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Aqua omnium florum

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Aqua omnium florum or all-flower water was water distilled from cow-dung in May, when the cows ate fresh grass with meadow flowers. It was also known less euphemistically as aqua stercoris vaccini stillatitia (distilled water of cow dung). This was used as a medicine to treat a variety of ailments including gout, rheumatism and tuberculosis.

The 17th century court physician George Bate favoured it and it appeared in the Pharmacopœia Bateana — Bate's Dispensatory. Recipes included:

cow dung, gathered in May, adding to it a third of white wine and then distilled

fresh cow-dung and snails with their shells bruised equal parts, mix and distill in a common still

℞ Fresh cow dung gathered in the morning; spring or rain water; mix and digest twenty-four hours, let it settle, and then decant the clear brown tincture.