Black Pills.
Take powder'd Elecampane, Orris, Aniseed, Sugar candy, each 1 dram; Liquid pitch 2 drams; or as much as is sufficient, make it into 36 Pills.
They attenuate, incide, warm, are admirable and approved by good Experience, to bring off the crude, tough Phlegm, sticking in the Throat and Chest. And to restore a tonic Vigour to the Lungs. But where there's a defluxion of thin Rheum, of a Catarrhal Fever, they may not to be used. The Dose is 6 Evening and Morning.
Thomas Fuller
Pharmacopeia Extemporanea 1710