Unusual words 13 Calomel

Calomel is apparently a colourless, white or brown tasteless compound, Hg2Cl2, used as a purgative and insecticide. It is also called mercurous chloride.

On page 98 of Bryant's life of Macaulay, he says that Macaulay's doctor (Bright) prescribed it. It is referred to in these places

... suddenly addressing the prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil....

Bleak House by Dickens

The latter was a feeble child, and it was only by prodigious quantities of calomel that Lady Southdown was able to keep him in life at all.

Vanity Fair by Thackeray

Unusual words 11 Philibeg or Filibeg

In the introduction to a later edition of Arthur Bryant's life of Macaulay he quotes TBM saying (xviii) "There were three or four Highland Chiefs in kilts, plaids and philibegs with eagles plumes in their hats, dirks and pistols at their sides, and claymores in their hands."

Philibeg or Filibeg refers to the kilt worn by Scottish Highlanders [from Scottish Gaelic fēileadhbeag, from fēileadh kilt + beag small]

Babington Macaulay on the Sabbath

Man, man is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigour. Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger, and healthier, and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorer.

Part of a speech given on May 22, 1846, in the House of Commons