l rules in my old book, in spite of the
earth-worms and wood-lice and adders and vipers in which some of them
abound (to say nothing of other and more shocking ingredients). In
surprising and unpleasant compounds they do not excel the prescriptions
in a serious medical book published in Exeter, New Hampshire, as late as
1835. Nor is Cotton Mather's favorite and much-vaunted ingredient
_millepedes_, or sowbugs, once mentioned within. All are not vile
in my Queen's Closet--far from it. Medicines composed of Canary wine
or sack, with rose-water, juice of oranges and lemons, syrup of
clove-gillyflower, loaf sugar, "Mallago raisins," nutmegs, cloves,
cinnamon, mace, remind me strongly of Josselyn's New England Nectar, and
render me quite dissatisfied with our modern innovations of quinine,
antipyrine, and phenacetin, and even make only passively welcome the
innocuous and uninteresting homo[eo]pathic pellet and drop.

Many other dispensatories, guides, collections, and records of medical
customs and concoctions, remain to us even of the earliest days. We have
the private receipt-book of John Winthrop, a gathering of choice
receipts given to him in manuscript by one Stafford, of England. These
receipts have been printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts
Historical Society for the year 1862, with delightful notes by Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, and are of the same nature as those in the
Queen's Closet. Here is one, which was venomous, yet harmless enough:

"My black powder against ye plague, small-pox, purples, all sorts
of feavers, Poyson; either by way of prevention or after Infection.
In the Moneth of March take Toades, as many as you will, alive;
putt them into an Earthen pott, so yt it be halfe full; Cover it
with a broad tyle or Iron plate, then overwhelme the pott, so yt ye
bottome may be uppermost; putt charcoals round about it and over it
and in the open ayre not in an house; sett it on fire and lett it
burne out and extinguish of itself; when it is cold take out the
toades; and in an Iron morter pound them very well; and searce
them; then in a Crucible calcine them; So againe; pound them &
searce them again. The first time they will be a brown powder, the
next time blacke. Of this you may give a dragme in a Vehiculum or
drinke Inwardly in any Infection taken: and let them sweat upon it
in their bedds: but let them not cover their heads; especial