Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1883 — Ants as Medicine. [ARTICLE]

Ants as Medicine.

A curious use is made of ants by the Indians in Brazil, who employ them to dress wounds, causing them to bite the edges together, and then cutting off the head; the jaws will not relax, but hold the wound together till healed. They were formerly used as a cruel instrument of torture by South African tribes, who tied their victim to a tree, smeared his body with grease, and placed an ants’ nest at his feat. The Arabs, according to M. Mo.gr idge, placed an ant in the hand of a newborn child, that the virtues of the insect may pass into the infant. Naturalists also sometimes makes use of these industrious scavangers. When they require a perfect specimen of the smaller vertebrates, they place the body in a box, bore a few holes in it, and bury it near an ants’ nest; in a few days ,a perfect and most delicately whitened skeleton will be found in the box. — Bow Bells.