Typical alchemical poultice

Typical of the products cooked in the alchemy kitchens of rudolf's labs was the following: 2 ounces of toads dried in the air and sun and reduced to powder, "the menstruum" of young girls, crystals of white arsenic, an ounce and a half of red arsenic, three drams of root of dittany, one dram of unpierced pearls, one dram of coral, one dram each of Eastern sapphire and Eastern emerald, two scruples of Eastern saffron. Several grains of musk could be added to provide a pleasant odour. Everything then had to be reduced to a fine powder, mixed together and added to rose water to make a paste. Then when the Sun and moon were in Scorpio or when the Moon was new, the paste had to be fashioned around an amulet and worn around the neck or close to the heart. This would not only preserve one from the plague but would make the body less susceptible to venereal or astral diseases. Rudolf was known to wear many such amulets and poison-drawing poultices. Freaky!