Diagredium or Diagrydium. This term was often applied to scammony but it was correctly reserved to a prepared scammony (see Dia); the object being to modify the purgative action. One method was to place some scammony in the hollow of a quince and keep it for some time in hot ashes. This gave Diagredium cydoniatum. Or sulphur was burned under a porous paper on which scammony was spread, and the preparation was known as Diagredium sulphuratum. It was also combined with liquorice and called Diagredium glycyrrhisatum. Dropax was the name of a plaster employed as a depilatory. It was applied warm and pulled off, with the hairs, when cold. It was the Greek term for a pitch plaster. Drug. The word “dragges” in the “Vision of Piers Plowman” (refer to “Dia”) has been generally supposed to have been an earlier form of drugs; but Skeat contended on philological grounds that the two terms could hardly be the same. Dragges occurs also in Chaucer in the description of the Doctour of Phisike:-- Ful redy had he his apothecaries To send him dragges and his lettuaries. and Skeat presumed that the dragges were a kind of medicinal sweetmeat corresponding with the French dragées. But Murray has shown that in most of the texts of Chaucer the word is droggis or drugges. So that it is probable that the poet was using the term which we now almost invariably confine to the raw materials of pharmacy. It might easily be shown that in the past it was more generally applied. The etymology of drug is doubtful. The majority of philologists trace it to Anglo-Saxon dryg, and Dutch droog, both meaning dry, the sense originating from dried herbs. There is, however, a Celtic word, drwg, in Irish, droch, which has the meaning of something bad. But Littré suggests that the primary signification of that word is that of an ingredient, and therefore might have been the derivation of our drug. Most likely it is the original of the word when employed as indicating something worthless, as “a drug in the market.” It may well be therefore that the word used in different senses has distinct derivations. (Two interesting articles on this subject will be found in _The Chemist and Druggist_ for February and March, 1882.) Eclegma. Thick syrups given on a piece of liquorice root to suck with the object of relieving coughs. (See Electuary for Derivation.) Ecussons. Compounds of theriaca with some added opium used as plasters. Edulcorate. To deprive substances of their acrid taste. Generally by the addition of syrup. Electuary. Old dictionaries give the origin of this word as from the Latin electus, on the theory that an electuary was a composition of selected drugs. It is, in fact, a Latin corruption of the Greek ekleikton, which meant something that could be licked. See Eclegma.