“Dull Gardner, destroyer of worms and of men, Like Leake, sells his pills to rouse death from his den; And Perkins stands brandishing two-pointed tractors, To heal the contusions of girls, beaux, and actors. Derry down. “There’s the lotion of Gowland that flays ladies’ faces, Distorting the features of our modern Graces; There, Lignum’s dire pills—but of quackery enough! Let John Bull take his pipe and contentedly puff. Derry down.” CHAPTER XXI. THE ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE MORTAR. The mortar is the most ancient of pharmaceutical implements, its earliest use carrying us back to prehistoric times, when the early Briton bruised his grain in the hollow of a granite boulder. There is little doubt indeed that mortars were employed for the purpose of bruising and reducing hard bodies to powder, centuries before medicine as an art was thought of or known. The name is derived from the Latin word _mortarium_, which is probably from the root _mordeo_, to bite, akin to the Sanscrit _mrid_, to grind or to pound; the literal meaning of the word being a vessel in which substances may be pounded with a pestle. The origin of the mortar appears to have been identical with that of the mill or quern as it was called in ancient times. The primitive implement used by prehistoric nations for the purpose of crushing their grain, was simply made by hollowing out a cup-shaped hole in a block of stone or granite, and pounding the grain placed in this receptacle with a smaller stone of suitable form. These grain-crushers, together with stone rollers and pounders, have been found in the circular huts of the Britons in several parts of North Wales. This method was also used by the early Jews before the Christian era for crushing their spices and gums, the knowledge of which they doubtless gathered from the Egyptians during the captivity. [Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MORTAR.] In many of the ancient Egyptian papyri we find directions given to bruise certain herbs and roots, but no mention is made of the implement used for that purpose; carvings in stone, however, are extant which show the mortars used by the Egyptians were similar in form to those employed several centuries later.