Francis Bacon—the last of his generation to be considered a quack—prescribed a regimen which would make longevity a certainty. Every morning the patient was to inhale the fume of lignaloes, rosemary, and bay-leaves dried; “but once a week to add a little tobacco, without otherwise taking it, in a pipe.” For supper he was to drink of wine in which “gold had been quenched,” and to eat bread dipped in spiced wine. In the morning he was to anoint the body with oil of almonds and salt and saffron. Once a month he was to bathe the feet in water of marjoram, fennel, and sage.... That diet was pronounced best “which makes lean and then renews.” The great people were content with nothing less than extravagant remedies. Salt or chloride of gold was taken by noble ladies; dissolved pearls were supposed to have mystic virtues, and even coral was a fashionable medicine. Common folk had to submit to more desperate remedies. They were advised by Dr. Andrew Boorde to wipe their faces daily with a scarlet cloth, and wash them only once a week. Pills made of the skull of a man that had been hanged, a draught of spring water from the skull of a murdered man, the powder of antimony, the oil of scorpions, the blood of dragons, and the entrails of wild animals were all recommended for special diseases. Salves, conserves, cataplasms, ptisanes, and electuaries were made of all kinds of herbs, and freely used and believed in, though most of them must have been ridiculous. The “nonsense-confused compounds” which Burton ridiculed half a century later were in great demand, however, and the amount of general physic-taking was marvellous. Complexion-washes for ladies and fops, love-philtres for the melancholy, and anodynes for the aged, were commonly dispensed in every apothecary’s establishment. Tumours were supposed to be curable by stroking them with the hand of a dead man. Chips of a hangman’s tree were a great remedy for the ague, worn as amulets. To cure a child of rickets, it was passed head downwards through a young tree split open for the purpose, and then tied up. As the tree healed, the child recovered. The king’s evil, a scrofulous affection, was supposed to be cured by the royal touch, as we have already seen in considering the service for the occasion. There is a description of the process in Macbeth:—