You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding.

Whether or not he believed in the philosopher's elixir is of very little consequence.

He is said to have resided most frequently at Kufa, where he prepared the "elixir," but, according to others, he never spent long in one place, having reason to keep his whereabouts unknown.

It is at the lastnamed spot that the various pharmaceutical preparations are now manufactured for which they are famous (though sold only since about 1840) - the Elixir, the Boule d'acier (a mineral paste or salve), and the celebrated liqueur.

In consequence, his lecture-room was thronged with people of all sorts, anxious to hear a man who shunned the barren obscurities of the alchemists, and did not regard the quest of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life as the sole end of his science.