Note 12 — ORATION.
Reading edition
Corroborative evidence of the esteem in which this remedy was held will be found in Macaulay’s account of the death scene of Charles II.:—“All the medical men of note in London were summoned. Several of the prescriptions have been preserved; one of them is signed by fourteen doctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head. A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth.”
[This volatile salt is thus described in the Dictionares des Drogues: Amsterdam, 1716. “L’Usnée humaine contient beaucoup de sel volatil et d’huile; elle ne bouillonne point avec les acides.”]