The appended formulas from Geoffroy’s Materia Medica (written before 1731) will show how this sealed earth was used. Both are for dysentery.
Lemnian earth, ʒi, syrup of quinces, 1 oz., plantain water, and knot grass water, of each 3 oz. Spoonful doses.
Lemnian earth, conserve of red roses, conserve of hips, of each ½ oz.; syrup of bearberries sufficient to make a soft electuary. Take ʒi morning and evening.
Several so-called “alexipharmic powders” or mixtures much more complex than the preceding were prescribed in small-pox, fevers, and pestilential diseases.
Oil of Bricks.
Oil of Bricks appeared in the earlier London and Edinburgh pharmacopœias and in many foreign formularies. It was long held to be a specially valuable application in gouty and rheumatic pains, and was especially in repute as a cure for deafness. It was also sometimes given as an internal remedy. Among its synonyms were those of oleum philosophorum, oleum sanctum, oleum divinum, and oleum benedictum; but as these names were adopted for selling purposes they may not have meant much. The process given in the P.L. 1746 was to heat bricks red-hot and quench them in olive oil until they had soaked up all the oil. They were then broken into small pieces and put into a retort, and by means of a sand-bath with a gradually increasing heat a distillate of oil and so-called spirit was obtained. The spirit was water impregnated with empyreumatic oil. The oil was nothing but an empyreumatic olive oil.
Arquebusade Water
was the original of many vulnerary waters invented for application to wounds, bruises, and ulcers. It was a weak, spirituous distillate from a large number of herbs and aromatic plants, such as angelica, rosemary balm, hyssop, mint, rue, sage, and wormwood. These would furnish an antiseptic lotion. As the arquebus was displaced by the musket about the end of the sixteenth century it may be supposed that the lotion acquired its name and popularity at that same period; but these evidently lasted for a long time, as we find that a certain John Thomson took out a patent for “a concentrated balsam of arquebusade” in 1786.
Four Thieves Vinegar
is the sub-title of the Antiseptic Vinegar of the French Codex. It is a strong vinegar in which a number of aromatics with camphor and garlic have been macerated. The story of its origin is that in the year 1720 a plague was raging in the city of Toulouse, and that during the period of panic four thieves went about the city plundering the dead and dying. People wondered why they never took the disease, and when they were ultimately brought to justice and convicted, they were offered pardon if they would reveal the secret of their prophylactic. This is the legend as given by Littré, who quotes it from Abbé Lemontey. Other authors make Marseilles the scene of the exploit.