A Diuretic Acid Julep.
Take Rhenish Wine 1 pint; depurated Juices of Pellitory of the Wall, and of Lemons each 2 ounces; Cleaver Water, French Brandy, Syrup of the Five opening Roots, each 4 ounces, mix.
Acid, diuretic Salts, fuse the Blood, and precipitate it into Serum, just as sour Liquors do, when poured into boiling Milk. But this effect is not wrought upon all alike, nor equally upon any. In a sound Constitution, or one that not far from it, the Salt of the Blood is partly fixt, partly nitrous, and partly volatile. Also in some Scorbutic, and some Hydropic Persons, it's mostly fix'd; wherefore in all these recited Cases, your Diuretics consisting of an acid Salt, are used with Success.
But in Rheumatic Affections, and those Scurvies where the Fixt salt Particles of the Blood are carried up to a State of Fluxion, and the Volatile deprest (which is a usual Case) acidulate Remedies are apt to do more hurt than good, forasmuch as they further pervert the Blood (which was too much degenerated before) from an healthy Crasis. And here Medicines that partake of fixt and volatile Salts, ought rather to be made use of.
The Dose is four or six ounces.
Thomas Fuller
Pharmacopeia Extemporanea 1710