Concerning the medicinal virtues of Bees, Dr. James says: “Their salts are very volatile, and highly exalted; for this reason, when dry’d, powder’d, and taken internally, they are diuretic and diaphoretic. If this powder is mixed in unguents, with which the head is anointed, it is said to cure the Alopecia, and to contribute to the growth of hair upon bald places.”[713] Another, an old writer, says: “If Bees, when dead, are dried to powder, and given to either man or beast, this medicine will often give immediate ease in the most excruciating pain, and remove a stoppage in the body when all other means have failed.” A tea made by pouring boiling water upon Bees has recently been prescribed, by high medical authority, for violent strangury; while the poison of the Bee, under the name of _apis_, is a great homœopathic remedy.[714] Concerning wax, Dr. James says: “All wax is heating, mollifying, and moderately incarning. It is mixed in sorbile liquors as a remedy for dysentery; and ten bits, of the size of a grain of millet, swallowed, prevent the curdling of milk in the breast of nurses.”[715] [If we might credit the history of former times, says Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, sub. _Walx_, iv. 642-3, there must have been a considerable demand for this article (wax) for the purpose of witchcraft. It was generally found necessary, it would seem, as the medium of inflicting pain on the bodies of men. “To some others at these times he teacheth, how to make _pictures of waxe_ or clay, that by the wasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continuall sickenesse.” K. James’s Dæmonologie, B. II. c. 5. In order to cause acute pain in the patient, pins, we are told, were stuck in that part of the body of the image, in which they wished the person to suffer. The same plan was adopted for inspiring another with the ardor of love. Then mould her form of fairest _wax_, With adder’s eyes and feet of horn; Place this small scroll within its breast, Which I, your friend, have hither borne. Then make a blaze of alder wood, Before your fire make this to stand; And the last night of every moon The bonny May’s at your command. _Hogg’s Mountain Bard_, p. 35. Then it follows: With fire and steel to urge her weel, See that you neither stint nor spare; For if the cock be heard to crow, The charm will vanish into air. The wounds given to the image were supposed to be productive of similar _stounds_ of love in the tender heart of the maiden whom it represented. A female form, of melting _wax_, Mess John surveyed with steady eye, Which ever an anon he _pierced_, And forced the lady loud to cry.--P. 84.