diminished; but during the last decade of the nineteenth century,
extracts of animal organs were manufactured on a large scale, and found
a ready market. Thus some of the articles mentioned are reckoned among
remedial agents to-day, but most of them doubtless owed their virtues to
mental action. Wolf's eyes in former times and bread pills nowadays may
be cited as typical remedies, acting through the patient's imagination
and possessing no intrinsic curative properties, yet nevertheless
valuable articles of the pharmacopoeia from the standpoint of
suggestive therapeutics. In a list of Japanese quack medicines, of the
present time, we find mention of "Spirit-cheering" pills.[159:1]

In "A Booke of Physicke and Chirurgery, with divers other things
necessary to be knowne, collected out of sundry olde written bookes, and
broughte into one order. Written in the year of our Lorde God 1610,"
among many curious prescriptions we find the following: "A good
oyntment against the vanityes of the heade. Take the juice of worm woode
and salte, honye, waxe and incens, and boyle them together over the
fire, and therewith anoynte the sick heade and temples." The volume
referred to was the property of Mr. William Pickering, an apparitor of
the Consistory Court at Durham, England.

A commentator on the above prescription observed that few coxcombs,
dandies, and heads filled with bitter conceits, would like to be
anointed with this cure of self-sufficiency. The wax might make the
plaster stick, but it might be feared that the honey and the incense
would neutralize the good effects to be expected from the wormwood and
salt. If, however, the phrase "vanityes of the head" be interpreted to
mean a dearth of ideas, we may assume that the above prescription was
intended as a stimulus to the imagination, and as such it might well
have a therapeutic value.

Dr. William Salmon, a London practitioner, published in the year 1693 "A
Short Manual of Physick, designed for the general use of Her Majestie's
subjects, accommodated to mean capacities, in order to the Restauration
of their Healths."

In this little volume we find a prescription for "an Elixer Universall,
not particular for any distemper," as follows:

[Rx]
Rex Metallorum [gold] [ounce] ss.
Pouder of a Lyon's heart [ounce] iv.
Filings of a Unicorn's Horn [ounce] ss.
Ashes of the whole Chameleon [ounce] iss.