﻿154 oN THJS CUI^E OF 



* ble powder in one of stone with a stone pestle, and 

 ' thus completely levigated, a little water being mixed 



* with them. Make pills of them as large as tares 



* or small pulse, and keep them dry in a shady 

 c place *. 



' One of those pills must be swallowed morning 

 ( and evening with some betel-leaf, or, in countries 

 ' where betel is not at hand, with cold water. If the 



* body be cleansed from foulness and obstructions by 

 1 gentle cathartics and bleeding before the medicine 

 ' is administered, the remedy will be speedier.' 



The principal ingredient of this medicine is the 

 arsenic, which the Arabs call Shuce ; the Persians 

 mergi mush, or mouse-bane ; and the Indians, sanc'hya : 

 a mineral substance ponderous and crystalline. The 

 orpiment, or yellow arsenic, is the weaker sort. It is 

 deadly poison, -and so subtil, that, when mice are 

 killed by it, the very smell of the dead will destroy 

 the living of that species. After it has been kept about 



* The lowest weight in general use among the Hindus is the 

 rest, called in Sanscrit either rettica or ractica, indicating redness ; 

 and crisbnala, from crisbna, black ; it is the red and black seed 

 of the gunja plant, which is a creeper of the same class and 

 ordevi at least with glycyrrbiza : but I take this from report, 

 having never examined its blossoms. One rattica is said to 

 be of equal weight with three barley-corns, or four grains 

 of rice in the husk : and eight rf<7-weights, used by jewellers, 

 are equal to seven carats. I have weighed a number of 

 the seeds in diamond-scales, and find the average Apothecary's 

 weight of one seed to be a grain and five-sixteenths. Now, id the 

 Hindu medical books, ten of the rattica-seeds are one masbaca: and 

 .eight masbacas make a tolaca, or tola ; but in the law-bertras of 

 Bengal a masbaca consists of sixteen racticas, and a rolaca of five 

 tnasbas; and, according to some authorities, fivf retis only go 

 to one maiba, sixteen of which make a tolaca. We may observe, 

 that the silver rf/z'-weights, used by the goldsmiths at Banares are 

 twice as heavy as the seeds ; and thence it is that eight retis are 

 commonly said to constitute one masba; that is, eight silver weights, 

 or sixteen seeds; eighty of which seeds, or 105 yrains, constitute 

 the quantity of arsenic in the Hindu prescription. 



