alarming ideas, this medicine should be described as "mineral solution."
It is universally recognised that Fowler introduced the modern medicinal employment of arsenic, but it should in fairness be remembered that he was guided to his discovery by a quack remedy, as lie himself fully acknowledged.
The Liquor Arsenici Chloridi, P.L., was adopted from a formula of Dr. F. de Valangin, a Swiss doctor who qualified in England in 1765. He made a quantity and presented it to the Apothecaries' Hall, where it was sold for some time under the name of Solvent Mineral.
Friar's Balsam,
Tinct. Benzoin Co., was a copy of Ward's Balsam, which itself was only the adaptation of compounds which had been for a long time sold under the names of Friar's Balsam, Commander's Balsam, Jesuit's Drops, Turlington's Drops, and Traumatic Balsam. It was under the last name that it first appeared in the P.L. of 1746. This was only the Latinised name of Wound Balsam, another old designation of a similar preparation.
It is not known how the still popular name for this preparation, Friar's Balsam, originated. It is included in the Schedule to the Medicine Stamp Act of 1812, suggesting that at that time it was regarded as a proprietary medicine.
A correspondent of The Chemist and Druggist (P. F. R., April 15, 1885) quoted from the Western Antiquary, 1884, page 136, the curious item that a Portuguese merchant named Peter de Frias obtained from the Viceroy of Peru, about the year 1581, the fruit of a balm or balsam. It is not an impossible
