A ROYAL MEDICINE.
Even so late as the days of Queen Elizabeth, ignorance and superstition continued prime regulating powers in the practice of physic; accomplished as some of the physicians of the day were, it was, as Lord Bacon has affirmed, in every department excepting those that immediately touched their own profession. Sir William Bulleyn was not one of the least prominent and enlightened; but some of the prescriptions which he has left on record, attest a very deplorable state of things, existing little more than half a century before Harvey achieved his great discovery. Take for example this recipe for an
"Electuarium de Gemmis."
"Take two drachms of white perles; two little peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, granettes, of each an ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace, basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger, long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful; cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much as will suffice. This healeth cold diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack. It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting and souning, the weaknes of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and noble men have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good coloure."