[965] Universal Lexicon, vol. xlix. p. 1340.
[966] Traité de la Chemie, par N. le Febure. Leyde, 1669, 2 vols. 12mo,
i. p. 474.
[967] In his notes to Blumentrost’s Haus- und Reise-apotheke. Leipzig,
1716, 8vo, cap. 16, p. 47.
[968] Succincta Medicorum Hungariæ et Transilvaniæ Biographia, ex
adversariis St. Wespremi. Wien, 1778, 8vo, p. 213.
[969] Selectiora remedia multiplici usu comprobata, quæ inter secreta
medica jure recenseas. In page 6 the following passage occurs: “For the
gout in the hands and the feet. As the wonderful virtue of the remedy
given below has been confirmed to me by the cases of many, I shall
relate by what good fortune I happened to meet with it. In the year
1606 I saw among the books of Francis Podacather, of a noble Cyprian
family, with whom I was extremely intimate, a very old breviary, which
he held in high veneration, because, he said, it had been presented
by St. Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, to some of his ancestors, as a
testimony of the friendship which subsisted between them. In the
beginning of this book he showed me a remedy for the gout written by
the queen’s own hand, in the following words, which I copied:--
“‘I Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, being very infirm and much troubled
with the gout in the seventy-second year of my age, used for a year
this receipt given to me by an ancient hermit whom I never saw before
nor since; and was not only cured, but recovered my strength, and
appeared to all so remarkably beautiful, that the king of Poland asked
me in marriage, he being a widower and I a widow. I however refused
him for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ, from one of whose angels I
believe I received the remedy. The receipt is as follows:
“‘℞. Take of aqua vitæ, four times distilled, three parts, and of
the tops and flowers of rosemary two parts: put these together in a
close vessel, let them stand in a gentle heat fifty hours, and then
distil them. Take one dram of this in the morning once every week,
either in your food or drink, and let your face and the diseased
limb be washed with it every morning.
“‘It renovates the strength, brightens the spirits, purifies the marrow
and nerves, restores and preserves the sight, and prolongs life.’ Thus
far from the Breviary.”--Then follows a confirmation which Prevot gives
from his own experience.
[970] Medicorum Hungariæ Biographia, _ut supra_, p. 214.
[971] The book of Zapata, who is not noticed in the Gelehrten
Lexicon, was printed at Rome, as Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan.
vol. i. p. 368, in the year 1586; and other editions are mentioned
in Boerhavii Methodus Studii Medici, p. 728 and 869. I have now
before me, Joh. Bapt. Zapatæ, Medici Romani, Mirabilia seu Secreta
Medico-chirurgica--per Davidem Spleissium. Ulmiæ, 1696. The passage
above alluded to occurs in page 49.