Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/123

 ii s. in. FEB. 11, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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debate the business over a bottle of wine first," Raymund replies, somewhat taunt- ingly : " Must I stay, till the strength of Terse claret have wet yourself into courage ? "

" Terse claret " was no doubt the red wine known by the name of claret, as it is stated by a wine merchant that it was not before 1750 that the first-growth claret, properly prepared and of proper age came to England from France ; so the term " terse " does denote a good quality of wine. TOM JONES.

May I presume to suggest that SIR JAMES MURRAY has supplied the answer to his own query ? Terse is simply " tierce " (<

(often

simply " ti<

spelt " terce " in old books, as, for example, in Boyer's ' French-English Dictionary,' ed. 1729), meaning a cask, of claret or any other wine, containing 42 gallons. If we substitute for terse the word " cask " in the three quotations cited by SIR JAMES, the sense of the different passages will be quite apparent. Thus in * Bellamira,' Act. II. sc. i., Merryman had imbibed so many gallons of wine that they amounted in the aggregate to several casks, consequently any jolt would have spilt a cask at a time, and not merely a gallon. W. S. 8.

ADDERS' FAT AS A CURE FOR DEAFNESS <11 S. iii. 69). SCRUTATOR'S query puts me in mind that my mother had in her medicine cupboard possibly some sixty years ago a small phial of pinkish oil, which she said was viper oil for the cure of vipers' bites. It was extracted and pre- pared from the dead snakes by a man who plied the trade of ratcatcher and viper- killer in the neighbourhood. We were then living in Kent, about six miles from Dover. My mother could not say if the oil was efficacious, as she had never had experience of its use. EGERTON GARDINER.

Adders' or any other fat may relieve temporary deafness due to an accumulation of hardened wax in the ear, and possibly the fat of adders may possess peculiar pene- trating and solvent properties. Certainly it has long had, and among country people still has, this reputation. I have often had dead adders brought to me in Lincolnshire under the impression that they still are, as they once were, included in our Materia Medica ; and I have seen them, preserved in spirits, in country chemists' shops, where they serve the same purpose as the " stuff 'd -alligators " of the old apothecaries. I do

not know that their fat was ever recom- mended specifically for deafness, but it was much used in many cutaneous affections, and for dropping into the eyes to clear the sight. It is, says Alleyne (1733), "more penetrative and active than other oily sub- stances." For the subject of the viper in medicine see Wootton's ' Chronicles of Pharmacy.' C. C. B.

The application of oil to the ear is some- times advisable in cases of deafness due to stoppage of the meatus. Adders' fat, being the produce of a reptile which is, proverbially, wilfully d.eaf, would be specially curative on the similia similibus curantur system, that was known by the folk-leech before Hahne- mann. ST. SWITHIN.

The peasantry of the Home Counties (Berkshire, for example, where adders are more plentiful than in the Midlands) regard this fat as a safe cure for the poison of an adder's bite. I do not remember it in connexion with deafness.

WM. JAGGARD.

Avonthwaite, Stratford-on-Avon.

EARLY BEEFSTEAK CLUB (11 S. ii. 445, 497). On referring to ' The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,' by Bro. Walter Arnold (1871), I find that the anonymous writer quoted by MR. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL is correct in assigning the date of the foundation of the Society to 1735. The book contains a list of " the original 24 members of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks founded in the year 1735 by John Rich, harlequin and machinist at Covent Garden."

This is confirmed by " Thormanby " in an article in Temple Bar for March, 1906, in which he repeats the date, but calls Rich " Henry " instead of John. The article is entitled ' The Laureate of the " Beef- steaks," ' and refers to Capt. Charles Morris of " the sweet shady side of Pall Mall " fame.

I have other references to the Sublime Society (which must not be confused with the Beefsteak Club, or other sporadic societies), but can find none earlier than the foregoing.

There was a Beefsteak Club in the reign of Queen Anne (Spectator, No. 9, 10 March, 1710/11): Dr. King dedicated his 'Art of Cookery ' to it. John Timbs in his ' History of Clubs and Club Life ' refers to several other Beefsteak Clubs.

FRANK SCHLOESSER.