Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/39

 soaked in the spirit mixture for twenty-four hours, and finally hung up in a dry place to dry.

Mummies were principally recommended for consumption, wasting of flesh, ulcers, and various corruptions.

Nicasius Le Febre, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry to Charles II, in his "Compleat Body of Chymistry," 1670, says the best mummies for medical use were those of bodies dried up in the hot sands of Lybia, where sometimes whole caravans were overwhelmed by simooms and suffocated. "This sudden suffocation doth concentrate the spirits in all the parts by reason of the fear and sudden surprisal which seizes on the travellers." Next to these Lybian mummies Le Febre recommends the dried corpse of a young lusty man of about 25 to 30 years of age who has been suffocated or hanged. He gives directions for drying the flesh, smoking it for a philosophical month, and then it is to be given in doses of 1 to 3 grains with some old treacle (theriaca) and vipers' flesh made into an electuary with spirit of wine. It was specially good against pestilential diseases.

Animal oil, oil of harts' horns, or empyreumatic oil, as it was variously called, or Dippel's animal oil, which was the original, was highly prized as a medicine in the eighteenth century, and disputed the palm for nastiness with the balsam of sulphur. Dippel made it from harts' horns, but later formulas directed it to be made from any bones, from blood, or indeed from any animal substance. In distilling the horn some water first came over, and this was rejected. At the end of the operation the distillate consisted of carbonate of ammonia in