Chalybeate Powder.
Take rust of Iron powder'd and searced 8 scruples; Salt of Steel, Saffron, Ginger, each 1 scruple; Aniseed 5 scruples; Mace 4 scruples; white Sugar 10 scruples, make all into a Powder for 20 Doses.
Chalybeates are Instar Omnium, for a Cachexie, Green Sickness, Obstructions, Jaundise, Dropsie, and all Diseases whatsoever owing their Origin from Crudity and Poverty of the Blood. For they raise a new Fermentation; and agitate, beat up , mix, depurate and exalt the Mass of Blood, in such a manner, that whereas before it wanted the rich red Globuli, and look'd pale and watery, it is by degrees, render'd pure red, spirituous, brisk, spumous and sparkling. Also whereas the unconcocted, slimy Pituita, having daub'd up the Passages, and made Obstructions; and so the Blood was forced to circulate unequally, here swiftly, there slowly, Steel breaks its way thro' those Obstructions, and opens the ways, and causes the Blood to run, pass and re-pass freely, and vividly, through all the minutest Canals and Rivulets of the Body, so as to bring and distribute, equally and benignly, Nourishment, Heat and Life, to every individual particle of the Machine.
But if the condition of the Blood be such as is altogether uncapable of the requisite, lusty juvenile Fermentation, because of its Principles being grown old, the Fibres worn out, the Tone broken, the Passages fallen in, and the whole Humane Fabric in an old ruinous State. In vain then, do we expect much from a Remedy though so generous and powerful an one as Chalybeates are. 'Twould be as easie to reduce dead Vinegar into sweet Wine, a withered Rose into a fresh and florid one, yea to turn old Mutton into Lamb, or old Beef into Veal. As to my own part, I ingenuously confess, that looking back, and carefully calling to mind the Series of my Practice, 1 don't remember, that I ever observed any great Advantage accrue to Antient People, from the use of Chalybeates.
Thomas Fuller
Pharmacopeia Extemporanea 1710