& beza stone." Both the unicorn's horn and
the bezoar stone were sovereign antidotes against poison. At another
time Winthrop had sent to him "bezoar stone, mugwort, orgaine, and
galingall root." Ambergris was also too rare and costly for American
Puritans to use, though we find Hull writing for golden ambergroose.

Insomnia is not a bane of our modern civilization alone. This little
book shows that our ancestors craved and sought sleep just as we do.
Here is a prescription to cure sleeplessness, which might be tried by
any wakeful soul of modern times, since it requires neither rubies,
pearls, nor gold for its manufacture:

"Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water,
& make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill,
and it will cause sleep."

So aniseed bags were used in earlier days for a purpose very different
from our modern one; if your nineteenth century nose should refuse to
accustom itself to having bags hung on it, you can "Chop Chammomile &
crumbs of Brown Bread smal and boyl them with White Wine Vinegar, stir
it wel and spred it on a cloth & binde it to the soles of the feet as
hot as you can suffer it." And if that should not make you sleepy, there
are frankincense-perfumed paper bags for your head, and some very
pleasant things made of rose-leaves for your temples, and hard-boiled
eggs for the nape of your neck--you can choose from all of these.

They had abounding faith in those days. Several of the prescriptions in
"The Queen's Closet" are to cure people at a remote distance, by
applying the nostrums to a linen cloth previously wet with the patient's
blood. They had plasters of power to put on the back of the head to draw
the palate into place; and wonderful elixirs that would keep a dying man
alive five years; and herb-juices to make a dumb man speak. The
following suggestion shows plainly their confiding spirit:

"To Cure Deafnesse. Take the Garden Dasie roots and make juyce
thereof, and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster &
drop three or four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three
or four dayes together."

"Simpatheticall" medicines had a special charm for all the Winthrops,
and that delightful but gullible old English alchemist, Sir Kenelm
Digby, kept them well posted in all the newest nonsense.

In a medical dispensatory of the times the different varieties of
medicines used in New England are