Читать книгу Social Life in the Insect World - Fabre Jean-Henri - Страница 9

Are you afflicted with any kidney trouble, or are you swollen with dropsy, or have you need of some powerful diuretic? The village pharmacopœia is unanimous in recommending the Cigale as a sovereign remedy. The insects in the adult form are collected in summer. They are strung into necklaces which are dried in the sun and carefully preserved in some cupboard or drawer. A good housewife would consider it imprudent to allow July to pass without threading a few of these insects.

Do you suffer from any nephritic irritation or from stricture? Drink an infusion of Cigales. Nothing, they say, is more effectual. I must take this opportunity of thanking the good soul who once upon a time, so I was afterwards informed, made me drink such a concoction unawares for the cure of some such trouble; but I still remain incredulous. I have been greatly struck by the fact that the ancient physician of Anazarbus used to recommend the same remedy. Dioscorides tells us: Cicadæ, quae inassatae manduntur, vesicae doloribus prosunt. Since the distant days of this patriarch of materia medica the Provençal peasant has retained his faith in the remedy revealed to him by the Greeks, who came from Phocæa with the olive, the fig, and the vine. Only one thing is changed: Dioscorides advises us to eat the Cigales roasted, but now they are boiled, and the decoction is administered as medicine. The explanation which is given of the diuretic properties of the insect is a marvel of ingenuousness. The Cigale, as every one knows who has tried to catch it, throws a jet of liquid excrement in one's face as it flies away. It therefore endows us with its faculties of evacuation. Thus Dioscorides and his contemporaries must have reasoned; so reasons the peasant of Provence to-day.

What would you say, worthy neighbours, if you knew of the virtues of the larva, which is able to mix sufficient mortar with its urine to build a meteorological station and a shaft connecting with the outer world? Your powers should equal those of Rabelais' Gargantua, who, seated upon the towers of Notre Dame, drowned so many thousands of the inquisitive Parisians.