FOOTNOTES
[965] Universal Lexicon, vol. xlix. p. 1340.
[966] Traité de la Chemie, par N. le Febure. Leyde, 1669, 2 vols. 12mo, i. p. 474.
[967] In his notes to Blumentrost’s Haus- und Reise-apotheke. Leipzig, 1716, 8vo, cap. 16, p. 47.
[968] Succincta Medicorum Hungariæ et Transilvaniæ Biographia, ex adversariis St. Wespremi. Wien, 1778, 8vo, p. 213.
[969] Selectiora remedia multiplici usu comprobata, quæ inter secreta medica jure recenseas. In page 6 the following passage occurs: “For the gout in the hands and the feet. As the wonderful virtue of the remedy given below has been confirmed to me by the cases of many, I shall relate by what good fortune I happened to meet with it. In the year 1606 I saw among the books of Francis Podacather, of a noble Cyprian family, with whom I was extremely intimate, a very old breviary, which he held in high veneration, because, he said, it had been presented by St. Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, to some of his ancestors, as a testimony of the friendship which subsisted between them. In the beginning of this book he showed me a remedy for the gout written by the queen’s own hand, in the following words, which I copied:—
“‘I Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, being very infirm and much troubled with the gout in the seventy-second year of my age, used for a year this receipt given to me by an ancient hermit whom I never saw before nor since; and was not only cured, but recovered my strength, and appeared to all so remarkably beautiful, that the king of Poland asked me in marriage, he being a widower and I a widow. I however refused him for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ, from one of whose angels I believe I received the remedy. The receipt is as follows:
“‘℞. Take of aqua vitæ, four times distilled, three parts, and of the tops and flowers of rosemary two parts: put these together in a close vessel, let them stand in a gentle heat fifty hours, and then distil them. Take one dram of this in the morning once every week, either in your food or drink, and let your face and the diseased limb be washed with it every morning.
“‘It renovates the strength, brightens the spirits, purifies the marrow and nerves, restores and preserves the sight, and prolongs life.’ Thus far from the Breviary.”—Then follows a confirmation which Prevot gives from his own experience.
[970] Medicorum Hungariæ Biographia, [ut supra], p. 214.
[971] The book of Zapata, who is not noticed in the Gelehrten Lexicon, was printed at Rome, as Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan. vol. i. p. 368, in the year 1586; and other editions are mentioned in Boerhavii Methodus Studii Medici, p. 728 and 869. I have now before me, Joh. Bapt. Zapatæ, Medici Romani, Mirabilia seu Secreta Medico-chirurgica—per Davidem Spleissium. Ulmiæ, 1696. The passage above alluded to occurs in page 49.