Oprechte Haarlemmerolie

Oprechte Haarlemmerolie is a brown, pungent liquid of terebinth oil, sulphur and herbs, sold in a narrow bottle of dark glass about the size of a finger. The bottle carries the arms of Tilly in white, a sword between stars, with the word HARLEMENSIS and the signature of C. de Koning Tilly, and it comes in a long brown and cream carton printed 'Anno 1696'. It is taken a few drops at a time, or rubbed on the skin.

Its inventor, Claes Tilly, was a schoolmaster who read Latin and Greek and the works of Paracelsus. Remedies of sulphur dissolved in turpentine were already in the pharmacopoeias of his day, and his own, called medicamentum gratia probatum, the remedy approved by grace, was a secret blend of them. Haarlem allowed him to make and sell it in 1696, and an early handbill promised relief from fevers, coughs, stones, scurvy and worms with fifteen drops every other day.

Sailors and missionaries took the little bottles around the world, and they still turn up in excavations around the world. The name of the town became the name of the remedy, and then a figure of speech: in Dutch, anything said to cure every problem is 'haarlemmerolie'. Imitators followed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the firm fought them in the courts and printed a cipher on its labels that only it could read.

The secret passed through eleven generations of Tilly's step-descendants, and one of the family once leaked a false recipe containing linseed oil so that copies could be spotted. Modern rules no longer allow it to be sold as a medicine, and it is offered as a household remedy, chiefly for colds. Since 2017 the firm has belonged to new owners outside Haarlem, but the oil is still sold in its dark bottle under the name of C. de Koning Tilly.