ÆGYPTIACUM
—is a well known and long established external application in veterinary practice, and is thus prepared.
Take of verdigrease, finely powdered, five ounces; honey, fourteen ounces; the best white wine vinegar, seven ounces; mix and boil them over a gentle fire to the consistence of treacle or honey.
This article, which has so long passed under the denomination of an ointment, and was so called in the London Dispensatory of the College of Physicians, produces, without any additional process, (but merely by standing, and depositing its sediment,) another name for a part of the same preparation in this way: the grosser parts subsiding, constitute a more substantial consistence at the bottom, which is the article termed ÆGYPTIACUM: the fluid or thinner part, floating upon the surface, is the mildest in its effect, and called, by medicinal practitioners, MEL ÆGYPTIACUM. The property of both (one being a degree stronger than the other, and may be used separately, or shaken together, according to the effect required) is to assist in cleansing inveterate and long-standing ulcers; to keep down fungous flesh; and to promote the sloughing off of such foul and unhealthy parts of the surface, as prevent new granulations from arising to constitute the incarnation necessary to a sound and permanent restoration of parts. They are articles of acknowledged utility in the hands of judicious and experienced practitioners; but the furor of folly has sometimes rendered them medicines of mischief with those who have never heard, or do not condescend to recollect, the trite but expressive adage, that "the shoemaker should never go beyond his last." This is the case when the lower classes of farriers, smiths, coachmen, and grooms, attempt to cure the grease, cracked heels, &c. with the articles described, constituting to a certainty, "the remedy worse than the disease."