Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/174

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH i, 1902.

expression is repeated in the errata and addenda to his third edition, with the addi- tion, "and the story an invention intended to satisfy a popular craving for an ety- mology." But Prof. Eidgeway, in 'The Early Age of Greece,' vol. i. p. 651, puts before us the much more probable theory that the word means that that people were very far from being vegetarians, the true etymology being from a- and /xafa. This is suggested by a passage in J^schylus ('Suppl.,' 283), ra<s avavSpo^s Kpeo/Bopovs 'A//,a^oi^a5, the husband- less, flesh-eating Amazons. This may be new to some of your readers, and worth a corner in 'N. &Q.' W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

[The 'H.E.D.' in its first part, issued in 1884, stated that the Greeks explained the word as from a and /iao, but Dr. Murray added that this was probably a popular etymology to explain a foreign word.]

"OPODELDOC." (See 7 th S. vi. 167, 316.) Dr. Murray will soon arrive at this word, and he may be glad to know that a discussion has recently taken place in one of the organs of the drug trade as to what opodeldoc really is. In one or two cases that I have noticed the definitions of popular names of drugs: given in the ' H.E.D.' have not been quite correct. In the Lap Leisurely section, for instance, lapis infernalis is said to signifj 7 lunar caustic. It is true that under 'Infernal ' quotations are given which seem to justify this definition, and it is also true that lunar caustic has this name assigned to it in some continental pharmacopoeias ; but I believe I am correct in saying that in England it is almost invariably given to caustic potash. I rely partly on my own experience, which is fairly wide, and partly on what I find in our dispensatories. These, without exception, so far as my own collection goes, give the name to caustic potash if they mention it at all. My collection of these books is not a large one, but it begins with Culpeper (1654) and ends with Phillips (1851).

The opodeldoc of Paracelsus was undoubt- edly a plaster, but he gives several different formulas for it. The first occurrence of the word in English (so far as I know) is in a version of the ' Chirurg. Min.' of Paracelsus, published in 1656 under the title ' Paracelsus his Dispensatory and Chirurgery,' in which the translator invariably uses the form oppo- deltoch, and applies it to a plaster. How it afterwards came to be transferred to a lini- ment composed mainly of soap I do not know but from the notes of different correspond- ents of _ the Chemist and Druggist, and an article in that journal, under date 1 Feb.,

I gather that the first saponaceous prepara- tion to which it was given was the Unguen- tuin opodeldoch of the Edinburgh Pharma- copoeia, 1722. The name, however, continued in use for a time in the old sense, for an Emplastrum opodeldoc, founded on that of Paracelsus, appears in Alleyne's 'Dispen- satory,' 1733. In 1744 the Edinburgh Un- ' guentum took the name Balsamum sapona- ceum, vulgo opppdeldoch ; and in 1745 it appeared, in a simplified form, in the Lon- don Pharmacopoeia, under the name Lini- mentum saponaceum. Of this preparation the Linimentum saponis of the present British Pharmacopoeia is the lineal descendant, and to this, in England at any rate, the name opodeldoc is generally applied. In the Merchant Shipping Acts (1867), however, for some unknown reason, opodeldoc is described as liniment of opium, which is really com- posed of equal parts of soap liniment and tincture of opium ; and on the Continent the name is given to a preparation based on Steers's Opodeldoc, a famous nostrum of the eighteenth century, which was, I believe, an imitation of the old Edinburgh Unguentum opodeldoch, with the addition of ammonia. In Scotland, I understand, liniment of opium is frequently sold as opodeldoc, in accordance with the Acts of Parliament just mentioned. It is to be hoped that in the 'H.E.D.' the word will be properly defined. C. C. B.

"PENILE" IN 'NERO CAESAR.' (See ante, p. 22.) The Ptev. L. Davies, in his ' Supple- mentary English Glossary,' gives an earlier quotation for penile, from Speed's ' Hist. Great Britain ' (1611), bk. ix. chap. xii.

H. P. L.

SIR HENRY CROMWELL. I am not aware whether the following reference has been noticed by writers on the Cromwell family :

"Also Igiveandbequeathetoeitherof Sir Henry Cromwell Knighte and to the ladye his wife and to every one of theire children a black gowne apiece."

I have extracted it from a copy (which lately came into my possession by the death of a near relative) of the will of Sir Thomas White, Knt., citizen and alderman of Lon- don and merchant tailor, the will being in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. It is dated 8 Elizabeth, being the 8 November, 1566, and the year of his death. This Sir Thomas is the well-known founder of St. John's College, Oxford.

The grandfather of the great Oliver was Sir Henry Cromwell, Knt., and as Oliver was born in 1599 the dates and name would agree with the conclusion that the friend of the founder of St. John's was the grand-