enumerated. They are leaves, herbs,
roots, barks, seeds, flowers, juices, distilled waters, syrups, juleps,
decoctions, oils, electuaries, conserves, preserves, lohocks, ointments,
plasters, poultices, troches, and pills. These words and articles are
all used nowadays, except the lohock, which was to be _licked up_, and
in consistency stood in the intermediate ground between an electuary and
a syrup. These terms, of course, were in the Galenic practice. In "The
Queen's Closet" all the physic was found afield, with the exception of
the precious metals and one compound, rubila, which was made of antimony
and nitre, and which was in special favor in the Winthrop family--as
many of their letters show. They sent it and recommended it to their
friends--and better still, they took it faithfully themselves, and with
most satisfactory results.

There was also one mineral "oyntment" made of quicksilver, verdigris,
and brimstone mixed with "barrows grease," which was good for "horse,
man, or other beast." Alum and copperas were once recommended for
external use. The powerful "plaister of Paracelsus," also beloved of the
Winthrops, was not composed of mineral drugs, as might be supposed, but
was made of herbs, and from the ingredients named must have been
particularly nasty smelling as well as powerful.

The medicine mithridate forms a part of many of these prescriptions; it
does not seem to be regarded as an alexipharmic, but as a soporific. It
is said to have been the cure-all of King Mithridates. I will not give
an account of the process of its manufacture; it would fill about three
pages of this book, and I should think it would take about six weeks to
compound a good dose of it. There are forty-five different articles
used, each to be prepared by slow degrees and introduced with great
care; some of them (such as the rape of storax, camel's hay, and bellies
of skinks) must have been inconvenient to procure in New England.
Mithridates would hardly recognize his own medicine in this
conglomeration, for when Pompey found his precious receipt it was simple
enough: "Pound with care two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of
rice, and a grain of salt." I think we might take this _cum grano
salis_.

Queer were the names of some of the herbs; alehoof, which was
ground-ivy, or gill-go-by-ground, or haymaids, or twinhoof, or
gill-creep-by-ground, and was an herb of Venus, and thus in special use
for "passions of the heart," for "a