Bees and Honey in Medicine - The Opinion of Another Physician, article in the American Bee Journal 1922
By Doctor Bob
The Promised Land of Israel is described as the “Land of Milk and Honey.” Modern medical research has found that milk is almost a perfect food and that honey is both food and medicine.
Now the question arises, what is meant by medicine? The Century dictionary tells us: “A substance used as a remedy for disease, a substance having, or supposed to have, curative properties." The Medical Dictionary tells us: “The art of healing diseases." Not many years ago the average doctor understood by medicines, pills or nasty concoctions. That was why he laid his profession bare to such unmerciful criticism by various faddists, physical culturists and others. And their criticism, although not always wise or prudent, did much to bring about a very useful reform. These days the average physician understands the proper definition of medicine. Some physical culturists and other healers still direct their shafts at the regular physician.
This article is not intended as a defense of the physician, he needs no defense, if he is a real modern physician, he uses whatever means are expedient to acomplish a cure, be it physical culture, osteopathy or what not.
It has been quite the proper form of recent years in certain magazines to condemn drugs, setting forth the virtues of proper diet and exercise. Of course, an excess of pills and decoctions, many of which contained deleterious substances, sold and prescribed promiscuously, brought about a reaction. But let us see what a “drug” really is.
The Century Dictionary tells us a "drug" is any vegetable, animal or mineral matter that is used in medicine. So there you are again.
It is plain that most any food may be a drug and many drugs a food. Long articles appear from time to time warning us against drugs, especially laxatives. These articles tell us what to eat to remedy a condition ——yet if we eat to remedy a condition we are taking a drug—a medicine. Lots of our medicines, too, are just extracts of foods. So you see it is very hard to draw a line between food and drugs. Some well-meaning friend may warn you against some extract or a syrup of the very food he would give you as a remedy!
All this dissertation brings us back to the beginning in which we find our first parents in the Garden of Eden given explicit instructions as to their eating.
As it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end; life and death are very largely dependent on what we have to put into our stomachs.
Various substances, call them food or medicine as you please, have power to affect the human system in various ways. Probably the Lord,
when He sees proper to give us back the perfection our first parents lost, will teach us enough about eating to enable us to maintain life indefinitely. It seems the Israelites considered locusts a valuable food. Galen and Pliny used the bee in medicine. Hollerius and Alexander Bened used honey bees in honey as both an external application and internal remedy. Later Mouffet in 1658 speaks of their use in his day. In 1682 Salmon tells us: “The whole bee given inwardly provokes urine, opens stoppages of the reins and breaks the stone; they are good against cancers, schirrous tumors, King’s evil, dropsies, dimness of vision, etc.”
Dale’s Pharmocopae, 1739, makes mention of Apis as used for baldness and as a diuretic.
The Complete English Dispensatory, London, 1749, speaks of prepared bees.
Lewis Materia Medica, 1768, gives Apis, or bees, short notice.
Others spoke of bees as being active medicinally, but the bee was not considered as an important medicine again until the 19th century, when Dr. Scudder, an eclectic, speaks favorably of them as a remedy for women.
The Medical Summary, A. D., 1908, contains an article by Dr. F. P. Davis, “Study of Apis," which is both comprehensive and to the point. Among other statements Dr. Davis said: "If there is any remedy that will give prompt and expected results, when properly exhibited, it is Apis.”
It is interesting to note that when the sting is removed from the bee it continues to operate in a pump-like manner as long as it is in contact with the flesh, for quite some time.
The composition of the poison of the honeybee is not known to chemistry with any degree of accuracy. It is, of course, probably a vegetable poison.
Apis has a depressing influence on the heart and experimentally causes paralysis in birds. Properly used by physicians, it is useful in conditions of dropsy, fever, scarlatina and various other conditions known to physicians. Many have heard of the use of the bee sting to cure rheumatism, in which instance the following historic incident is interesting as related to the Eclectic Medical Society of Kansas City in 1904, by Dr. Packer.
“A Mr. Gardner, of this city, had been laid up with articular rheumatism for four years, and had been unable to walk any distance, and that only slowly and with a pair of crutches.
“In August, 1903, he was hobbling around the yard and upset a bee hive. The bees stung him by the hundreds and almost killed him. But when he recovered from the bee stings his rheumatism was gone, nor did it ever return."
Bee stings are generally quite painful, occasionally serious, and rarely fatal. Among the easily obtainable remedies for bee stings are ammonia water and bruised stramonium leaves, commonly known as jimson weed.
It is not the purpose of this article to exploit remedies, and some of the regular profession do not place any confidence in the bee as a remedy. It is easier to deny than to affirm. Time will decide all things. In the meantime most laymen will do well to suspend judgment in matters outside their special domain of experience.
By Doctor Bob
The Promised Land of Israel is described as the “Land of Milk and Honey.” Modern medical research has found that milk is almost a perfect food and that honey is both food and medicine.
Now the question arises, what is meant by medicine? The Century dictionary tells us: “A substance used as a remedy for disease, a substance having, or supposed to have, curative properties." The Medical Dictionary tells us: “The art of healing diseases." Not many years ago the average doctor understood by medicines, pills or nasty concoctions. That was why he laid his profession bare to such unmerciful criticism by various faddists, physical culturists and others. And their criticism, although not always wise or prudent, did much to bring about a very useful reform. These days the average physician understands the proper definition of medicine. Some physical culturists and other healers still direct their shafts at the regular physician.
This article is not intended as a defense of the physician, he needs no defense, if he is a real modern physician, he uses whatever means are expedient to acomplish a cure, be it physical culture, osteopathy or what not.
It has been quite the proper form of recent years in certain magazines to condemn drugs, setting forth the virtues of proper diet and exercise. Of course, an excess of pills and decoctions, many of which contained deleterious substances, sold and prescribed promiscuously, brought about a reaction. But let us see what a “drug” really is.
The Century Dictionary tells us a "drug" is any vegetable, animal or mineral matter that is used in medicine. So there you are again.
It is plain that most any food may be a drug and many drugs a food. Long articles appear from time to time warning us against drugs, especially laxatives. These articles tell us what to eat to remedy a condition ——yet if we eat to remedy a condition we are taking a drug—a medicine. Lots of our medicines, too, are just extracts of foods. So you see it is very hard to draw a line between food and drugs. Some well-meaning friend may warn you against some extract or a syrup of the very food he would give you as a remedy!
All this dissertation brings us back to the beginning in which we find our first parents in the Garden of Eden given explicit instructions as to their eating.
As it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end; life and death are very largely dependent on what we have to put into our stomachs.
Various substances, call them food or medicine as you please, have power to affect the human system in various ways. Probably the Lord,
when He sees proper to give us back the perfection our first parents lost, will teach us enough about eating to enable us to maintain life indefinitely. It seems the Israelites considered locusts a valuable food. Galen and Pliny used the bee in medicine. Hollerius and Alexander Bened used honey bees in honey as both an external application and internal remedy. Later Mouffet in 1658 speaks of their use in his day. In 1682 Salmon tells us: “The whole bee given inwardly provokes urine, opens stoppages of the reins and breaks the stone; they are good against cancers, schirrous tumors, King’s evil, dropsies, dimness of vision, etc.”
Dale’s Pharmocopae, 1739, makes mention of Apis as used for baldness and as a diuretic.
The Complete English Dispensatory, London, 1749, speaks of prepared bees.
Lewis Materia Medica, 1768, gives Apis, or bees, short notice.
Others spoke of bees as being active medicinally, but the bee was not considered as an important medicine again until the 19th century, when Dr. Scudder, an eclectic, speaks favorably of them as a remedy for women.
The Medical Summary, A. D., 1908, contains an article by Dr. F. P. Davis, “Study of Apis," which is both comprehensive and to the point. Among other statements Dr. Davis said: "If there is any remedy that will give prompt and expected results, when properly exhibited, it is Apis.”
It is interesting to note that when the sting is removed from the bee it continues to operate in a pump-like manner as long as it is in contact with the flesh, for quite some time.
The composition of the poison of the honeybee is not known to chemistry with any degree of accuracy. It is, of course, probably a vegetable poison.
Apis has a depressing influence on the heart and experimentally causes paralysis in birds. Properly used by physicians, it is useful in conditions of dropsy, fever, scarlatina and various other conditions known to physicians. Many have heard of the use of the bee sting to cure rheumatism, in which instance the following historic incident is interesting as related to the Eclectic Medical Society of Kansas City in 1904, by Dr. Packer.
“A Mr. Gardner, of this city, had been laid up with articular rheumatism for four years, and had been unable to walk any distance, and that only slowly and with a pair of crutches.
“In August, 1903, he was hobbling around the yard and upset a bee hive. The bees stung him by the hundreds and almost killed him. But when he recovered from the bee stings his rheumatism was gone, nor did it ever return."
Bee stings are generally quite painful, occasionally serious, and rarely fatal. Among the easily obtainable remedies for bee stings are ammonia water and bruised stramonium leaves, commonly known as jimson weed.
It is not the purpose of this article to exploit remedies, and some of the regular profession do not place any confidence in the bee as a remedy. It is easier to deny than to affirm. Time will decide all things. In the meantime most laymen will do well to suspend judgment in matters outside their special domain of experience.
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