But, as I remarked before, the notion that costliness of itself is a test of medicinal virtue has been, necessarily, far less prolific of results than the kindred idea that by the pain and disgust entailed on a patient might be estimated the value of the remedy applied to his disease. As to disgust, it would really appear as if some ancient prophets of the healing art, some Phœbus Epicurios or Æsculapius, must have laid down as a principle for the selection of health-restoring compounds and concoctions, “By their nauseousness ye shall know them.” Else were the recipes for all the hideous, abominable witch-broths, wherewith the older books of medicine are replete, quite unaccountable on any theory of human sanity. Many of them (which weak-souled patients have swallowed by the ounce and the pound) were of a kind which it is quite impossible to quote; nor can we wonder that, as Plato tells us, the Athenian physicians were wont to engage the great rhetorician Gorgias to accompany them and persuade their patients to take their prescriptions. Let the following, however, be taken as moderate examples:-- “Take what Animal soever thy fancy best liketh, and thou thinkest most fit to prepare. Kill it and take it (but separate nothing of its impurities, as feathers, hoofs, hairs, or other heterogeneous substance), bruise all in a large and strong mortar to a fit consistency, put it then into a vessel for putrefaction, and put upon it of the blood of animals of the same kind so much as may well moisten it, or, which is better, cover it all over. Shut close the vessel and set it to putrifie, _in fimo equino_, for forty dayes that it may ferment.” (The result is to be distilled, calcined, rectified, and distilled over again and again, “seven times to separate its phlegme,” till finally) “thou hast a pleasant [!!], safe, and noble Animal Arcanum to fortifie the animal life, and restore health and vigor to its languishing spirit, till God doth call for its final dissolution and separation.”--_Aurora Chymica_, p. 6.