and when it's perfectly dissolved and all taken up, pour
the Vinegar into a clean glasse Bason; then drop some few drops of
oyl of Tartar upon it, and it will call down the Pearl into the
powder; then pour the Vinegar clean off softly; then put to the
Pearl clear Conduit or Spring water; pour that off, and do so
often until the taste of the Vinegar and Tartar be clean gone; then
dry the powder of Pearl upon warm embers and keep for your use."

Gold and precious stones were specially necessary "to ease the passion
of the Heart," as indeed they are nowadays. In that century, however,
they applied the mercenary cure inwardly, and prepared it thus:

"Take Damask Roses half-blown, cut off thier whites, and stamp them
very fine, and straine out the Juyce very strong; moisten it in the
stamping with a little Damask Rose water; then put thereto fine
powder Sugar, and boyl it gently to a fine Syrup; then take the
Powders of Amber, Pearl, Rubies, of each half a dram, Ambergreese
one scruple, and mingle them with the said syrup till it be
somewhat thick, and take a little thereof on a knifes point morning
and evening."

I can now understand the reason for the unceasing, the incurable
melancholy that hung like a heavy black shadow over so many Puritan
divines in the early days of New England, as their gloomy sermons, their
sad diaries and letters, plainly show. Those poor ministers had no
chance to use these receipts and thus get cured of "worms in the brain,"
with annual salaries of only L60, which they had to take in corn, wheat,
codfish, or bearskins, in any kind of "country pay," or even in wampum,
in order to get it at all. Rubies and pearls and gold and coral were
scarce drugs in clerical circles in Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth
plantations. Even amber and ivory were far from plentiful. We find John
Winthrop writing in 1682, "I am straitened, having no ivory beaten,
neither any pearle nor corall." Cleopatra drinks were out of fashion in
the New World. So Mather and Hooker and Warham were condemned to die
with uncheered spirits and unjewelled stomachs.

Another ingredient, unicorns' horns, which were ground and used in
powders, must have been difficult to obtain in New England, although I
believe Governor Winthrop had one sent to him as a gift from England;
and John Endicott, writing to him in 1634, said: "I have sent you Mrs
Beggarly her Vnicorns horne