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Catholicon (electuary)


In pre-modern medicine, catholicon was a soft electuary, so called as being supposedly universal in its curative and prophylactic abilities (see panacea); or a purger of all humours.

Different authors have given different recipes for catholicon. That called Catholicon Nicholai was the most common in use; it consisted of sixteen ingredients, the chief being tamarinds, cassia, senna, and rhubarb. It was said to be double (catholicon duplicatum or duplex) when there was a double portion of senna and rhubarb. The catholicon for clysters, which was injected into the rectum, only differed from this in that it had no rhubarb, and that honey was used instead of sugar when mixing the drug with water in forming the electuary.

An example recipe for catholicon duplicatum follows:

Spirit of Mindererus, a solution of ammonium acetate in alcohol, was also considered a catholicon among pre-modern surgeons.

The term catholicon also specifically referred to remedies for women. For example, aurum vitae, or the gold of life, was a panacean catholicon used in the middle 18th century and later. It consisted of gold and corrosive sublimate.

By the 19th century, catholicons had fallen into disuse.

Death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.

Besides, on the said date, a good cleaning clyster, composed of double catholicon, rhubarb, with honey of roses, and other ingredients, according to prescription, to scour, wash and clean the lower abdomen of Mr. Argan, thirty sols.


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