In an old book entitled _Demonologia_, the author cites many instances of important remedies which being neglected at first afterward rose into notice through mere accident. He also shows that most of the new discoveries in medicine have turned out to be no more than “the revival and reädoption of very ancient practices.” During the last century, the root of the male fern was sold and widely advertised as a secret nostrum by a Madame Nouffleur, a female quack, for the effective cure of the tapeworm. The secret was bought by Louis XV. for a large sum of money; after which the physicians discovered that it was recommended and administered in that disease by Galen. The famous powder of the Duke of Portland for the gout, was the _diacentaureon_ of Cælius Aurelianus. Later it was ascertained that it had been used by the earliest medical writers, who had found it in the writings of the old Greek philosophers. So with the _eau medicinale_ of Dr. Husson, whose name it bears. This famous remedy for the gout was recognized under its new mask to be the _Colchicum autumnale_, or meadow saffron, which is identical with a plant called _Hermodactylus_, whose merits as a certain antidote to gout were recognized and defended by Oribasius, a great physician of the fourth century, and Ætius Amidenus, another eminent physician of Alexandria (fifth century). Subsequently it was abandoned and fell into disfavor only because it was _too old_ to be considered good by the members of the medical faculties that flourished toward the end of the last century! Even the great Magendie, the wise physiologist, was not above discovering that which had already been discovered and found good by the oldest physicians. His proposed remedy against consumption, namely, the use of prussic acid, may be found in the works of Lumæus, _Amenitates Academicæ_, vol. iv., in which he shows distilled laurel water to have been used with great profit in pulmonary consumption. Pliny also assures us that the extract of almonds and cherry-pits had cured the most obstinate coughs. As the author of _Demonologia_ well remarks, it may be asserted with perfect safety that “all the various secret preparations of opium which have been lauded as the discovery of modern times, may be recognized in the works of ancient authors,” who see themselves so discredited in our days.