GADEANS AND PLBUEONECTS. " 345 



Of the vast variety of drugs used or misused by the 

 medical practitioner^ the majority certainly produce no 

 definite impression on his senses. The routine rhubarb 

 piU, the familiar black dose, the mild cretaceous mix- 

 ture ; in a word, all the petty tyranny of those drugs 

 which are employed against the fancied or quite the 

 minor ills of the body, make no appeals to his sensibility; 

 but some medicines cannot be viewed or prescribed with 

 the same stoical indifference. Paphian blue pUl sug- 

 gests a new view of ' love among the roses/* which, in 

 spite of aU that Pracastorius't Muse has done to embel- 

 lish the foul disease for which it is given, he looks upon 

 with snbnausea and dislike ; pruriginous brimstone, too, 

 albeit lotum, and ever so well ' washed,' no medical man 

 wiU fancy clean enough to finger, or desire to put its 

 ' flowers' to his nose ; while, as to every species of oint- 

 ment since the days for smearing the person with fats 

 and oils is past, he, remembering only the vile purposes 

 to which inunction is now restricted, regards them, and 

 the gallipots which contain them, with unsuppressed 

 disgust ; but of all painful drugs to scent, that daily ap- 

 plied to the moribund nostrils of thousands, overpower- 

 ing death-bed ether, which, escaping from the narrowest 

 chink of the closest-corked phial, comes fitfully, coldly, 

 clammily, and as a breath from the chamel-house, to 

 force back upon his memory many a scene of sorrow 

 where he has inhaled it, in presence of the last struggles 

 of the departing, and amid the sobs, and wailings, and 

 faintings of the bereaved — he recoils from with detesta- 

 tion and loathing. Other medicines, again, convey plea- 

 santer sensuous impressions, and suggest more agreeable 



dripped tkrough the boughs into a veasel placed underneath to 

 receive it. 



* Blue piR is made by triturating mercury in conserve of roses, 

 till the two are intimately mixed. 



t See his poem, ' De Morbo GaUico.' 



Q 3 



