which this milder form of mercurial has come to be most usually known. The alchemical writers of the time called it Aquila Alba or Draco Mitigatus. A notorious Paracelsian of Paris, Joseph Duchesne, but better known by his Latinised surname of Quercetanus, who shared with Turquet the animosity of Gui Patin and his medical confederates, and for similar reasons, also made calomel and administered it, probably sold it, under the designation of the mineral Panchymagogon, purger of all humours. Panacea mercurialis, manna metallorum, and sublimatum dulce, were among the other fanciful names given. It was believed by the old medical chemists that the more frequently it was resublimed the more dulcified it became. In fact, resublimation was likely to decompose it, and thus to produce corrosive sublimate.
What the name "calomel" was derived from has been the subject of much conjecture. "Kalos melas," beautiful black, is the obvious-looking source, but it does not seem possible to fit any sense to this suggested origin. A fanciful story of a black servant in the employ of de Mayerne manufacturing a beautiful white medicine is told by Pereira with the introduction of "as some say." A good remedy for black bile is another far-fetched etymology, and another conceives the metal and the sublimate in the crucible as blackish becoming a fair white. Some thirty years ago, in a correspondence published in the "Chemist and Druggist, Mr. T. B. Groves, of Weymouth, and "W. R." of Maidstone, both independently broached the idea that "kalos" and "meli" (honey) were the constituents of the word, forming a sort of rough translation of the recognised term, dulcified mercury; a not unreasonable supposition, though this leaves the "kalos" not very well
