as Diachylon, Diapente, and Diacodion, but in the old medical formularies its use is very frequent. Generally it meant an electuary or confection. Thus for example the P.L. of 1746 changed the old Diascordium into Electuarium e Scordio. Apparently the dia- was then going out of fashion.
Diagredium or Diagrydium. This term was often applied to scammony but it was correctly reserved to a prepared scammony (see Dia); the object being to modify the purgative action. One method was to place some scammony in the hollow of a quince and keep it for some time in hot ashes. This gave Diagredium cydoniatum. Or sulphur was burned under a porous paper on which scammony was spread, and the preparation was known as Diagredium sulphuratum. It was also combined with liquorice and called Diagredium glycyrrhisatum.
Dropax was the name of a plaster employed as a depilatory. It was applied warm and pulled off, with the hairs, when cold. It was the Greek term for a pitch plaster.
Drug. The word "dragges" in the "Vision of Piers Plowman" (refer to "Dia") has been generally supposed to have been an earlier form of drugs; but Skeat contended on philological grounds that the two terms could hardly be the same. Dragges occurs also in Chaucer in the description of the Doctour of Phisike:—
Ful redy had he his apothecaries
To send him dragges and his lettuaries.
and Skeat presumed that the dragges were a kind of medicinal sweetmeat corresponding with the French dragées. But Murray has shown that in most of the texts of Chaucer the word is droggis or drugges. So
