Dr. Boerhave's Fever Powder

[ Dr. Boerhave's Fever Powder ] Sarah Creighton Wilkins

Contributors
Contributor Role
Compiler
Contributor Name
Sarah Creighton Wilkins
Contributor Role
Author
Contributor Name
Dr. Boerhaave

Date: 1818/01/01

Publication Format
Manuscript

Type
Medicine

Symptoms
fever

Ingredients
nitre
camphor
saffron
cochineal

Places
Halifax
Nova Scotia
Ireland

Source: Manuscript Notebook of Sarah Creighton Wilkins
Institution: Nova Scotia Archives | Source Origin: MacDonald Family Fonds | Reference: MG 1 No. 1 / Microfilm Reel 10,618

Description

A hand-written letter to the new Times with Dr. Herman Boerhaave's remedy for fever powder. Dutch physician Boerhaave's remedy was well known and was published also in John Wesley's 1747 Primitive Physic, a lay manual reprinted in numerous editions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.


Images
Transcription

To the Editor of the new Times 1818

{...}  the afflicting {...} from Ireland
respecting the Fever have suggested
the propriety of sending you a receipt
efficatious Fever powder of the use {...}
{...} Dr. Boerhave,  Ten grains of
which may be taken every 4 hours
this doze for an Adult
8 onces of Nitre
¼ once of Camphor
½ a ¼ of an once of Saffron
8   grains of Cochineal

Pound them together & keep them
in a dry bottle

Annotations
After 940 editions, The Daily Universal Register was renamed the Times on 1 January 1788.
Herman Boerhaave was a Dutch physician known as "the father of physiology." He lectured at the University of Leiden.
Potassium nitrate in mineral form, known also as saltpeter or saltpetre. (Also niter)
A red dye derived from insects of the same name.