PHYSIC AND ASTRONOMY.

According to a contemporary,-

“The medical profession of Paris have resolved to give a grand dinner to Dr. Lescarbault, the discoverer of the new planet between Mercury and the Sun. It is to take place at the Hotel du Louvre.”

Is the above announcement quite correct? May not the discovery on account whereof the Parisian medical men are going to feast Dr. Lescarbault have been that of a new pill? The planet Mercury is rather out of the way of modern doctors, who prescribe physic irrespectively of the influence of the stars. The mineral so called, however, is quite in their line, and may well be conceived to enter into the composition of the pill which has been discovered by Dr. Lescarbault. Sol, in the nomenclature of the elder chemists, was the scientific term for aurum, and ancient pharmacy had its aurum potabile; gold dissolved and mixed with oil of rosemary, which – without, of course, intending a prospective pun – the old apothecaries used to call a sovereign remedy. Dr. Lescarbault’s new pill, for the invention whereof the Faculty of Paris proposes to give his something better than black dose, may consist of mercury, and gold in combination with some substance wherewith he has found it capable of forming a novel compound, possessing medicinal properties. The discoverer of a new planet, and better at the hands of the medical profession, which still has to seek a cure for cancer, hydrophobia, and some other diseases, and can by no means boast of as many new pills as the new planets which reflect lustre upon Astronomy.

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