SPICES OF EUROPEAN GROWTH. SAFFRON. 631 



c cumin.' It is found, the price undergoing very little varia- 

 tion, from the earliest to the latest times. An average of 

 twelve entries gives a little more than id. the Ib. Anise is 

 also, but more rarely, quoted. The prices are so various as not 

 to be suggestive. Liquorice is also found three times, the price 

 being nearly ^d. 



. Among colouring-matters we find c sanders' and c alkanet/ 

 to both which drugs our forefathers assigned medicinal virtues. 

 Sanders is always dear, but of very various prices, the highest 

 quoted being 6s. 8d. in 1376; an average of six entries gives 

 35-. 3!^. Alkanet is cheaper, an average of three entries giving 

 is. the pound. 



SAFFRON. The evidence of the price of saffron is so con- 

 siderable as to make a decennial average possible. The stig- 

 mata of the flower were imagined by our forefathers to have 

 the highest medicinal value, and saffron formed an ingredient 

 in some of their choicest extracts and compounds. If we omit 

 two entries at a very high price, denoting purchases made in 

 London by the Countess of Leicester, the money value of saffron 

 up to the time of the Plague is 4*. g^J. the pound, on ati 

 average of twelve entries. But after this event, the price is 

 exceedingly enhanced; and another average, also taken from 

 twelve entries, gives 145-. 7^. 



I have no doubt that, in consequence of the supposed medi- 

 cinal virtues of saffron, this rise in its price was due to the 

 impression that it was a specific or prophylactic against the 

 Plague. Its brilliant yellow colour connected it, in the imagina- 

 tion of the mediciners of that time, with gold; and, as is well 

 known, it was a general conviction among the physicians and 

 alchemists of the Middle Ages, (if indeed the two parties can 

 be distinguished,) that if by any ingenuity an c aurum potabile' 

 could be prepared, it would ensure its fortunate possessor a 

 long, if not a perpetual youth. Part of the virtues of this grand 

 arcanum were supposed, in this fanciful philosophy, to belong 

 by analogy to those bodies which partook, in their character- 

 istic properties, of the colour or other qualities of gold, espe- 



