through Egypt and central Asia as far as China. It is very rich in cantharidin, yielding fully twice as much as ordinary cantharides. Several green-coloured beetles are, on account of their colour, used as adulterants to cantharides, but they are very easily detected by examination with the eye, or, if powdered, with the microscope.
CANTICLES. The Old Testament book of Canticles, or the Song of Solomon, is called in Hebrew The Song of Songs (that is, the choicest of songs), or, according to the full title which stands as the first verse of the book, The choicest of the songs of Solomon. In the Western versions the book holds the third place among the so-called Solomonic writings, following Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In Hebrew Bibles it stands among the Megilloth, the five books of the Hagiographa which have a prominent place in the Synagogue service. In printed Bibles and in German MSS. it is the first of these because it is read at the Passover, which is the first great feast of the sacred year of the Jews.
No part of the Bible has called forth a greater diversity of opinions than the Song of Solomon, and this for two reasons. In the first place, the book holds so unique a position in the Old Testament, that the general analogy of Hebrew literature is a very inadequate key to the verbal difficulties, the artistic structure, and the general conception and purpose of the poem. In point of language the departures from ordinary Hebrew are almost always in the direction of Aramaic. Many forms unique in Biblical Hebrew are at once explained by the Aramaic dialects, but not a few are still obscure. The philological difficulties of the book are, however, less fundamental than those which lie in the unique character of the Song of Solomon in point of artistic form, and in the whole atmosphere of thought and feeling in which it moves. Even in these respects it is not absolutely isolated. Parallels to the peculiar imagery may be found in the book of Hosea, in Ezekiel xvi. and xxiii. and above all in the 45th Psalm; but such links of union to the general mass of the Old Testament literature are too slight to be of material assistance in the solution of the literary problem of the book. Here, again, as in the lexical difficulties already referred to, we are tempted or compelled to argue from the distant and insecure analogy of other Eastern literatures, or are thrown back upon traditions of uncertain origin and ambiguous authority.
The power of tradition has been the second great source of confusion of opinion about the Song of Solomon. To tradition we owe the title, which apparently indicates Solomon as the author and not merely as the subject of the book. The authority of titles in the Old Testament is often questionable, and in the present case it is certain on linguistic grounds that the title is not from the hand that wrote the poem; while to admit that it gives a correct account of the authorship is to cut away at one stroke all the most certain threads of connexion between the book and our historical knowledge of the Old Testament people and literature.
To tradition, again, we owe the prejudice in favour of an allegorical interpretation, that is, of the view that from verse to verse the Song sets forth the history of a spiritual and not merely of an earthly love. To apply such an exegesis to Canticles is to violate one of the first principles of reasonable interpretation. True allegories are never without internal marks of their allegorical design. The language of symbol is not so perfect that a long chain of spiritual ideas can be developed without the use of a single spiritual word or phrase; and even were this possible it would be false art in the allegorist to hide away his sacred thoughts behind a screen of sensuous and erotic imagery, so complete and beautiful in itself as to give no suggestion that it is only the vehicle of a deeper sense. Apart from tradition, no one, in the present state of exegesis, would dream of allegorizing poetry which in its natural sense is so full of purpose and meaning, so apt in sentiment, and so perfect in imagery as the lyrics of Canticles. We are not at liberty to seek for allegory except where the natural sense is incomplete. This is not the case in the Song of Solomon. On the contrary, every form of the allegorical interpretation which has been devised carries its own condemnation in the fact that it takes away from the artistic unity of the poem and breaks natural sequences of thought.[1] The allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon bad its rise in the very same conditions which forced a deeper
- ↑ An argument for the allegorical interpretation has been often drawn from Mahommedan mysticism—from the poems of Hafiz, and the songs still sung by dervishes. See Jones, Poëseos Asiaticae Com. pt. in. cap. 9; Rosenmüller’s remarks on Lowth’s Praelectio, xxxi., and Lane’s Modern Egyptians, ch. xxiv. But there is no true analogy between the Old Testament and the pantheistic mysticism of Islam, and there is every reason to believe that, where the allegory takes a form really analogous to Canticles, the original sense of these songs was purely erotic.
