“That,” said he, “is Lord H—, and he has been a martyr to rheumatism these ten years back. I could have cured him long ago if he had only come to me before, as I have done many a poor soul in these parts; but he, and those like him, are the last to hear of the physician in the hive. He will begin to get better now, as you will see. He is to be brought here every fortnight; but in a month or two he will not need the chair. And before the winter is out he will walk again as well as the best of us.”
We went slowly back through the bee-farm. The working-song of the bees seemed as loud as ever in the keen October sunshine. But the steady deep note of summer was gone; and the peculiar bee-voice of autumn—shrill, anxious, almost vindictive—rang out on every side.
“Of course,” continued the bee-master, “there is nothing new in this treatment of rheumatism by bee-stings. It is literally as old as the hills. Every bee-keeper for the last two thousand years has known of it. But it is as much as a preventive as a cure that the acid in a bee’s sting is valuable. The rarest thing in the world is to find a bee-keeper suffering from rheumatism. And if every one kept bees, and got stung occasionally, the doctors would soon have one ailment the less to trouble about.”
“But,” he went on, “there is something much pleasanter and more valuable to humanity, ill or well, to be got from the hives. And that is the honey itself. Honey is good for old and young. If mothers were wise they would never give their children any other sweet food. Pure ripe honey is sugar with the most difficult and most important part of digestion already accomplished by the bees. Moreover, it is a safe and very gentle laxative. And probably, before each comb-cell is sealed up, the bee injects a drop of acid from her sting. Anyway, honey has a distinct aseptic property. That is why it is so good for sore throats or chafed skins.”
We had got back to the extracting house, where the great caldron of metheglin was still bubbling over the fire. The old bee-keeper relieved himself of his stiff Sunday coat, donned his white linen overalls, and fell to skimming the pot.
“There is another use,” said he, after a ruminative pause, “to which honey might be put, if only doctors could be induced to seek curative power in ancient homely things, as they do with the latest new poisons from Germany. That is in the treatment of obesity. Fat people, who are ordered to give up sugar, ought to use honey instead. In my time I have persuaded many a one to try it, and the result has always been the same—a steady reduction in weight, and better health all round. Then, again, dyspeptic folk would find most of their troubles vanish if they substituted the already half-digested honey wherever ordinary sugar forms part of their diet. And did you ever try honey to sweeten tea or coffee? Of course, it must be pure, and without any strongly-marked flavour; but no one would ever return to sugar if once good honey had been tried in this way, or in any kind of cookery where sugar is used.”