Mel Atticum Ex Monte Hymetto, c1745-1807

Description

Cardboard box and cup sealed with leather and plastic wrapping, containing honey from Mount Hymettus near Athens. From the Burges Collection.

Text on paper box labels reads ‘Catal. Mat. Med. p.127, no. 77’ and ‘MEL ATTICUM EX MONTE HYMETTO’.

Lemery says that ‘Raw Honey is apt to gripe and swell the Belly, but being clarified, it opens, cleanses, nourishes, and restores in Consumptions, is pectoral, diuretick, and one of the best Opthalmicks in the World’, and that ‘The Spirit of Honey is an excellent Aperitive, cools the violent Heat of Fevers, quenches Thirst, and strengthens the Stomach’.