COMMENTARY. Dioscorides and Galen direct the species which is found among corn to be used medicinally. As the _Meloe vesicatorius_ is commonly found upon trees, such as the fraxinus, sambuchus, and ligustrum, it is evidently different from the ancient cantharis, and yet their effects upon the human frame would appear to have been very much alike. It appears to be now agreed upon by all competent judges that the medicinal cantharis of the ancients is the _Mylabris Cichorii_ or _M. Füsselini_, which is still used for forming blistering plasters by the profession in Constantinople and by the native practitioners in Hindostan. See Ainslie (Mat. Ind., i, 622), Royle (Antiq. of Hindoo Med.), and Pereira (1834.) The _Buprestis_, however, which also is included by Dioscorides in his Materia Medica, can have been no other than the _Meloe vesicatorius_. See Book V of this work. It is the tellini fly of the Hindoos. See Ainslie (Mat. Ind. ii, 417.) The ancients prepared the cantharides for medicinal use in the same manner as the Spanish fly is now prepared, namely, by killing them with the fumes of vinegar. Dioscorides says cantharides are septic, ulcerative, and calefacient, and hence are mixed up with the medicines that cure cancerous diseases, leprosy, and lichen agrius; they are also emmenagogue when applied in a pessary; and some, he adds, relate that cantharides are beneficial in dropsies, by acting as diuretics. Their wings and feet are further said to be antidotal, that is to say, we suppose, to counteract the operation of the body of the insect. (ii, 65, 66.) Galen treats of the cantharis and buprestis in very nearly the same terms as Dioscorides. Instead of using only the wings and feet, as mentioned by Dioscorides, he says that he used the whole insect. (De Simpl. xi.) In moderate doses he held it to be a safe diuretic. (ii, 463, ed. Basil.) Aëtius and Oribasius give nearly the same account of the cantharis as Galen. Cantharides are frequently mentioned in the Hippocratic treatises (De Nat. Mulier. 565, ed. Föes; De Intern. Affect. 552), and in the works of Celsus. (199, ed. Milligan.) Aretæus is the first author, as far as we know, who notices the external use of cantharides as a rubefacient. (De Curat. Morb. Chron. i, 4.) The Arabians, in treating of cantharides, borrow nearly all the information they give from Dioscorides and Galen. See Serapion (c. 441), Avicenna (ii, 2, 201), Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 162.) Rhases on his own authority, affirms, that administered in small doses cantharides cleanse the kidneys. We are rather surprised to find that the _Mylabris_ does not occur in the modern Greek Pharmacopœia. Κάνναβις, Cannabis, _Hemp_; the fruit is carminative and desiccative, so as to dry up even the semen. The juice of it when green is useful for pains of the ears and obstructions of them. * * * * *