Balsam of Sulphur
was a famous medicine up to our own days. It appears now to have dropped out of use. It was highly commended by Van Helmont, Rulandos, Boyle, and indeed by most of the medical experts of the seventeenth century, and was compounded from many different formulæ. The simple balsam was made by boiling one pound of flowers of sulphur with four times its weight of olive oil until the sulphur was dissolved and a thick dark balsamic substance was obtained. This was the formula of the P.L. 1746. But linseed oil and walnut oil were often prescribed in preference to olive oil, and oil of anise, oil of amber, oil of juniper, white wine, Barbadoes tar, turpentine, myrrh, aloes, and saffron; one or more of these substances were combined with the balsam in other receipts. The use of the balsam was generally for coughs, asthmas, and lung diseases. Salmon says, “It is of good use to digest crude humours and undigested matter in any part of the body, being often anointed upon the same.” The terebinthinated balsam was given in stone; a combination with iron, Balsamum Sulphuris Martis, was prescribed in gravel. These balsams were applied externally to ulcers, or taken in doses of from five to forty drops.
XVII
PHARMACOPŒIAS
But here is one prescription out of many:—
Sodæ sulphat. ʒvi, ʒss Mannæ optim.,
Aq. fervent, f℥iss, ʒii Tinct. Sennæ
Haustus (and here the Surgeon came and cupp’d him),
R. Pulv. Com. gr. iii Ipecacuanhæ
(With more besides if Juan had not stopp’d ’em).
Bolus Potassæ Sulphuret sumendus,
Et haustus ter in die capiendus.
Byron: Don Juan, Canto x (41).