exhibit unto their patients, what they list, be it never so homely, so it goe under the name of a medicine.”[207] The following extraordinary case of insects introduced into the human stomach, which is of rare occurrence, has been completely authenticated, both by medical men and competent naturalists. It was first published by Dr. Pickells, of Cork, in the Dublin Transactions.[208] Mary Riordan, aged 28, had been much affected by the death of her mother, and at one of her many visits to the grave seems to have partially lost her senses, having been found lying there on the morning of a winter’s day, and having been exposed to heavy rain during the night. It appears that when she was about fifteen, two popular Catholic priests had died, and she was told by some old woman, that if she would drink daily, for a certain time, a quantity of water, mixed with clay taken from their graves, she would be forever secure from disease and sin. So following this absurd and disgusting prescription, she took from time to time large quantities of the draught; and, some time afterward, being affected with a burning pain in the stomach (_cardialgia_), she began to eat large pieces of chalk, which she sometimes also mixed with water and drank. In all these draughts, it is most probable, she swallowed the eggs of the enormous progenies of apterous, dipterous, and coleopterous insects, which she for several years continued to throw up alive and moving. Dr. Pickells asserts that altogether he himself saw nearly 2000 of these larvæ, and that there were many he did not see, for, to avoid publicity, she herself destroyed a great number, and many, too, escaped immediately by running into holes in the floor. Of this incredible number, the greatest proportion were larvæ of the Church-yard beetle, _Blaps mortisaga_, and of a dipterous insect, an _Ascarides_; and two were specimens of the Meal-worm--the larvæ of the Darkling--_Tenebrio molitor_. It may be interesting to learn that, by means of turpentine in large doses, this unfortunate woman was at length entirely rid of her pests.[209] Curculionidæ--Weevils.