The belief that meteorological and astrological conditions affected medicines was strong in all minds. The best physicians gravely noted the condition of the moon when gathering herbs and simples and concocting medicines; and certain drugs were held to be powerless at certain times of the year, owing to planetary influences. "Sympathetical" medicines were confidingly trusted, and tried to a surprising extent upon children; apparently these were as beneficial as our modern method of healing by the insinuation of improved health. We cannot wonder that children died when we know the nostrums with which they were dosed. There were quack medicines which held sway for a century--among them, a valuable property, _Daffy's Elixir_. These patented--or rather secret--medicines had a formidable rival in snail-water, which was used as a tonic and also a lotion. Many of the ingredients and extracts used in domestic medicines were incredibly revolting. Venice treacle was a nasty and popular compound, traditionally invented by Nero's physician; it was made of vipers, white wine, opium, "spices from both the Indies," licorice, red roses, tops of germander and St.-John's-wort, and some twenty other herbs, juice of rough sloes, mixed with honey "triple the weight of all the dry spices." The recipe is published in dispensatories till within this century. The vipers had to be put, "twelve of 'em," into white wine alone. Mithridate, the ancient cure-all of King Mithridates, was another dose for children. There were forty-five ingredients in this, each prepared and introduced with care. Rubila, made chiefly of antimony and nitre, was beloved of the Winthrops, and frequently dispensed by them--and with benefit. Children were grievously afflicted with rickets, though curiously enough it was a new disease, not old enough to have received adequate observation in England, wrote Sir Thomas Browne in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Snails furnished many doses for the rickets. Exact instruction of treatment for the rickets is given in a manuscript letter written to Rev. Joseph Perry of Windsor, Connecticut, in 1769:-- "REV'D SIR: