But sugar was a rarity and a luxury for the rich, while honey was always in use. Palestine was a land flowing with milk and honey, and the records of its employment as a food, a fermented beverage, and as a medicine, are traceable in almost all histories. The ancients had curious notions concerning it. They knew that the bees obtained it from flowers, but they thought the flowers had only caught it as it descended from the heavens. Pliny says it is engendered in the air, mostly at the rising of the constellations, and especially when Sirius is shining. He is not sure whether it is the sweat of the heavens, saliva from the stars, or a juice exuding from the air while purifying itself. He admits that its flavour affords an exquisite pleasure, but he wonders what that flavour would be if we could get the pure ethereal substance uncontaminated by the corruption of the air, its absorption by the herbs, and afterwards in the stomachs of the bees. Pliny and Galen both affirm that it was sometimes found where no bees had been, and Galen says in such cases the peasantry exclaimed that Jupiter was raining honey. The honey which came in this way was called Cibus Celestis. Honey was used in the preparation of all the famous confections and electuaries of old pharmacy, and when these began to lose their reputation there were authorities who attributed their decline in efficacy to the substitution of sugar for honey. Dioscorides had stated that honey counteracted the evil effects of the juice of the poppy. In the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries honey was credited with many medicinal virtues. Applied to the scalp it was a remedy for baldness; better if some dead and dried bees were ground up with it. It wonderfully promoted expectoration. It was also claimed that it would destroy worms if drunk in milk, because the worms took to it so greedily that they killed themselves by excess. Oxymels, too, had at one time a high repute. A compound oxymel, containing a number of aromatic herbs, was handed down from Mesué to the early pharmacopœias, and was esteemed as a stimulant of the liver and kidneys. An oil of wax was known as the Celestial Medicine. It was made by melting bees’ wax, then wringing it out by hand pressure seven times in sweet wine, and finally distilling it twice. It would kill worms, cure palsy, and greatly assist in childbirth. XVI REMINISCENCES OF ANCIENT PHARMACY