“It is difficult to pass this article without setting a mark upon that abominable cheat which is now sold by the name of Epsom waters. Dr. Grew, who was a most worthy physician and an industrious experimenter, made trial how much salt these waters would leave upon evaporation, and found that a gallon left about two drams, or near, according to my best remembrance, for I have not his writings by me. He likewise found the salt thus procured answered the virtues of the water in its cathartic qualities. Of this an account was given before the Royal Society in a Latin dissertation. But the avaricious craft of a certain furnace-philosopher could not let this useful discovery in natural knowledge rest under the improvement and proper use of persons of integrity; but he pretended to make a great quantity for sale; and to recommend his salt translated the Doctor’s Lecture into English to give away as a quack-bill.” Quincy proceeds to tell us how other competitors came in, and how the price was so reduced that what was first sold at one shilling an ounce, and could not honestly be made under (Quincy apparently refers to the salt made by evaporation), came down in a short time to thirty shillings per hundredweight. ETHER. The action of sulphuric acid on spirit of wine is alluded to in the works of Raymond Lully in the thirteenth century, and in those attributed to Basil Valentine, by whom the product is described as “an agreeable essence and of good odour.” Valerius Cordus, in 1517, described a liquor which he called Oleum Vitrioli Dulce in his “Chemical Pharmacopœia.” This was intended to represent the Spiritus Vitrioli Antepilepticus Paracelsi. It was prepared by distilling a mixture of equal parts of sulphuric acid and spirit of wine, after this mixture had been digested in hot ashes for two months. Probably the product obtained by Cordus was what came to be called later the sweet oil of wine, and not what we know as sulphuric ether.