Elixir. An Arabic word, al-iksir, which Littré says signified the essence or the quintessence. Murray suggests that it may have had a Greek origin. Xerion, a late Greek medical term, meaning a desiccative powder for wounds, is the word which he supposes the Arabs may have adopted. It is probable that elixir was from the first used to denote a medicine; perhaps the medicine, the great panacea which Arab chemists sought for. For although alchemy, the name at least, may be traced to their laboratories, it is certain that their early efforts were rather in the direction of the discovery of remedies than in that of the production of gold. By the alchemists of Europe and England, however, elixir was understood in both senses. It meant both the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. In “The Alchemist,” Ben Jonson (1610) alludes to an old superstition thus:
He that has once the “flower of the sun”
The perfect ruby which we call elixir
... by its virtue
Can confer honour, love, respect, long life,
Give safety, valour, yea, and victory
To whom he will. In eight and twenty days
He’ll make an old man of fourscore a child.
The word has been a useful one for empirics many times since.
Emplastra are noted by Celsus, many of his formulæ being made with a lead plaster basis as ours are to this day, litharge (spuma argenti) and olive oil being boiled together.