practitioner would employ cabbage leaves while the simple and elegant contrivance, lint covered with oiled silk, was within his reach." Perhaps if a medical man had constructed the cabbage-leaf, it might have been also regarded as "a simple and elegant contrivance."
Seignette's Salts.
(Soda Tartarata, Sodii potassio-tartras, Rochelle salts, Sel de Seignette, Sal polychrestum Seignette.)
Peter Seignette was an apothecary at Rochelle in the later half of the seventeenth century. He had at least a local scientific reputation, and a paper of his describing certain remarkable natural products of his locality was printed in the "Transactions" of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. A little before 1672 Seignette was making some soluble tartar (tartrate of potash), and inadvertently used carbonate of soda with the cream of tartar instead of carbonate of potash. At that time the distinction between the fixed alkalies had not been discovered. The product was a salt different from that which he had expected, and Seignette was ready to believe that he had made a valuable discovery. He ascertained that his new salt had laxative properties, he called it Sal Polychrestum, and advertised it by means of prospectuses, or handbills. From one of these it appears that he sold it at "20 sols la prise," say 10d. for a dose. Each dose was sold in an envelope on which appeared the design of a goose. One of the prospectuses states that Seignette's salt was sold in Paris by Lemery, but another refers customers to the "Messieurs Seignette, at present at Paris, lodging on the Quay de le Megisserie."
Peter Seignette died in 1716, and his son continued to sell the powder. Many attempts to analyse it
