B544 <=> B546 [BTG XXXI Last sojourn to Earth, p. 545]

“According to the notions there, this pharmacist was already an old being and his character was very kind, and even, so to say, obliging.

“He belonged to what is called there the ‘Jewish faith.’

“It is necessary to tell you here, that there, on almost all the continents at the present time, these pharmacists are, why I don’t know, mostly beings belonging to the Jewish faith.

“And so . . . when I used to go to that second chief place of Russia, where that acquaintance of mine, the pharmacist, existed, I would always call on him and there in the back room of his pharmacy, which as a rule they call a ‘laboratory,’ I used to chat with him about every kind of ‘fiddle-faddle.’

“Once when I went as usual into this said laboratory of his, I saw that he was pounding something in a mortar, and, as is usually done there on these occasions, I inquired what he was doing.

“To this he replied to me thus:

’I am pounding burnt sugar for this prescription,’ and here he handed me a scrap of paper on which the usual prescription was written of a widely spread medicinal means existing there under the name of ‘Dover’s powder.

“This powder is called there ‘Dover’s, because it was invented by a certain Englishman whose name was Dover, and it is used there chiefly for coughs.

“I read the prescription he gave me and I saw that sugar was no part of it, and much less burnt. . . Whereupon I expressed to him my amazed perplexity.

“Whereat, with a good-natured smile, he answered me, ‘Of course sugar has no part in this prescription, but instead it does contain a certain percentage of “opium.”’

“And he further explained as follows: