Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica and therapeutics : abridged and adapted for the use of medicine and pharmaceutical practitioners and students and comprising all of the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, with such others as are frequently ordered in prescriptions or required by the physician / edited by Robert Bently and Theophilus Redwood.

  • Jonathan Pereira
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica and therapeutics : abridged and adapted for the use of medicine and pharmaceutical practitioners and students and comprising all of the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, with such others as are frequently ordered in prescriptions or required by the physician / edited by Robert Bently and Theophilus Redwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1067/1132 (page 1035)
    HYMENOPTEKA, Linn. The Bee Order. APIS MELLIFICA, Linn. The Hive Bee, or Honey Bee. Zoological Character.—Body brownish-black, covered with hairs. Ahdomen of the same colour, with a transverse greyish band. An- tenna} filiform, and shorter than the combined length of the head and the thorax. Labium filiform, composing, with the jaws, a kind of proboscis, geniculate, and bent downwards. First joint of the posterior tarsi large, compressed; no spines at the extremity of the last two legs. Upper vnngs with one radial and three cubital cells. Habitat.—Old continent. In a state of nature they reside in hollow trees ; but they are almost universally domesticated, and are preserved in hives. Official Products.—Bees furnish two official products, viz. honey and wax. Of the former, common honey, and clarified honey are official; of the latter, both yellow wax and white wax are also official. [§ Mel. Honey. A saccharine secretion deposited in the honeycomb, by Apis melli- fica, Linn., the hive bee.] Production.—Honey is secreted by flowers, and is collected by the working or neuter bees, who take it by suction or lapping, and pass it into the dilatation of the oesophagus, denominated the crop, suclcing- stomach, or honey-bag; beyond which, we presume, the honey does not pass, as it has never been found in the true stomach. While retained in the honey-bag it receives the addition of an acid which possesses all the reactions of formic acid. On arriving at the hive, the honey is disgorged by a kind of inverted peristaltic motion into the comb, where it remains till the stock is taken. It is used by the animal as food. General Characters.—When freshly collected, honey is a viscid semi-translucent liquid, of a yellowish colour, with a peculiar heavy odonr, and a very sweet taste. Its specific gravity, according to Stoddart, is 1*423. It does not become blue with the solution of iodine. By keeping, it becomes thicker, somewhat opaque, and of a brownish-yellow colour. Honey varies in its colour, taste, and odour, according to the age of the bees and the nature of the flowers on which they have fed. A hive which has never swarmed is con- sidered to yield the best, which is therefore called virgin honey. The flavour of Narbonne honey, which is so much admired, is said to arise from the' labiate flowers on which the animals feed. To imitate this a sprig of rosemary is sometimes added to the honey obtained from other places.