Take dried figs one pound, tamarinds, cassia, french prunes, each half a pound, sena leaves eight ounces, coriander seed four ounces, liquorice root three ounces, double refined sugar two pounds and an half; reduce the sena and coriander to a powder, and sift it through a sieve, boil the figs, cassia, prunes, and liquorice into a pulp, and strain these also, then mix the powder gradually amongst it, and make it, with the help of the sugar, into an electuary.
This electuary is a gentle cathartic, keeping the body coolly open, and therefore very useful in fevers, and weak constitutions when openness of the body is required. The bigness of a large nutmeg is a dose, which may occasionally be repeated.
K. Turner’s Cerate:
Take olive oil a pint, yellow bees wax and prepared calamine stone, of each half a pound; melt the wax and oil, and mix the calamine stone: keep stirring till it is cool.
This is a healing cerate, very useful in scalds and burns; as also to dress blisters with; likewise for the external dressing of sores, when near healing, or to keep other dressings on.
L. Fever powders:
Take purified nitre powdered half a pound, crabs eyes prepared four ounces, cinnabar of antimony finely prepared two ounces, calomel one drachm, and mix them.
This is the celebrated antispasmodic powder of the great Stahl, with some considerable amendment by means of the calomel; which, in the course of a long practice, I have found the most beneficial for fevers. There is not a kind of fever to which mankind are subject, either at shore or at sea, but what this powder may with safety and with great benefit be applied. A scruple, or half a drachm is a dose, and which may be repeated, as the ardency of the fever shall require.
M. Stomach powder:
Take purified nitre prepared and chalk, of each eight ounces, nutmeg two ounces; reduce all to a fine powder, and let them be properly mixed.