The learned
eye of Mr. Pulsifer would have helped me, no doubt, as it has done in
other cases; but I have ventured this time to attempt finding my own way
among the hieroglyphics of these old pages. By careful comparison of
many prescriptions, and by the aid of Schroder, Salmon, Culpeper, and
other old compilers, I have deciphered many of his difficult paragraphs
with their mysterious recipes.
The Governor employed a number of the simples dear to ancient women,
--elecampane and elder and wormwood and anise and the rest; but he also
employed certain mineral remedies, which he almost always indicates by
their ancient symbols, or by a name which should leave them a mystery to
the vulgar. I am now prepared to reveal the mystic secrets of the
Governor's beneficent art, which rendered so many good and great as well
as so many poor and dependent people his debtors,--at least, in their
simple belief,--for their health and their lives.
His great remedy, which he gave oftener than any other, was nitre; which
he ordered in doses of twenty or thirty grains to adults, and of three
grains to infants. Measles, colics, sciatica, headache, giddiness, and
many other ailments, all found themselves treated, and I trust bettered,
by nitre; a pretty safe medicine in moderate doses, and one not likely to
keep the good Governor awake at night, thinking whether it might not
kill, if it did not cure.
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