Evidently some species of colchicum (Planchon thinks _C. variegatum_, L., but Hanbury does not agree) was used in ancient medicine under the name of Hermodactylus. Linnæus knew hermodactyls brought from India and attributed them to _Iris tuberosa_. Royle says they are sold in the bazaars of northern India under the name of Surinjan, but he thought they were brought from the shores of the Red Sea via Bombay. And notwithstanding the unfavourable opinions just quoted, Radix Colchici and Hermodactylus appear among the simples of the London Pharmacopœias of 1618 and 1639. They are then omitted, but Colchicum reappears in the edition of 1788. This was in consequence of the strong recommendation of Stoerck of Vienna, a practitioner and medical teacher who had a passion for experimenting with discredited remedies. Stoerck’s report, published in 1763, showed that the medicine was a powerful and a dangerous one; but it was a most potent diuretic, and he had administered it with success in dropsical cases in the Vienna Hospital. He recommended particularly a colchitic oxymel. He reports favourably on it as a remedy for asthma and in mucous catarrh, but does not suggest it as a remedy for gout. In the early part of the eighteenth century the bulbs of colchicum were frequently recommended by physicians of repute to be carried in the pocket or worn round the neck as an amulet. In the latter part of the eighteenth century a French proprietary article called D’Husson’s Eau Medicinale became popular. Its inventor was an army officer, and it is not known how he acquired his medical knowledge. I have no information as to the price at which the Eau Medicinale was sold in France; but from some interesting communications to the _Pharmaceutical Journal_ published in 1852 from medical men, Thomas Bushell, of 117, Crawford Street, Portman Square, and George Wallis, M.D., many details have been collected, among them being the statement made by Mr. Bushell that the proprietors of the Eau Medicinale were a firm of foreign perfumers in Bond Street; that they told him the sale had at that time (1852) quite died out; that four or five years previously they had sold a few bottles at 9_s._ 6_d._ each, but that when it was in demand the price was 22_s._ a bottle. The bottles each contained 2 fluid drachms, and the dose was 1 drachm, to be repeated if necessary in four to six hours.