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The history of popular medicines for the cure of Gout, will also furnish us with ample matter for the illustration of this subject. The celebrated Duke of Portland’s Powder was no other than the Diacentaureon of Cælius Aurelianus, or the Antidotos ex duobus Centaureæ generibus of Ætius,^[66] the receipt for which a friend of his Grace brought from Switzerland; into which country it had been probably introduced by the early medical writers, who had transcribed its virtues from the Greek volumes soon after their arrival into the western parts of Europe. The active ingredient of a no less celebrated remedy for the same disease, the Eau Medicinale,^[67] has been discovered to be the Colchicum Autumnale or Meadow Saffron; upon investigating the properties of this medicine, it was observed that similar effects in the cure of the gout were ascribed to a certain plant, called Hermodactyllus^[68] by Oribasius and Ætius, but more particularly by Alexander of Tralles,^[69] a physician of Asia Minor in the fourth century; an inquiry was accordingly instituted after this unknown plant, and upon procuring a specimen of it from Constantinople, it was actually found to be a species of Colchicum.