which killed her (“Mem. de St. Simon,” cxi, pp. 140–228). BALSAM OF SULPHUR was a famous medicine up to our own days. It appears now to have dropped out of use. It was highly commended by Van Helmont, Rulandos, Boyle, and indeed by most of the medical experts of the seventeenth century, and was compounded from many different formulæ. The simple balsam was made by boiling one pound of flowers of sulphur with four times its weight of olive oil until the sulphur was dissolved and a thick dark balsamic substance was obtained. This was the formula of the P.L. 1746. But linseed oil and walnut oil were often prescribed in preference to olive oil, and oil of anise, oil of amber, oil of juniper, white wine, Barbadoes tar, turpentine, myrrh, aloes, and saffron; one or more of these substances were combined with the balsam in other receipts. The use of the balsam was generally for coughs, asthmas, and lung diseases. Salmon says, “It is of good use to digest crude humours and undigested matter in any part of the body, being often anointed upon the same.” The terebinthinated balsam was given in stone; a combination with iron, Balsamum Sulphuris Martis, was prescribed in gravel. These balsams were applied externally to ulcers, or taken in doses of from five to forty drops. XVII PHARMACOPŒIAS But here is one prescription out of many:-- Sodæ sulphat. ʒvi, ʒss Mannæ optim., Aq. fervent, f℥iss, ʒii Tinct. Sennæ Haustus (and here the Surgeon came and cupp’d him), R. Pulv. Com. gr. iii Ipecacuanhæ (With more besides if Juan had not stopp’d ’em). Bolus Potassæ Sulphuret sumendus, Et haustus ter in die capiendus. BYRON: _Don Juan_, Canto x (41). THE LONDON PHARMACOPŒIA. The collection of medicinal formulas was a favourite occupation of ancient medical writers. Galen and Avicenna, Mesué and Serapion, Nicholas Prepositus and Nicolas of Salerno were the authors of the dispensatories most esteemed up to the sixteenth century in Europe. The College of Medicine of Florence adopted an Antidotarium in the early part of that century, and in 1524 the Senate of Nuremberg made the Dispensatory of Valerius Cordus official in that city. Augsburg followed the example of Nuremberg, and the Pharmacopea Augustana of 1601 was probably the first work of the kind designated a Pharmacopœia and issued under authoritative sanction. A quasi-official Dispensatorium for the State of Brandenburg, forerunner of the Prussian Pharmacopœia, came next in 1608, and the London Pharmacopœia, which appeared in 1618, was the first really national publication of that character. The first French Codex was published in 1639, and no other work of similar standing was issued until the next century.