HERB - Redacting Porta's Eye Wash

[Gaylin Walli]

For some crazy reason this weekend, I thought to try redacting
Giamattista della Porta's "Excellent Remedy for the Eyes" from
his Eight Book of Natural Magick. Cooking recipes seem almost
easier by comparison, simply because more people have played
with them and decide which word means rabbit and so forth.

So, now that I've figured out that a drachm isn't the same
thing as a drachma (see previous notes on measurements), I've
got a few questions that my dictionaries and web searches
can't answer (or did answer, but I still have questions).

One of the ingredients in the recipe is called, oddly to me,
"Tutty" and is prepared by heating and cooling repeatedly in
Rose water. My dictonaries say "tutty" is an impure zinc oxide.
As best I can find in online sources, this is true, however, a
writeup in a rare book collection on an OOP opthamology book
from 1745 says

  "The 'efficacious medicine' [recommended in this book] for
  all cases of ophthalmia was a once-secret liniment compounded
  of viper fat, aloes, and hematite. The principal ingredient,
  tutty of crude zinc oxide obtained from the flues of smelting
  furnaces, was known and used by the earliest Arabic ophthalmologists.
  The liniment closely resembles several given more than a
  century before by the anonymous A. T. in the home-remedy book,
  A rich storehouse (368).

Now this other book, "A rich storehouse or treasurie for the
diseased" was published in 1616 and I only have this secondary
mention of Tutty preparations in it. The instructions in Porta's
version calls for Tutty and Aloe prepared together in Rose water,
but does that mean that it's calling for just the zinc oxide (as
pure as may be obtained) and then asking you to prepare it? Or
is it calling for a previously prepared mixture that you enhance
with additional Aloe and such? I suspect the former and not the
later, but I'm wiling to accept advice on this.

I've more questions about the actual herbs, but I figured I'd
ask about tutty first in case I was missing something and it
really was some plant material that I wasn't familiar with.

Thanks in advance, sorry it was so long, hope everyone's weekend
was good!

Jasmine

Jasmine de Cordoba, Midrealm (Metro-Detroit area of Michigan)
jasmine at infoengine.com or g.walli at infoengine.com

"Si enim alicui placet mea devotio, gaudebo; si autem
nulli placet, memet ipsam tamen juvat quod feci."
-- Hroswith of Gandersheim
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