Balm and Balsam, which are words with the same origin, have always been suggestive of medicinal and healing virtues. Probably balsam has descended through the Greek and Latin from Semitic terms meaning spices. The Hebrew Besem or Bosem, often translated “spices,” in one place “cinnamon,” in another “calamus,” always meant some grateful aromatic. But the opobalsamum or juice of the Balsam tree, the famous Balm of Gilead, was Tsori in Hebrew. Old etymologists, supported by Littré and other moderns, consider that Baal-schaman, prince of oils, was the original word from which balsam was derived. The Arabic Abu-scham, father of perfumed oils, was a name for the balsam tree. Paracelsus taught that the human body contained a natural balsam which tended by itself to heal wounds. Basilicon ointment is first met with in Celsus. It means royal ointment but no explanation of the origin of the term is given. He compounded it of panax, (perhaps opopanax), galbanum, pitch, resin, and oil. Mesué made a basilicon minus, composed of wax, resin, pitch, and oil. This he also called unguentum tetrapharmacum, because it was made from four drugs. Both of these were black ointments. Later the pitch was omitted and the ointment was then named yellow basilicon. A green basilicon ointment was also formulated in the early London Pharmacopœias, containing verdigris, and used as a detergent. It is sometimes stated that the ointment acquired its name because it contained the plant basil (_Ocimum basilicum_) among its ingredients; but I find no authority for this statement. Baths. The most usual form of digesting substances in a gentle heat was in a Balneum Mariæ, Bain-Marie, or as old English writers translated it a St. Mary’s bath. It was supposed to have been derived from balneum maris, as if sea water was used; but there is no justification for this guess. Littré thinks it was called the bath of Mary because of its gentleness. Sand-baths, cinder-baths, horse-dung baths, and iron-filings baths were also ordered. Bezoards. Mineral bezoard was diaphoretic antimony. Silician earth was also called mineral bezoar. Blisters. Freind says these were introduced into medicine in Venice and Padua during the plague of 1576. Jerome Mercuriali wrote about them. They superseded dropaxes and metasyncretics. Bolus was a medicine of the consistence of an electuary or rather stiffer, taken in pieces about the size of a bean. The Greek word meant a lump of earth, and it was used medically by the Romans. It was the same as katapotia. Calx was the name applied to lime which had been burnt, and from this it came to be applied to the white powdery product yielded by burning metals. Thus came the calx Lunæ, the calx Saturni, the calx Jovis, the calx Mercurii, and others. The ancient theory was that in burning the metal the sulphur principle was driven out, and this was the parent of Stahl’s phlogiston theory.