“Take opium 1 oz.; saltpetre and tartar vitriolated, each 4 oz.; liquorish 1 oz.; ipecacuanha, 1 oz. Put the saltpetre and tartar into a red-hot mortar, stirring till they have done flaming. Then powder them very fine. After that slice in your opium; grind these to a powder, and then mix the other powders with them. Dose, from 40 to 60 or 70 grains in a glass of white wine posset going to bed, covering up warm, and drinking a quart or three pints of the posset while sweating. In two or three hours at furthest the patient will be free from pain, and though before not able to put his foot to the ground, ’tis very much if he cannot walk next day. The remedy may be taken once a week or once a month.” The dose appears to us in these degenerate days a large one, and Dover states that “some apothecaries have desired their patients to make their wills before they venture upon so large a dose.” But he declares he has given up to 100 grains, and the patient has appeared abroad the next day. The notion of danger, he adds, proceeds entirely from their ignorance, and from the want of knowing those ingredients that are mixed up with it, for they naturally weaken the power of the opium. Dover’s powder first appeared in the London Pharmacopœia for 1788. Probably it was adopted after the quack Ward had made it famous as a “sweating powder.” Ward died in 1761 and the formulæ for his remedies were published soon after his death. UNGUENTUM ELEMI. Ointment of elemi was in all the London Pharmacopœias, and was only dropped from the B.P. 1898. In the earlier issues it was called “unguentum or linimentum Arcœi,” because it had been introduced and recommended by Arcœus of Amsterdam in 1574, for healing wounds. A similar ointment was called “Balsamum Arcœi” in the Prussian Pharmacopœia of 1847. The inventor’s formula was to melt together six parts each of gum elemi and turpentine, and add six parts of melted stag’s suet, and two parts of oil of St. John’s wort. Arcœus was a Spaniard by birth, and an eminent authority on the treatment of wounds. FOWLER’S SOLUTION OF ARSENIC. Thomas Fowler kept an apothecary’s shop in York from 1760 to 1774. In the latter year he relinquished trade, and went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Graduating as M.D. in 1778, he settled at Stafford, and was appointed physician to the Infirmary of that town. Later, he returned to York, where he acquired a large practice, and where he died in 1801.