e represent,
he believed, a topic far too great to be considered in a brief compass.
But he declared that he knew an "ancient gentlewoman" suffering from
various "chronical distempers" who every morning drank her own urine,
"by the use of which she strangely recovered."[59] Boyle was quite
skeptical of the reports of others, which he had not had opportunity to
try himself. But in therapeutic trials that he himself had witnessed, he
seemed utterly convinced that the medication in question was responsible
for the cure and was quite content to accept the evidence of a single
case.

He discussed the "efficacy" of millepedes, which he found to be "very
diuretical and aperitive." And he indicated, on the evidence of a single
patient whom he knew, that the millepedes had great medicinal value in
suffusions of the eyes.[60]

Many remedies of this type, the so-called old wives' remedies, were
those of empirics. As mentioned previously, Boyle felt deeply concerned
because physicians tended to ignore the alleged remedies of those who
had not had formal training in medicine. He believed that great specific
virtue probably lurked in many of these remedies, and he maintained that
the chemists should investigate them without the prejudice that the
medical professions exhibited. As part of this view, he felt that
"simples" should be more carefully studied, because medicinal virtues
inhered in single substances and that complicated combinations were
unnecessary.

We find innumerable examples scattered through Boyle's writings
regarding the relations between chemistry and medication, numerous
descriptions of cures, and skepticism regarding other alleged cures. As
an important example, I would indicate Boyle's discussion of one of van
Helmont's alleged cures.[61]

Van Helmont described the remarkable cures brought about by a man
identified only by the name of Butler. Apart from van Helmont's
discussion, we can find no trace of him in medical annals, and van
Helmont's own account is extremely skimpy. There are no dates given, and
the only temporal clue is that Butler apparently knew King James--King
James I, naturally. Butler was an Irishman who suddenly came into world
view while in jail. A fellow prisoner was a Franciscan monk who had a
severe erysipelas of the arm. Butler took pity on him, and to cure him
took a very special stone which he had and dipped it briefly in a
spoonful of "almond milk." This he gave to the jailer, bidding