that this signification arose from the medicinal employment of rosemary to improve the memory. It may easily have happened, however, that the medicinal use followed the emblematical idea.
Old books and some modern ones tell the legend of the Queen of Hungary and her rosemary remedy. It is alleged in pharmaceutical treatises published in the nineteenth century that a document is preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna, dated 1235, and written by Queen Elisabeth of Hungary, thus expressed:—
"I, Elisabeth, Queen of Hungary, being very infirm and much
troubled with gout, in the seventy-second year of my age, used for
a year this recipe given to me by an ancient hermit, whom I never
saw before nor since; and was not only cured but recovered my
strength, and appeared to all so remarkably beautiful that the
King of Poland asked me in marriage, he being a widower and I
a widow. I, however, refused him for the love of my Lord Jesus
Christ, from one of whose angels I believe I received the remedy."
The royal formula is as follows:—"Take aqua vitae, four times distilled, 3 parts; the tops and flowers of rosemary, 2 parts; put these together in a closed vessel, let them stand in a gentle heat fifty hours, and then distil them. Take one teaspoonful of this in the morning once every week, and let your face and diseased limb be washed with it every morning."
Beckmann investigated this story and came to the
conclusion that the name "Eau de La Reine d'Hongrie"
had been adopted by some vendors of a spirit of rosemary
"in order to give greater consequence and credit
to their commodity"; in other words, he suggests that
the interesting narrative was only a clever advertisement.
The only Queen Elisabeth of Hungary was the wife of King Charles Robert, and daughter of Ladislaus, King of Poland. She died in 1380, and for more than
