Ants: The Strongmen of Medicine
A Tiny Beast With A Big Sting
I have a healthy respect (read: fear) for ants.
- They can lift 5x their body weight
- You drop something edible in your yard and BOOM, they’re on it
- Their sting will ruin your day
Yep, ants sting you.
They also bite you, but the bite is just to get access to your delicate nervous system.
Fire ants, for example, bite and then hang on while they sting again and again in little, painful circles. That onslaught leaves behind pustules that can last for a couple of weeks.
But the most painful ant sting?
Entomologist Justin Schmidt says the bullet ant.
This little guy below enjoys nectar, team work, and strolling through the Central and South American rainforests.
Schmidt subjected himself to more than 78 different insect bites and stings for the sake of forming the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.
In this index, he rated the sting from 1 (least pain) to 4 (most pain.) In the wide, wide world of painful stings, the bullet ant earned itself a 4.
Schmidt also included how long that pain lasts in that index.
Note below that the bullet ant’s pain lasts 300 minutes. That is five hours.
I’m impressed. And terrified. And confused.
Schmidt described the bullet ant’s sting as “pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel.”
Schmidty, oh Schmidty, who are you? (An Arizonian, apparently.)
Certain ants offer serious pain potential, which is not something I considered before researching for this article.
It turns out ants have also been a part of traditional medicine for thousands of years.
Ants as Stitches
There’s evidence that cultures around the world have substituted ant heads for stitches. For a long time.
Physicians would position the ant so that it’d bite the edges of a wound.
They’d then twist the body off and leave the head behind still grabbing the edges of the flesh. Kinda like a helpful, decapitated insect zombie.
Driver ants, army ants, and bullet ants would have been about the right size for this kind of job. And take a look at this leaf cutter ant below with its jaw strength. Dang.
Indian and Arabic doctors used this ant-suturing method in ancient times, and The Medical Record claimed in 1896 that Greek barber-surgeons in the Middle East used the same practice.
Ancient Indian physician Sushrata, an old-timey trail blazer in plastic surgery, took the method a step further.
He advised people to follow-up the ant-head sutures with some more traditional stitches to keep everything together.
He also wrote about stuffing entrails back into abdomens, so maybe in this case hardier stitches were in order.
Ants aren’t just super strong.
Ants as Medicine
Ants are also delicious!
Like cough syrup that is actually a placebo, but has some underlying and mysterious properties.
A source back in the early 20th century claims that medieval healers (and, for a hot second, some random French people back in the 1900s) believed that consuming ants could make humans stronger.
Moroccans in the late 19th century used ants to treat lethargy, and traditional Chinese healers subscribed ant eggs for poor vision and bags of ants for paralyzed legs.
Ants may hold anti-inflammatory potential.
One 2005 Chinese study on mice found that polyrhachis lamellidens have some anti-inflammatory properties.
Another study from 1984 shows South American tree ant venom could alleviate symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.
One doctor interviewed for an article in Global News is skeptical about the promise of insect venom.
Dr. Sian Bevan with the Arthritis Society says, “It’s really a developing area and there’s very little information that I can find around this therapy. For any treatment for any disease, we have to make sure that the initial findings from animal models can be translated to humans.”
For now, she advises seeking arthritis treatment through “non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, disease-modifying drugs, and lifestyle changes around diet, exercise and physical therapy.”
Tiny Little Pain-Machines or Medical Cure-All?
Let’s rehash.
- Ow. Some run-ins with ants can really, really hurt. For five hours.
- Glasses and eye contacts are for nerds. Ant eggs may have been the cure to my bad vision all along
- World of possibilities. Ant venom may deserve a closer look for its anti-inflammatory features.
One Vice article relates how a German guy in the ’60s used ant stings as a treatment for his rheumatoid arthritis. Oh boy. Please do not.
Ants, like other insects, may contribute to modern medicine. But I’m with Dr. Bevan on this one. We need to know more. Based on how recent some of these studies are, we probably will know more soon.
Even if ants aren’t the cure-all for our inflammation, they could help advance our grasp on ways forward in medicine and help clarify some things. Until then, please abstain from drinking ant tea, smoking ant hash, or cooking ants into your eggs. The ants thank you.
Parts & Poultices is a dive into the unique and interesting specifics of medical past and present. The writers (all one of them) thank the reporters and researchers of the source articles that inform its content.
