opodeldoc

Opodeldoc is a sort of liniment invented, or at least named, by the physician Paracelsus.

Opodeldoc is a formulation invented by the Renaissance physician Paracelsus.

In 1780, a London paper carried an advertisement listing the difficulties for which the Opodeldoc was a "speedy and certain cure."

The name Old Opodeldoc was formerly used as a standard name for a stock character who was a physician, especially when played as a comic figure.

This 16th-century continental chemist-physician, who introduced many mineral remedies into the materia medica, had coined the word "opodeldoc" to apply to various medical plasters.

Paracelsus's opodeldoc was a mixture of soap in alcohol, to which camphor and sometimes a number of herbal essences, most notably wormwood, were added.

The Pharmacopoeia of the United States (U.S.P.) gives a recipe for opodeldoc that contains:

When Dalby's Carminative and Steer's Opodeldoc came on the market in the 1780's, it was Francis Newbery who had them for sale.

The other two, Steer's Opodeldoc and Dalby's Carminative, did not reach the market before this colonial journal fell prey to the heightening tensions of early 1776.

Kurt Peters speculates that the curious name opodeldoc was concocted by Paracelsus from syllables from the words "opoponax, bdellium, and aristolochia."

A quarter of a century after the patenting of the Balsam, there appeared for sale to British ailing a remedy called Dr. Steer's Celebrated Opodeldoc.

Josef Švejk, protagonist of Jaroslav Hašek's novel The Good Soldier Švejk, treats his rheumatism with Opodeldoc.

For example, in 1835 the Free Will Glass Manufactory was making "Godfrey's Cordial," "Turlington's Balsam," and "Opodeldoc Bitters bottles."

Dr. Steer is a shadowy rider of a vigorous steed, for although the doctor has left but a faint personal impact upon the historical record, Opodeldoc has pranced through medical history since the time of Paracelsus.

I always said let her money go and be jolly without it," cried Toady, who, in his character of wounded hero, reposed with a lordly air on the sofa, enjoying the fragrance of the opodeldoc with which his strained wrists were bandaged. "

Edgar Allan Poe used "Oppodeldoc" as a pseudonym for a character in the short story "The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq." Steer's Opodeldoc was a patent medicine that was widely promoted during Poe's life.

Twelve-year-old spelling whiz Arvind Mahankali of Bayside, Queens, barely bats an eyelash at words like distelfink, phrontistery, opodeldoc and uayeb, all of which he has successfully dispatched at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, where he placed third last week, the second time in two years.

A Beverly, Massachusetts, druggist, Robert Rantoul, in 1799 ordered from London filled boxes and bottles of Anderson's Pills, Bateman's Drops, Steer's Opodeldoc, and Turlington's Balsam, along with the empty vials in which to put British Oil and Essence of Peppermint.