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The works of Glauber contain accounts of many discoveries that have been claimed by the chemists of our own day; he recommends the use of muriatic acid in sea scurvy, and describes an apparatus for its preparation exactly similar to that which has been extolled as the invention of Wolff; he also notices the production of Pyro-acetic Acid, under the title of “Vinegar of Wood,” so that the fact of the identity of this acid and Vinegar, so lately announced by Vauquelin as a New Discovery, was evidently known to Glauber nearly two centuries ago.

We have within the last few years heard much of the efficacy of Henbane fumigations in the tooth-ache, an application which may be easily shewn to be the revival only of a very ancient practice.^[71]

But while we might thus proceed to annul many other claims for originality, we ought not to close our eyes to the fallacies to which such investigations are peculiarly exposed. Nothing is more easy than to invest the doubtful sentence of an obscure author with an interpretation best adapted for the support of a favourite theory, and instances might be adduced where the medical antiquarian^[72] has by violence and distortion forced the most contradictory passages into his service; treating, in short, the oracles of Physic just as Lord Peter treated his father’s will in the Tale of a Tub,—determined to discover the word “Shoulder Knots,” he picks it out, letter by letter, and is even at last obliged to substitute C for K in the orthography.