CHEMICAL LEXICON.

A.

Alces Elk, from the Greek alke strength, is a great beast: a gregarious, cloven-hoofed animal, approaching the figure of a stag, though it is larger than one, by nature timid, and prone to the comitial disease epilepsy. They report that not every animal of this species is seized by the epileptic malady, and that the female’s hoof does not possess this power at all, but only the male’s; and not the calf’s, but the adult’s, and that at the time when it begins to be moved toward mating (between the feast of the Assumption of Mary and her Nativity). They attribute more power to the posterior hooves than to the anterior, and of these, some attribute it to the right foot (which is more common), others to the left. There are those who maintain these hooves must be cut from the animal while it is still alive, at the aforementioned time. Andreas Baccius, book on the Elk.

Physicians use the hoof and the nerves in a dose from half a scruple to one scruple with a specific vehicle.

The hoof is celebrated for a specific virtue against epilepsy