[Loch-Ruadh] Word of the Day, Feb. 28

[Cait O'Hara]

medicinal days

The sixth, eighth, tenth, twelfth, sixteenth, eighteenth, etc. days of a disease, so called because according to Hippocrates, no crisis occurs on these days, and medicine may be safely administered.
--Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Pgrase and Fable, 1898

Birthday of French essayist Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), who wrote that physicians gave their pills in odd numbers, appointed particular days in the year for taking medicine, gathered their simples [herbs] at certain hours, assumed austere, and even severe looks, and prescribed, among their choice drugs, "the left foot of a tortoise, the liver of a mole, and blood drawn from under the wing of a white pigeon."  A contemporary of Montaigne added, "Above all things, next to grammar, a physitian must have surely his astronomy, to know how, when, and at what time, every medicine ought to be administered."






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