Another favourite vehicle was broth, generally composed of many and strange ingredients. We have come across the broth of calves’ lungs, broth of the bones of lizards, and broths made from snails, tortoises, woodlice, crabs, and vipers. The recipe for the broth of viper we have taken from an old black-letter book, and is rather curious:— “℞ Living viper j. Remove his head, tail and viscera, excepting his heart and liver, cut it into little pieces and mix it with the blood, and add— Well water 12 ounces in a close vessel, boil for two hours and strain, and the broth will be made.” The _materia medica_ of the old apothecary was largely drawn from the animal kingdom, the greater part of it being, no doubt, handed down from a very early period, when witchcraft and superstition exerted a powerful influence on the minds of the people. Among the many curious things used, we find that the liver of a mad dog, or a wolf, washed in wine and dried in a stove, was employed as a remedy for hydrophobia. The nimble lizard had a reputation as a sudorific and antisyphilitic. Dried toads and the cast-off skins of snakes and adders, were administered in dropsy as a diuretic. The horn of rhinoceros was used in epilepsy, and goat’s blood and eel’s liver as a cure for dysentery. The oil of frog’s spawn was celebrated as an application for chilblains. The jawbone of a pike and the spine of a lamprey in powder, were prescribed for leucorrhœa. Pepys mentions in his diary, that he wore a hare’s foot as a sovereign remedy against the plague, in which charm he seemed to place more faith than in the various plague waters that were recommended to him as unfailing antidotes for that terrible disease. In the time of Edward I. there was a list of drugs recorded by the king’s physician, one Nicholas de Tyngewyke, in 1307, which throws an interesting light on the pharmacy of that period. The list includes distilled oil of turpentine, aromatic flowers for baths, carminative electuaries, plasters and ointments of various kinds, the oils of wheat, ash, and bay, water of the roses of Damascus, wine of pomegranates, remedies prepared from pearls, jacinths, and coral, and many other drugs. The king was taken ill at Carlisle, and the cost of conveying these remedies from London to that city amounted to £159 11s. 10d., the apothecary’s bill for the medicines being £134 16s. 4d. In 1596 Sir Henry Winton, who was sent as ambassador by Elizabeth to Henry IV. of France, met with an accident while on his mission. According to the records “he was physicked with _confectio alcarmas_, which was composed of musk, amber, gold, pearl, and unicorn’s horn, and with pigeons applied to his side, and all other means that art could devise sufficient to expel the strongest poison, and he be not bewitcht withall”.