Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/198

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the Vienna Hospital. He recommended particularly a colchitic oxymel. He reports favourably on it as a remedy for asthma and in mucous catarrh, but does not suggest it as a remedy for gout.

In the early part of the eighteenth century the bulbs of colchicum were frequently recommended by physicians of repute to be carried in the pocket or worn round the neck as an amulet.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century a French proprietary article called D'Husson's Eau Medicinale became popular. Its inventor was an army officer, and it is not known how he acquired his medical knowledge. I have no information as to the price at which the Eau Medicinale was sold in France; but from some interesting communications to the Pharmaceutical Journal published in 1852 from medical men, Thomas Bushell, of 117, Crawford Street, Portman Square, and George Wallis, M.D., many details have been collected, among them being the statement made by Mr. Bushell that the proprietors of the Eau Medicinale were a firm of foreign perfumers in Bond Street; that they told him the sale had at that time (1852) quite died out; that four or five years previously they had sold a few bottles at 9s. 6d. each, but that when it was in demand the price was 22s. a bottle. The bottles each contained 2 fluid drachms, and the dose was 1 drachm, to be repeated if necessary in four to six hours.

According to Pereira, Cadet and Parmentier had endeavoured to ascertain the composition of this medicine in 1782; but they only arrived at the conclusion that it contained no metallic or mineral substance, and that it was a vinous infusion of some bitter plant. Alyon, another French inquirer, had guessed gratiola; an English doctor (Moore) had diagnosed that it was a