Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), British alchemist and physician. Digby helped to found the Royal Society in 1665 and published extensively including Of the Body and of the Soul (1644) and Recipts in Physick and Chirurgery (1668). He was continually distracted from science, serving as a soldier in the English Civil War, an ambassador, a maritime privateer and Chancellor to Queen Henrietta Maria. Digby also promoted a wound-curing powder of sympathy", which was to be applied to the blood- stained clothing of an injured person. The recipe for this powder (which was iron II sulphate) was given to him by a mysterious oriental person he met on his travels."