Arnold de Villeneuve, in his medical treatise, written in Latin, _On the preservation of youth and the retardation of age_, has a sermon upon Golden water. “I have not,” he says, “read the properties of this water in books of distinguished authority, but it is to be presumed that, if it exists, it is so sublime a work that they have concealed the method of its preparation, and have even refused to mention its name. Of gold, however, they have spoken, and set it among cordial medicines. They have praised it for the comforting of the heart and for the palliation of leprosy. It is possible that since we every day find things diversified by alteration of substance, acquiring the operations of those other things into which they have been transformed, so out of wine may be made a water of life very different from wine both in colour and in substance, in effect and in operation. And the doubt here is, not about the fact, but how it is brought about. That the bodies of all metals may be reduced into water by the ingenuity of mankind, experience allows us not to question; but the operation and nature of those things by which this end is obtained it is no easy matter to discover.” This golden water was originally nothing else than _eau de vie_ in which had been macerated certain herbs and aromatic spices to give it taste and colour; afterwards minute portions of metallic gold were added. The ingredients mentioned by Arnold de Villeneuve are rosemary flowers, from which, he says, the water obtains its golden colour, cinnamon, grains of paradise, cloves, cubebs, liquorice, and the like. In the mind of the middle ages, gold was held to be a remedy for every ill. Many people applied themselves to the task of dissolving this metal and rendering it potable. It was put into drinks, baths, victuals, pills, and the pharmacopeia of the time abounds in elixirs of gold, tinctures of gold, drops of gold, and so on. To please the public eye, those pieces of the precious metal were cast into the composition which we now know as _Eau de vie de Dantzig_. Catherine de Medicis brought into France all the voluptuous discoveries and superfluities of Italy, and helped to augment considerably the number of new liqueurs and to popularize their usage. Henry II. was especially fond of the _anisette_ of Marie Brizard of Bordeaux. Sully, in 1604, examining the objects of luxury in France, found _Populo_ and _Rossolio_ to have the chief share in the public estimation and expenditure. Of them _Populo_ is mentioned in the Letters of Gui-Patin.[75] It was composed of spirits of wine, water, sugar, musk, amber, essence of anise, and essence of cinnamon.