Note 28 — WILLIAM ROUGHEAD (continued 6)

Mr. C.J.S. Thompson, in his Mystery and Romance of Alchemy and Pharmacy, remarks, "About the sixteenth century philtres came to be compounded and sold by the apothecaries, who doubtless derived from them a lucrative profit. Favourite ingredients with these later practitioners were mandragora, cantharides, and vervain, which were supposed to have Satanic properties. They were mixed with other herbs said to have an aphrodisiac effect; also man's gall, the eyes of a black cat, and the blood of a lapwing, bat, or goat." The same authority states that in the seventeenth century "Hoffman's Water of Magnanimity," compounded of winged ants, was a popular specific.—ED.