Letter 0947

Dale asks Sloane for thoughts regarding Marlow’s ‘Bengala Bean’. Specifically: is it an excrescence of some sort of myrobalan? Dale has seen a drug called ‘Vermiclule’, which seemed artificial: what did Sloane think of it and its uses? Lastly: does Marlow’s Goan root have any virtues? Samuel Dale was an apothecary, botanist, and physician who contributed several articles to the Philosophical Transactions. He was John Ray’s executor and good friend, and from Dale’s letters to Sloane we learn many details of Ray’s final moments (G. S. Boulger, Dale, Samuel (bap. 1659, d. 1739), rev. Juanita Burnby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7016, accessed 5 July 2013]).