“An ancient Irish prescription calls for seven balls of ground ivy, vervain, eye-bright, groundsel, foxglove, bark of elder tree, and young shoots of hawthorn well mixed together. These are made into a potion with bog water and salt and boiled in a vessel with a piece of money and an elf stone. The elf stone was an ancient arrow head dug up on the site of an old battlefield. When once lifted, it must never be permitted to touch the ground if it was to retain its wondrous virtues. If it was allowed to fall from the spade to the earth, it lost its magic power. Most of the plants named in the prescription are used more or less commonly today.”
George Niles Hoffman, The Pharmaceutical Era, Volume 55, 1922
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