s 4 



HARDWICKK S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



improvement on a recipe of Bate's. Salmon also 

 adds the same and other ingredients to Bate's 

 Electuarium epilepticum (p. 645). 



One of the strangest of these human compositions 

 was that vaunted catholicon of the famous W. 

 Goddard, "a great philosopher and physician who 

 deserv'd well of the world in his days and time, and 

 who has, even in this remedy, left himself an immortal 

 name. And this is the true medicine which was 

 purchas'd of the doctor by King Charles the Second, 

 so much fam'd through the whole kingdom, and for 

 which he gave him, as it is reported, many hundred 

 pounds sterling." By the publication for the first 

 time of this renowned prescription, Salmon con- 

 sidered he conferred a great "obligation upon the 

 generous lovers of art " ; a set-off indeed to the 

 revelation of their other arcana in the vulgar tongue. 

 The original preparation (p. 136) of the Guttcc 

 Goddardiana (or Goddard's drops) was to : — 



R.* human bones or rather skulls, well-dry'd, 

 break them into bits, . . . and distil first with a gentle 

 fire, then with a stronger, increasing the fire gradation ; 

 so will you have in the recipient a flegm, spirit, oil, 

 and volatile salt. . . . Set it in the earth to digest for 

 three months, after that, digest it in a gentle heat 

 fourteen cays, then separate the oil, which keep for 

 use." 



Salmon, improving on this, as was his wont, con- 

 tinued : " You may make it of all the bones of the 

 human body together ; or if it be for a particular 

 intention, as for the gout in any limb, then of the 

 bones of those parts ; f but if for diseases of the head, 

 then of skulls only. And you ought to chuse those 

 bones which have lain a long time a-drying, for that 

 they will have lost most of their flegm. . . . Tkdse 

 drops are of an ill and fcetid smell ; but, being made 

 of skulls, are an excellent thing against the falling 

 sickness, apoplexy, lethargy, vertigo, megrim, head- 

 achs, cams, palsies, convulsions, and most other 

 diseases of the head, brain, and nerves. . . But if 

 you would take away their evil scent and elixirate 

 them [by dissolving them in spirit of nitre and 

 leaving to digest a month in four times the weight of 

 alcohol], so you will have a 'medicine beyond all 

 comparison, ten times exceeding the other in worth 

 and efficacy." 



Goddard's dose was six to twelve, or even, " in 

 extremity, to twenty drops, in any proper vehicle." 

 Salmon, who afterwards made a still pleasanter and 

 more efficacious oil, " as I by a long series of 

 experiments can truly tell," gave of his previous 

 remedy twenty to forty drops, " in a glass of canary in 

 the morning, fasting, a little before dinner, and last at 

 "igh'i going to bed." May good digestion and 

 pleasant dreams have waited upon it ! 



Human blood was another favourite remedy, that 



* Recipe = take of. 



f i-e. Irom parts similar to those affected. 



of young men physically healthy having the 

 preference. The Decoctum ad Rachitidem (p. 586), 

 given to children for the rickets, contained ten drops 

 of "spirit of man's blood" to the dose. Bate's 

 Spiritus sanguinis (pp. 63-5), a distillation of the 

 blood "of a sound young man," was, says Salmon, 

 when mixed one dram to two or three ounces of 

 "water of earthworms, lilly convally and lavender 

 or peony," "that spirit so much cry'd up for the cure 

 of the palsy, being inwardly taken six to twenty 

 drops in broth, decoction or generous wine." There 

 were a variety of forms of this medicine, and in any of 

 them the blood of certain other mammals, " sheeps, 

 goats, swines or neats," to wit, could be substituted 

 "in defect'of man's blood ... for in perfect animals the 

 natural digestions are perform'd in the same manner 

 and their blood is endowed with nearly the same 

 virtues, save that human blood may be thought to be 

 more homogenial to our natures." 



Human fat was not neglected either. The 

 Balsamum spinale of Bate (p. 685), to which I shall 

 refer later, required four ounces of " man's grease," 

 and was applied ' ' on the spina dorsi, or back bone, 

 for the rickets." 



More than this, the apothecary of old went even 

 further afield for his human materia than to the 

 graves and charnel-houses of his own time. During 

 the preceding century Sir Thomas Browne had 

 alleged " that the mummy is medicinal the Arabian 

 doctor Haly delivereth and divers confirm ; but of 

 the particular use thereof is much discrepancy of 

 opinion." While Hoffmannus prescribes the same to 

 epileptics, Johan de Muralto commands the use 

 thereof to gouty persons ; Bacon likewise extols it as 

 a styptic, and Junkenius considers it of efficacy to 

 resolve coagulated blood." Nor had it gone out of 

 fashion when Salmon's " Pharm. Bat." was published. 

 For instance (on pp. 270-1) the editor gives the 

 recipe of "a famous, great and most powerful 

 anodyn," yclept Laudanum sine opio, which required, 

 among other components, upwards of half a dram of 

 an Egyptian mummy. 



Perhaps the most curious of these strange medleys 

 was that of the greatest repute and least practical 

 value. Bate's Unguentum sympatheticum was an 

 ointment of half an ounce each of oil of roses and 

 fine bole, two ounces of linseed oil, one ounce each 

 of " man's grease, moss of a man's skull killed by a 

 violent death, in powder, [quarter ounce each of] 

 mummy, man's blood ; mix and make an ointment. 

 By this ointment all wounds are healed, anointing 

 the instrument by which the wound was made once 

 a day, every day if the wound be great ; otherwise, if 

 the wound be small, once every second or third day 

 may suffice. The weapon is to be kept wrapt up in 

 a clean linen cloth and in a place not too hot, lest 

 the patient suffers thereby." Salmon tells us this is 

 abstracted "exactly from Barbet ; [but is] said to 

 perform the cure, provided," he cautiously adds, " the 



