Strigonium in Hungary, stamped with a design, suggesting mountain peaks and cross-keys on them; and Terra Livonica. Naturally the temptation of selling soil at fabulous prices per shovelful appealed to all nations.
The appended formulas from Geoffroy's Materia Medica (written before 1731) will show how this sealed earth was used. Both are for dysentery.
Lemnian earth, i, syrup of quinces, 1 oz., plantain water, and knot grass water, of each 3 oz. Spoonful doses.
Lemnian earth, conserve of red roses, conserve of hips, of each 1/2 oz.; syrup of bearberries sufficient to make a soft electuary. Take i morning and evening.
Several so-called "alexipharmic powders" or mixtures much more complex than the preceding were prescribed in small-pox, fevers, and pestilential diseases.
Oil of Bricks.
Oil of Bricks appeared in the earlier London and Edinburgh pharmacopœias and in many foreign formularies. It was long held to be a specially valuable application in gouty and rheumatic pains, and was especially in repute as a cure for deafness. It was also sometimes given as an internal remedy. Among its synonyms were those of oleum philosophorum, oleum sanctum, oleum divinum, and oleum benedictum; but as these names were adopted for selling purposes they may not have meant much. The process given in the P.L. 1746 was to heat bricks red-hot and quench them in olive oil until they had soaked up all the oil. They were then broken into small pieces and put into a retort, and by means of a sand-bath with a gradually
