The following formula for a preparation resembling the Eau des Carmes was published by Baumé after many experiments, and was adopted by the compilers of the Codex:—
“Balm, in flower, freshly gathered, and freed from the stalks, 2 lbs.; lemon peel, fresh, 4 oz.; coriander seeds, 8 oz.; nutmegs, cloves, cinnamon, each bruised, 2 oz.; angelica roots, dried, 1 oz.; spirit of wine, highly rectified, 10 pints.”
Goddard’s Drops.
The original formula for these is given as follows by Dr. William Salmon in his edition of “Bate’s Dispensatory”:—
R. Humane Bones or rather scales, well dryed, break them into bits, and put them into a retort, and join thereto a large Receiver which lute well; and distil first with a gentle Fire, then with a stronger, increasing the fire gradatim; so will you have in the Recipient a Flegm, Spirit, Oyl, and Volatile Salt. Shake the Receiver to loosen the Volatile Salt from the sides, then close your Receiver and set it in the earth to digest for three months, after that digest it in a gentle heat fourteen days, then separate the Oyl which keep for use.
Salmon says they that please may make it according to the prescription, but he gives an alternative formula which was “to rectify the Oyl from the Flegm, then to grind the Volatile Salt with the Oyl, and so by a long digestion to join them together.” Salmon also tells us that if these drops are distilled from the bones of the skull they are good for apoplexy, vertigo, megrims, &c., but “if you want it for gout of any particular limb it is better to make it from the bones of that limb. The dose is 6 to 12 drops, but it has an evil scent.” You can, however, correct that, and “Elixirate” the preparation, bringing it “even to a Fragrancy” if you add so much Spirit of Nitre as will dissolve the oil, and then mix it with four times its weight of spirit of wine. Then you should give 20 to 60 drops in a glass of Canary. “So you will have a medicine beyond all comparison ten times exceeding the other in worth and efficacy.”
Who was the inventor of this medicine? Salmon says, “The author of this Recipe was not that Goddard whose Recipes and Prescriptions are scattered up and down in several places of this book, but the famous W. Goddard, a great Philosopher and Physician who deserved well of the World in his Day and Time, and who has even in this Remedy left himself an Immortal name. And this is the true Medicine which was purchased of the Doctor by King Charles the Second, so much famed through the whole kingdom, and for which he gave him, as it is reported, fifteen hundred pounds sterling.” Other statements say that Charles bought the formula for £5,000 or £6,000.
Salmon had lived in the reign of Charles II, and may be expected to have been correct in regard to such a recent event. But in the Roll of the Royal College of Physicians by William Munk, M.D., published by the College in 1878 I find the invention of these drops attributed to Jonathan Goddard, M.D., a person of some historical fame, due to a large extent to his association with Oliver Cromwell, whom he accompanied as first physician to his army through his Irish and Scotch campaigns. Cromwell made him Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and in other ways showed his confidence in him. In the Little Parliament which succeeded the Long Parliament Dr. Goddard was the sole representative of the University of Oxford, and became a member of the Council of State. With this record it is not surprising that the doctor did not become a favourite with Charles II. when that monarch returned to London. Dr. Goddard was removed from his Wardenship, but subsequently became Professor of Physic at Gresham College, London, and it was there that he and a few other scientific associates founded the Royal Society. It is difficult to believe that he was the inventor of the drops of which Salmon writes; and it is impossible to accept the statement that he offered, or that the King agreed to purchase, the secret of their composition from him.
Dr. Munk, however, states that “Dr. Goddard was a good practical chemist and the inventor of certain volatile drops, the Guttæ Goddardianæ vel Anglicanæ, as they were termed on the Continent, long in great repute and commended by Sydenham, who gave them a preference over all other volatile spirits whatsoever for ‘energetically and efficaciously attaining the end for which they are applied.’”
There was a Dr. William Goddard admitted a Fellow of the College in 1634 of whom Dr. Munk records that “on the 23rd of November, 1649, having been contumacious and refusing to attend at his place in the College, though repeatedly summoned by the President, he was, by a vote of his colleagues, dismissed from his fellowship: Decrete Collegii, in Collegii societale locum amisit.” Dr. Goddard carried the matter into the Court of King’s Bench, but was defeated.