Elixir for a long life / Elixir de longue vie

Manuscript recipe for "elixir for a long life". This version in French, clearly written out with method, ingredients and contemporary provenance. Description provided by Leo Cadogan Rare Books: "Manuscript of the “elixir for a long life”, the well-known receipt purported to be found in the papers of a Swedish doctor who lived (in the present version) to the age of 103, his grandmother living to 136, his mother to 107 and his father to 103. The ingredients are aloes, zedoary, white agaric, gentian, saffron, rhubarb, and theriaque of Venice. A version (manuscript) of this text has been dated back to c.1710. The receipt did go into print, but possibly not until the nineteenth century, and manuscript copying seems to have been crucial to its distribution - with all the variations that this could produce. [This] manuscript is written on paper apparently watermarked from Normandy. It has a 24-line section at end titled ‘Proprietez de cet elixir’ (for which there is no version in the c.1710 manuscript). This part ends with a note stating that the receipt was sent to a Mr. Desgranges, officer in Caen, by aMr. Béranger, officer in Cherbourg (both cities in Normandy), that it was known to the English, who preferred it to their best elixirs, and that an English lord (”un Mylord”) had told one of these officers that their doctors found it incomparable."

1800s

1 sheet

Purchased in July 2018