More Anecdotes

The following has been extracted from Conchologists' Newsletter No. 34, p.159

THE MEDICINAL SNAIL

Considerable healing powers have been attributed to the common garden snail, Helix aspersa L. through the ages. Its use in medicine was first recorded by Pliny, who stated that some snails beaten in warm water cured coughs, and that sore throats should be anointed with juice drawn from living snails. The mucilaginous broth obtained from snails probably is soothing to a dry, sore throat, and it is this which may explain the almost universal and remarkably long-lived belief that snails in various forms are good for pulmonary troubles. Until quite recently the glass blowers of Newcastle held an annual feast of snails to “strengthen their lungs” for the coming year.

In 1728 Dr. J. Quincy pronounced about snails: “They abound with a slimy juice; and are experienced very good in weaknesses and consumption, especially for children and tender constitutions. To make a syrup of snails, take Garden snails, early in the morning while the dew is upon them, one pound; take off their shells; slit them; and with half a pound of sugar, put them in a bag; hang them in a cellar and the syrup will melt and drop through; which keep for use. It possesses in the best manner all the virtues of snails.”

That the administration of snail potions was not always welcomed by the patient is implied in these instructions given by Mrs. Delaney in 1758: “Two or three snails should be boiled in the barley water which Mary takes, who coughs at night: she must know nothing of it, they give no manner of taste. Six or eight boiled in water and strained off, and put in a bottle would be a good way of adding a spoonful of the same to every liquid she takes; this must be fresh done every two or three days, otherwise they grow thick.”

Almost a century later, in 1854, M. de la Marr, of Paris, was expounding the virtues of Helicin, the glutinous extract obtained from the snail and “long given in broth for pulmonary phthisis”, as a domestic remedy.

In France, snails were dried and concocted into cough lozenges. For consumptive diseases of the lungs, the snails were not only eaten but also crushed and rubbed on the back and chest, the snail juice being extolled by some as superior to cod liver oil.

Although snails have always been primarily considered a specific against pulmonary complaints, they have also tended to be treated as a veritable panacea. The London Dispensatory (1696) states “the flesh (of snails) cools, thickens, consolidates, is pectoral, strengthens the nerves, cures coughs, asthmas, spitting of blood and consumptions; (used) outwardly they ripen tumours, imposthumes and carbuncles.” The Rich Storehouse of Medicine (1650) directs that “for any manner of boil, fellin or uncome, take twenty garden snales and beat them, shells and all, in a mortar until you perceive them to be come to a salve, then spread a little thereof upon a linen cloth and lay it on the place grieved .... and it will kill the fellin”. This source further recommends “a very sovereign remedy for the gout, take a good quantity of snails and pick them forth of the shells and stamp them in the mortar: then put them in a pretty quantity of salt, salet oyl, and sope, and stamp them all well together in the mortar with the snails; then take the same and make a plaister thereof, and apply the same to the place grieved, and so let it ly for the space of three days and this will destroy the gout.”

A mixture of pounded snails and crushed parsley was used as a poultice to cure “scrofulous swellings”. Boyle gives “a tryed medicine for a whitloe” in his Collection of Medicines (1695): “Take House snaills and beat them, shells and all, in a stone or wooden mortar so long till they be reduced to the consistence of a cataplasm, which apply some what warm to the part affected, and keep it on for sixteen or twenty four hours, renewing it then if need be.” Local application of snails was also recommended to cure obstinate eczema of the skin.

The powdered shells also, according to an old medicinal writer, are “Lithontriptrick and good for the gravel, they cure clefts or chops in the hands, lips or fundament. Aqua Cochlearium, distilled from the snails in May and October being excellent against consumption and a cosmetick; it also takes away corns and warts.”

That snail remedies were taken seriously in bygone days is evidenced by the entry in the London Gazette of March 23rd. 1739 which tells that Mrs. Joanna Stevens received from the Government then in power £5,000 for revealing the secret of her famous cure against “stones”. The cure consisted chiefly of snails, egg-shells, soap, honey and herbs.

There are many even more esoteric medicinal uses of garden snails to be found in the records, particularly in rural areas. Thus in South Hampshire snails were made into a poultice with soaked bread crusts and applied “to help weak eyes”. Gloucestershire yields two typical recipes: to cure earache a snail was pricked and the froth which exudes is dropped into the ear as it falls: and also a sufferer from “ague” in this county would often wear a live garden snail in a bag around the neck for nine days. The bag would then be opened and the snail thrown on the fire when it would “shake like to ague”, thus curing the patient. Such was the faith in the healing power of snails that one country remedy for warts did not even require contact with the beast. The cure was reputedly effected merely by “pricking a live snail’s shell as many times as one had warts in number” and then impaling the snail upon a blackthorn in the hedgerow. As the snail died and withered the warts were supposed to wane and disappear.

Charles Pettitt