Spider
As an amulet. This insect, baked, was sometimes worn round the neck as a charm. Elias Ashmole in his Diary says: "I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir, and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove my ague away. Deo Gratias!" Spiders and their webs were often recommended as a cure for this malady. Burton gives us the following tale: "Being in the country in the vacation time, not many years since, at Lindly in Leicestershire, my father's house, I first observed this amulet of a spider in a nut-shell, wrapped in silk, so applied for an ague by my mother...... This I thought most absurd and ridiculous, and I could see no warrant in it. at length, rambling amongst authors, I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus, repeated by Aldrovandus..... I began to have a better opinion of till it, and to give more credit to amulets, when I saw it in some parties answer to experience."