red.
This process is repeated several times, and finally the tincture is
concentrated by distilling off the spirit of wine, leaving the pure
rock-crystal tincture. Its remedial quality is stated to have been
applicable to dropsy, scrofula, or hypochondriac melancholia, if it
were taken in doses up to forty drops in a proper medium.90
To make the magisterium of
rock-crystal, a pound of the substance was to be heated to a high
temperature and then dipped into spirits of vitriol. After this
operation had been repeated ten times, the rock-crystal was to be
ground, on a marble slab, to a very fine powder, which was a sure
remedy for gout and for calculi formed in any of the bodily organs. The
spirits of vitriol in which the rock-crystal had been dipped was
sometimes filtered through blotting-paper and sold as crystal spirits
of vitriol ; this was asserted to be a powerful diuretic, from seven to
ten drops being given at a dose in a cup of meat broth.91
As
late as the last half of the eighteenth century a Dr. Bourgeois
recommended the use of rock-crystal, calcined and ground, as a very
excellent astringent in the most obstinate cases of diarrhœa. In
reporting this, Valmont de Bomare (1731-1807) adds that it would be
desirable to know the nature of the acid in rock-crystal and its state
of combination.92 Here, as in all cases where some of the
constituents of precious stones may really possess certain curative
powers, a better result can be attained by using these constituents in
other forms or combinations.
The wonderful therapeutic virtues of a Scotch lake named Loch-mo-naire are explained by a local legend as
"From
MS. of Borch's lectures of 1685, in the Royal Library at Copenhagen,
Thottske Collection, 744 ; cited in Axel Garboe's " Kulturhiatorisk
Studier over ^Idelstene," K^henhavn og Kristiania, 1915, p. 215.
" " Der Römisch Kaiserlichen Akademie der Naturforscher . . . Abhandlungen, Siebenter Theil," Nürnberg, 1759, pp. 162, 163.
·» Valmont de Bomare, " Dictionnaire raisonné universel," Paris, 1775, vol. üi, p. 118.
