This is a quiz. Can you best it? Will you ace it? Is your scientific knowledge sound? What about of 18th c. knowledge?
To what does this phrase, taken from a 1703 English diary, refer?
"Balsamic Panspermicall Panacea Juice of Heaven"
If ever there was a need for our sub-category, "where miscellany thrive," this might be it.
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Ooh ooh -- salad dressing!!
Salad dressing?
Newman's Own, you should say.
I actually guessed right even before I googled it.
Wait, what did you guess rev.enki? I tried to google it too (because come on, why try to figure it out myself?) but only found returns on this site. Certainly not salad dressing. I'd say, errr, an animal effluent?
I'm guessing rain - it is life-giving, although "Balsamic Panspermicall Panacea" is a bit over the top, and "Juice of Heaven" matches a liquid that falls from the sky.
I found the abstract, which does give you a bit of a clue, but have to pay for the article, so I didn't see what it actually is.
Something along the line of
"Wellness-enhancing" "Universal Life-Giving" "Wonder Medicine" "Rain/water from above/blessed water"
-- a medicine made from microbiotical organisms found in rain-drops?
Now, I'd have said wine. I don't think that salad dressing was popular in England in 1703, but I can definitely see the phrase in a 2008 ad campaign for balsamic vinegar pomegranete juice salad dressing with soy.
Matt XIV's regal intuitions were right. It was rain.