Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/143

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having dismissed the adjuncts, altered the name of the simple plaster to Emplastrum Commune, but the old term has refused to die. An Emplastrum Commune cum Gummi was also prescribed. This contained galbanum, thus, and turpentine combined with the Emplastrum Commune.

The Menecrates to whom we owe Diachylon is alleged to have written 155 works, and Galen gives a number of his formulas, but no other than Diachylon has survived. He must not be confounded with the perhaps more celebrated Menecrates who was physician to Philip of Macedon. This one was particularly noted for his vanity, which amused the king. Once he wrote a letter to Philip commencing "Menecrates-Jupiter to King Philip, greeting." The king replied, heading his letter, "Philip to Menecrates, Health and Common Sense." Menecrates got himself up to look like Jupiter, and had attendants who were made to figure as Apollo, Æsculapius, and Mercury. Philip gave a banquet in his honour. A separate table was reserved for him, and instead of viands only incense was served to him, while the other guests were gloriously feasted. Menecrates was offended at the joke and left the table in anger. He is credited with having written a Book of Remedies, but it has been lost.


Dover's Powder.

Thomas Dover, to whom we owe "Dover's Powder," practised as a doctor in London in the first half of the eighteenth century. He was born and buried at Barton on the Heath in Warwickshire in 1660. How he got his medical training is not on record, but some time in his youth he lived in the house of Thomas