We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that the large Ant of the West Indies is “so poysonfull that herewith the Indians infect their arrowes so remedilesse, that not foure of an hundred which are wounded escape.”[561] The medicinal virtues of the Ant are as follows: “Ants, _Formica minor_ of Schroder, heat and dry, and incite to venery; their acid smell mightily refreshes the vital spirits. They are said to cure the Flora, Lepra, and Lentigo. The eggs (pupæ) are effectual against deafness, and correct the hairiness of the cheeks of children being rubbed thereon.” The Horse-ant, _Formica major_, Schrod., “provokes to venery, and the oil thereof, by infusion, is good for the gout and palsy.”[562] Sloane tells us the Spaniards in the West Indies have a very highly valued medicated earth called “Makimaki,” which he thinks is made of the nests of Ants.[563] There is a species of Ant in Cayenne, _Formica bispinosa_, which collects from the bombax and silk-cotton trees a sort of lint which the natives value much as a styptic in cases of hemorrhage.[564] The magicians, as mentioned by Pliny, recommended that the parings of all the finger-nails should be thrown at the entrance of Ant-holes, and the first Ant to be taken which should attempt to draw one into the hole; for if this, they asserted, be attached to the neck of a patient, he will experience a speedy cure.[565] The two following remarkable cures effected by Ants of themselves are worthy of being noticed: Schuman, a missionary among the negroes of Surinam, relates in one of his letters, that after a most dangerous attack of the acclimating fever, his body was covered with boils and painful sores. He lay in his cot as helpless as a child, and had no one to administer any relief or food but a poor old negro woman, who sometimes was obliged to follow the rest to the plantations in the woods. One morning while she was absent, after spending a most restless and painful night, he observed at sunrise an immense host of Ants entering through the roof, and spread themselves over the inside of his chamber; and expecting little else than that they would make a meal of him, he commended his soul to God, and hoped thus to be released from all suffering. They presently covered his bed, and entering his sores caused him the most tormenting pain. However, they soon quitted him, and continued their march, and from that time he gradually recovered his health.[566]