Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. I of II

By Author	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Title	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Language

Download this book: [ ASCII ]

Look for this book on Amazon

We have new books nearly every day.
If you would like a news letter once a week or once a month fill out this form and we will give you a summary of the books for that week or month by email.

Title: Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. I of II
Author: Wootton, A. C
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. I of II" ***

This book is indexed by ISYS Web Indexing system to allow the reader find any word or number within the document.

II ***

CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

[Illustration]

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

CHRONICLES OF
PHARMACY

A. C. WOOTTON

VOL. I

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1910

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,

BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

Pharmacy, or the art of selecting, extracting, preparing, and
compounding medicines from vegetable, animal, and mineral substances,
is an acquirement which must have been almost as ancient as man himself
on the earth. In experimenting with fruits, seeds, leaves, or roots
with a view to the discovery of varieties of food, our remote ancestors
would occasionally find some of these, which, though not tempting to
the palate, possessed this or that property the value of which would
soon come to be recognised. The tradition of these virtues would be
handed down from generation to generation, and would ultimately become,
by various means, the heritage of the conquering and civilising races.
Of the hundreds of drugs yielded by the vegetable kingdom, collected
from all parts of the world, and used as remedies, in some cases for
thousands of years, I do not know of a single one which can surely be
traced to any historic or scientific personage. It is possible in many
instances to ascertain the exact or approximate date when a particular
substance was introduced to our markets, and sometimes to name the
physician, explorer, merchant, or conqueror to whom we are indebted
for such an addition to our materia medica; but there is always a
history or a tradition behind our acquaintance with the new medicine,
going back to an undetermined past.

In modern dispensatories the ever increasing accumulation of chemical,
botanical, histological, and therapeutic notes has tended to crowd out
the historic paragraphs which brightened the older treatises. Perhaps
this result is inevitable, but it is none the less to be regretted on
account of both the student and the adept in the art of pharmacy. “I
have always thought,” wrote Ferdinand Hoefer in the Introduction to his
still valuable “History of Chemistry” (1842), “that the best method
of popularising scientific studies, generally so little attractive,
consists in presenting, as in a panorama, the different phases a
science has passed through from its origin to its present condition.”
No science nor, indeed, any single item of knowledge, can be properly
appreciated apart from the records of its evolution; and it is as
important to be acquainted with the errors and misleading theories
which have prevailed in regard to it, as with the steps by which real
progress has been made.

The history of drugs, investigations into their cultivation, their
commerce, their constitution, and their therapeutic effects, have
been dealt with by physicians and pharmacologists of the highest
eminence in both past and recent times. In Flückiger and Hanbury’s
“Pharmacographia” (Macmillan: 1874), earlier records were studied
with the most scrupulous care, and valuable new information acquired
by personal observation was presented. No other work of a similar
character was so original, so accurate, or so attractive as this. A
very important systematic study of drugs, profusely illustrated by
reproductions of photographs showing particularly the methods whereby
they are produced and brought to our markets, by Professor Tschirch
of Berne, is now in course of publication by Tauchnitz of Leipsic. In
these humble “Chronicles” it has been impossible to avoid entirely
occasional visits to the domain so efficiently occupied by these great
authorities; but as a rule the subjects they have made their own have
been regarded as outside the scope of this volume.

But the art of the apothecary, of pharmacy, as we should now say,
restricted to its narrowest signification, consists particularly of
the manipulation of drugs, the conversion of the raw material into the
manufactured product. The records of this art and mystery likewise go
back to the remotest periods of human history. In the course of ages
they become associated with magic, with theology, with alchemy, with
crimes and conscious frauds, with the strangest fancies, and dogmas,
and delusions, and with the severest science. Deities, kings, and
quacks, philosophers, priests, and poisoners, dreamers, seers, and
scientific chemists, have all helped to build the fabric of pharmacy,
and it is some features of their work which are imperfectly sketched in
these “Chronicles.”

My original intention when I began to collect the materials for this
book was simply to trace back to their authors the formulas of the most
popular of our medicines, and to recall those which have lost their
reputation. I thought, and still think, that an explanation of the
modification of processes and of the variation of the ingredients of
compounds would be useful, but I have not accomplished this design. I
have been tempted from it into various by-paths, and probably in them
have often erred, and certainly have missed many objects of interest. I
shall be grateful to any critic, better informed than myself, who will
correct me where I have gone astray, or refer me to information which
I ought to have given. I may not have the opportunity of utilising
suggestions myself; but all that I receive will be carefully collated,
and may assist some future writer.

A. C. WOOTTON.

4, SEYMOUR ROAD, FINCHLEY,
LONDON, N.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

As the author unhappily died while his book was still in the printer’s
hands, his friend, Mr. Peter MacEwan, editor of _The Chemist and
Druggist_, has been good enough to revise the proofs for press.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MYTHS OF PHARMACY 1

II. PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS 34

III. PHARMACY IN THE BIBLE 46

IV. THE PHARMACY OF HIPPOCRATES 77

V. FROM HIPPOCRATES TO GALEN 88

VI. ARAB PHARMACY 97

VII. FROM THE ARABS TO THE EUROPEANS 113

VIII. PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN 124

IX. MAGIC AND MEDICINE 157

X. DOGMAS AND DELUSIONS 174

XI. MASTERS IN PHARMACY 206

XII. ROYAL AND NOBLE PHARMACISTS 287

XIII. CHEMICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHARMACY 323

XIV. MEDICINES FROM THE METALS 376

ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

PAGE

Isis 3

Osiris 3

Apollo 7

Æsculapius 8

Arms of the Society of Apothecaries 10

Chiron the Centaur 15

Achillea Milfoil 16

Centaury 25

Phœnix 26

Unicorn 28

Dragon 31

The Dragon Tree 32

Papyrus Ebers 41

Hippocrates 85

Interior of Mosque, Cordova 99

Avicenna 108

Nuremberg Pharmacy 120

Sir Theodore Mayerne 145

“Lohn” 163

George Ernest Stahl 176

Marquise de Sévigné 192

Sir Kenelm Digby 194

Galen 211

Raymond Lully 222

Basil Valentine 225

Paracelsus 247, 248, 249

Culpepper 252

Culpepper’s House 253

J. B. Van Helmont 258

Glauber 262

Karl Wilhelm Scheele 267

Scheele’s Pharmacy 269

École de Pharmacie, Paris 271

Vauquelin 272

Joseph Pelletier 275

Baron Liebig 283

Sir Humphry Davy 284

Dr. William Heberden 291

Sir Walter Raleigh 311

Berkeley 315

Dr. Nehemiah Grew 343

Joseph Black 357

Johann Kunckel 362

Antimony cup 385

Dr. Thomas Sydenham 400

Thomas Willis, M.D. 401

Quicksilver bottles 408

ERRATA

VOL. I

Page 101. _Tenth line from top, for_ Mesué _read_ Mesuë.
„ 211. _Sixth line from bottom, reference should be_: Vol. II.,
63.
„ 217. _Eighth line from top, reference should be_: Vol. II.,
182.
„ 224. _Top line, reference should be_: Vol. II., 37.
„ 337. _Second line from top, additional reference_: Vol. II.,
179.
„ 419. _Ninth line from top, for_ Panchymagogum _read_
Panchymagogon.

CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

MYTHS OF PHARMACY

“Deorum immortalium inventioni consecrata est Ars
Medica.”--CICERO, _Tusculan. Quaest._, Lib. 3.

The earliest medical practitioners of any sort and among all peoples
would almost certainly be, as we should designate them, herbalists;
women in many cases. How they came to acquire knowledge of the healing
properties of herbs it is futile to discuss. Old writers often
guess that they got hints by watching animals. Their own curiosity,
suggesting experiments, would probably be a more fruitful source of
their science, and from accidents, both happy and fatal, they would
gradually acquire empiric learning.

Very soon these herb experts would begin to prepare their remedies so
as to make them easier to take or apply, making infusions, decoctions,
and ointments. Thus the Art of Pharmacy would be introduced.

The herbalists and pharmacists among primitive tribes would accumulate
facts and experience, and finding that their skill and services had
a market value which enabled them to live without so much hard work
as their neighbours, they would naturally surround their knowledge
with mystery, and keep it to themselves or in particular families. The
profession of medicine being thus started, the inevitable theories
of supernatural powers causing diseases would be encouraged, because
these would promote the mystery already gathering round the practice
of medicine, and from them would follow incantations, exorcisms,
the association of priestcraft with the healing arts, and the
superstitions, credulities, and impostures which have been its constant
companions, and which are still too much in evidence.

THE INVENTORS OF MEDICINE

Medicine and Magic consequently became intimately associated, and
useful facts, superstitious practices, and conscious and unconscious
deceptions, became blended into a mosaic which formed a fixed and
reverenced System of Medicine. Again the supernatural powers were
called in and the credit of the revelation of this Art, that is its
total fabric, was attributed either to a divine being who had brought
it from above, or to some gifted and inspired creature, who in
consequence had been admitted into the family of the deities.

In Egypt Osiris and Isis, brother and sister, and at the same time
husband and wife, were worshipped as the revealers of medical knowledge
among most other sciences. Formulas credited to Isis were in existence
in the time of Galen, but even that not too critical authority rejected
these traditions without hesitation. In ancient Egypt, however, the
priests who held in their possession all the secrets of medicine
claimed Isis as the founder of their science. Some old legends
explained that she acquired her knowledge of medicine from an angel
named Amnael, one of the sons of God of whom we read in the book of
Genesis. The science thus imparted to her was the price she exacted
from him for the surrender of herself to him. The son of Isis, Horus,
was identified by the Greeks with their Apollo, and to him also the
discovery of medicine is attributed.

[Illustration: ISIS.

OSIRIS.

From the Collection of Medals and other Antiquities of Casalius (17th
century).

In Leclerc’s _History of Medicine_.
]

The legend which associated “the sons of God” with the daughters
of men before the Flood, and the suggestion that they imparted a
knowledge of medicine to the inhabitants of the earth, is traceable
in the traditions of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Persians,
as well as in Jewish literature. In the 6th chapter of Genesis it is
said that “they saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all that they chose.” From these unions came the
race of giants, and the wickedness of man so “great in the earth”
that the destruction of the race by the Flood resulted. The apocryphal
Book of Enoch, composed, it is agreed, about 100 or 150 years before
the birth of Christ, is very definite in regard to this legend,
showing that it was current among the Jews at that period. We read in
that Book, that “They (the angels) dwelt with them and taught them
sorcery, enchantments, the properties of roots and trees, magic signs,
and the art of observing the stars.” Alluding to one of these angels
particularly it is said “he taught them the use of the bracelets and
ornaments, the art of painting, of painting the eyelashes, the uses
of precious stones, and all sorts of tinctures, so that the world was
corrupted.”

HERMES.

With Osiris and Isis is always associated the Egyptian Thoth whom the
Greeks called Hermes, and who is also identified with Mercury. He was
described as the friend, or the secretary, of Osiris. Eusebius quotes
an earlier author who identified Hermes with Moses; but if Moses was
the inventor of medicine and all other sciences it would be hardly
exact to speak of him as “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”
Thoth, who is also claimed as a Phoenician, as Canaan the son of Ham,
and as an associate of Saturn, attained perhaps the greatest fame
as an inventor of medicine. He was the presumed author of the six
sacred books which the Egyptian priests were bound to follow in their
treatment of the sick. One of these books was specially devoted to
pharmacy.

Thoth, or Hermes, is supposed to have invented alchemy as well as
medicine, the art of writing, arithmetic, laws, music, and the
cultivation of the olive. According to Jamblicus, who wrote on the
mysteries of Egypt in the reign of the Emperor Julian, the Egyptian
priests then recognised forty-two books as the genuine works of Hermes.
Six of these dealt respectively with anatomy, diseases in general,
women’s complaints, eye diseases, surgery, and the preparation of
remedies. Jamblicus is not sure of their authenticity, and, as already
stated, Galen uncompromisingly declares them to be apocryphal. Other
writers are far less modest than Jamblicus in their estimates of the
number of the writings of Hermes. Seleucus totals them at 20,000, and
Manethon says 38,000.

The legend of Hermes apparently grew up among the Alexandrian writers
of the first century. It was from them that his surname Trismegistus
(thrice-great) originated. It was pretended that in the old Egyptian
temples the works of Hermes were kept on papyri, and that the priests
in treating diseases were bound to follow his directions implicitly.
If they did, and the patient died, they were exonerated; but if they
departed from the written instructions they were liable to be condemned
to death, even though the patient recovered.

It is hardly necessary to say that in the preceding paragraph no
attempt has been made to discuss modern researches on ancient beliefs.
Greek scholars, for example, trace the Greek Hermes to an Indian
source, and assume the existence of two gods of the same name.

BACCHUS, AMMON, AND ZOROASTER.

Bacchus, King of Assyria, and subsequently a deity, was claimed by some
of the Eastern nations as the discoverer of medicine. He is supposed
to have taught the medicinal value of the ivy, but it is more likely
that he owes his medical reputation to his supposed invention of wine.
Some old writers identify him with Noah. Hammon, or Ammon, or Amen,
traced to Ham, the second son of Noah, has been honoured as having
originated medicine in Egypt. Some attribute the name of sal ammoniac
to the temple of Ammon in the Libyan oasis, on the theory that it
was first produced there from the dung of camels. Gum ammoniacum is
similarly supposed to have been the gum of a shrub which grew in that
locality. Zoroaster, who gave the Persians their religious system, is
also counted among the inventors of medicine, perhaps because he was so
generally regarded as the discoverer of magic.

APOLLO.

Apollo, the reputed god of medicine among the Greeks, was the son of
Jupiter and Latona. His divinity became associated with the sun, and
his arrows, which often caused sudden death were, according to modern
expounders of ancient myths, only the rays of the sun. Many of his
attributes were similar to those which the Egyptians credited to Horus,
the son of Osiris and Isis, and it is evident that the Egyptian legend
was incorporated with that of the early Greeks. Besides being the god
of medicine Apollo was the deity of music, poetry, and eloquence,
and he was honoured as the inventor of all these arts. He evidently
possessed the jealousy of the artist in an abundant degree, for after
his musical competition with Pan, Apollo playing the lyre and Pan
the flute, when Tmolus, the arbiter, had awarded the victory to the
former, Midas ventured to disagree with that opinion, and was thereupon
provided with a pair of asses’ ears. Marsyas, another flute player,
having challenged Apollo, was burnt alive.

[Illustration: APOLLO.]

Peon, sometimes identified with Apollo, was the physician of Olympus.
He is said to have first practised in Egypt. In the fifth book of the
‘Iliad’ Homer describes how he cured the wound which Diomed had given
to Mars:--

--Peon sprinkling heavenly balm around,
Assuaged the glowing pangs and closed the wound.

ÆSCULAPIUS.

Æsculapius, son of Apollo and Coronis, had a more immediate connection
with medicine than his father. He was taught its mysteries by Chiron
the Centaur, another of the legendary inventors of the art, who
also taught Achilles and others. Æsculapius became so skilful that
Castor and Pollux insisted on his accompanying the expedition of the
Argonauts. Ultimately he acquired the power of restoring the dead to
life. But this perfection of his art was his ruin.

[Illustration: ÆSCULAPIUS.

From the Casalius Collection of Medals, &c. (17th century).

From the Louvre Statue, Paris.
]

Pluto, alarmed for the future of his own dominions, complained to
Jupiter, and the Olympian ruler slew Æsculapius with a thunderbolt.
Apollo was so incensed at this cruel judgment that he killed the
Cyclops who had forged the thunderbolt. For this act of rebellion
Apollo was banished from Olympia and spent nine years on earth, for
some time as a shepherd in the service of the king of Thessaly. It was
during this period that the story of his adventure with Daphne, told
by Ovid, and from which the quotation on

THE ARMS OF THE SOCIETY OF APOTHECARIES

(italicised below) is taken, occurred. Ovid relates that Apollo,
meeting Cupid, jeered at his child’s bows and arrows as mere
playthings. In revenge Cupid forged two arrows, one of gold and the
other of lead. The golden one he shot at Apollo, to excite desire; the
leaden arrow, which repelled desire, was shot at Daphne. The legend
ends by the nymph being metamorphosed into a laurel which Apollo
thenceforth wore as a wreath. One of the incidents narrated by Ovid
represents the god telling the nymph who he is. Dryden’s version makes
him say:

Perhaps thou knowest not my superior state
And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.

A somewhat uncouth method of seeking to ingratiate himself with the
reluctant lady. Among his attainments Apollo says:

Invention medicina meum est, _Opiferque per orbem
Dicor_, et herbam subjecta potentia nobis.

Dryden versifies these lines thus:

Medicine is mine, what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know,
And am the great physician called below.

The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are thus described in Burke’s
“Encyclopædia of Heraldry,” 1851:

“In shield, Apollo, the inventor of physic, with his head radiant,
holding in his left hand a bow, and in his right a serpent. About the
shield a helm, thereupon a mantle, and for the crest, upon a wreath
of their colours, a rhinoceros, supported by two unicorns, armed and
ungulated. Upon a compartment to make the achievement complete, this
motto: ‘Opiferque per orbem dicor.’”

[Illustration: ARMS OF THE SOCIETY OF APOTHECARIES.]

It was William Camden, the famous antiquary and “Clarenceux King at
Arms” in James I.’s reign, who hunted out the middle of the above Latin
quotation for the newly incorporated Society of Apothecaries.

THE SONS OF ÆSCULAPIUS.

Æsculapius left two sons, who continued their father’s profession,
and three or four daughters. It is not possible to be chronologically
exact with these semi-mythical personages, but according to the usual
reckoning Æsculapius lived about 1250 B.C. He would have been
contemporary with Gideon, a judge of Israel, about two centuries after
the death of Moses, and two centuries before the reign of King David.
His sons Machaon and Podalirus were immortalised in the Iliad among the
Greek heroes who fought before Troy, and they exercised their surgical
and medical skill on their comrades, as Homer relates. When Menelaus
was wounded by an arrow shot by Pandarus, Machaon was sent for, and
“sucked the blood, and sovereign balm infused, which Chiron gave, and
Æsculapius used.”

After the Trojan war both the brothers continued to exercise their art,
and some of their cures are recorded. Their sons after them likewise
practised medicine, and the earliest Æsculapian Temple is believed to
have been erected in memory of his grandfather by Spyrus, the second
son of Machaon, at Argos. Perhaps he only intended it as a home for
patients, or it may have been as an advertisement. From then, however,
the worship of Æsculapius spread, and we read of temples at Titane in
the Peloponnesus, at Tricca in Thessalia, at Trithorea, at Corinth,
at Epidaurus, at Cos, at Megalopolis in Arcadia, at Lar in Laconia,
at Drepher, at Drope, at Corona on the Gulf of Messina, at Egrum, at
Delos, at Cyllene, at Smyrna, and at Pergamos in Asia Minor. The Temple
of Epidaurus was for a long time the most important, but before the
time of Hippocrates that of Cos seems to have taken the lead.

THE DAUGHTERS OF ÆSCULAPIUS

are often described as allegorical figures, Hygeia representing health,
and Panacea, medicine. Hygeia especially was widely worshipped by
Greeks, and when rich people recovered from an illness they often
had medals struck with her figure on the reverse. Pliny says it was
customary to offer her a simple cake of fine flour, to indicate the
connection between simple living and good health. Panacea was likewise
made a divinity. She presided over the administration of medicines.
Egrea and Jaso are but little known. The former (whose name signified
the light of the Sun) married a serpent and was changed into a
willow, while Jaso in the only known monument on which she appears, is
represented with a pot, probably of ointment, in her hand.

PROMETHEUS.

More mythical than the story of Æsculapius, or even of Orpheus, who was
also alleged to have discovered some of the secrets of medicine, is
the legend of Prometheus who stole fire from heaven for the benefit of
mankind. According to the older mythologists Prometheus was the same as
Magog, and was the son of Japhet. Æschylus is the principal authority
on his tradition. After recounting many other wonderful things he
had done for humanity, the poet makes him say, “One of the greatest
subtilties I have invented is that when any one falls ill, and can find
no relief; can neither eat nor drink, and knows not with what to anoint
himself; when for want of the necessary remedies he must perish; then
I showed to men how to prepare healing medicine which should cure all
maladies.” Or as Dean Plumptre has rendered it:--

If any one fell ill
There was no help for him nor healing balm,
Nor unguent, nor yet potion; but for want
Of drugs they wasted till I showed to them
The blendings of all mild medicaments
Wherewith they ward the attacks of sickness sore.

In other words, Prometheus was the first pharmacist.

MELAMPUS.

Melampus was a shepherd to whom we owe, as legend tells us, hellebore
(Gr. Melampodion) and iron as medicines. Melampus studied nature
closely, and, when young, brought up by hand some young serpents, who
were dutifully grateful for the cares he had bestowed on them. One day,
finding him asleep, two of them crept to his ears and so effectively
cleaned them with their tongues that when he woke he found he could
easily make out the language of birds, and hear a thousand things which
had previously been hidden from man. Thus he became a great magician.
In tending his goats he observed that whenever they ate the black
hellebore they were purged. Afterwards, many of the women of Argos were
stricken with a disease which made them mad. They ran about the fields
naked, and believed they were cows. Among the women so afflicted were
the three daughters of Proetus, the king of Argos. Melampus undertook
to cure the three princesses, and did so by giving them the milk of
the goats after they had eaten the hellebore. His reward was one of
them for his wife and a third of the kingdom. Another cure effected
by Melampus was by his treatment of Iphiclus, king of Phylacea, who
greatly desired to beget children. Melampus gave him rust of iron in
wine, and that remedy proved successful. This was the earliest Vinum
Ferri. Melampus is supposed to have lived about 1380 B.C.

GLAUCUS.

Glaucus, son of Minos, king of Crete, was playing when a child and
fell into a large vat of honey, in which he was suffocated. The child
being lost the king sent for Polyidus of Argos, a famous magician, and
ordered him to discover his son. Polyidus having found the dead body
in the honey, it occurred to Minos that so clever a man could also
bring him back to life. He therefore commanded that the magician should
be put into the same vat. While perplexed at the problem before him,
Polyidus saw a serpent creeping towards the vat. He seized the beast
and killed him. Presently another serpent came, and looked on his dead
friend. The second went out of the place for a few minutes and returned
with a certain herb which he applied to the dead reptile and soon
restored him to life. Polyidus took the hint and used the same herb on
Glaucus with an equally satisfactory result. He restored him to his
father, who loaded the sorcerer with gifts. Unfortunately in telling
the other details of this history the narrator has forgotten to inform
us of the name of the herb which possessed such precious properties.
Polyidus, according to Pausanias, was a nephew of Melampus.

CHIRON.

Chiron the Centaur was very famous for his knowledge of simples, which
he learned on Mount Pelion when hunting with Diana. The Centaury owes
its name to him, either because he used it as a remedy or because
it was applied to his wound. His great merit was that he taught his
knowledge of medicines to Æsculapius, to Hercules, to Achilles, and to
various other Greek heroes. In the Iliad Homer represents Eurypylus
wounded by an arrow asking Patroclus

With lukewarm water wash the gore away
With healing balms the raging smart allay
Such as sage Chiron, sire of pharmacy,
Once taught Achilles, and Achilles thee.
(_Il._, Bk. XI., Pope’s Translation.)

Chiron was shot in the foot by Hercules by an arrow which had been
dipped in the blood of the Hydra of Lerna, and the wound caused intense
agony. One fable says that Chiron healed this wound by applying to it
the herb which consequently bore the name of Centaury; but the more
usual version is that his grief at being immortal was so keen that
Hercules induced Jupiter to transfer that immortality to Prometheus,
and that Chiron was placed in the sky and forms the constellation
of Sagittarius. The Centaurs were a wild race inhabiting Thessaly.
Probably they were skilful horse tamers and riders, and from this may
have grown the fable of their form.

[Illustration: CHIRON THE CENTAUR.]

ACHILLES.

Achilles carried a spear at the siege of Troy which had the benign
power of healing the wounds it made. He discovered the virtues of
the plant Achillea Milfoil, but Pliny leaves it doubtful whether he
cured the wounds of his friend Telephas by that remedy or by verdigris
ointment, which he also invented.

[Illustration: ACHILLEA MILFOIL.]

ARISTES.

Aristes, king of Arcadia, was another famous pupil of Chiron. He is
credited with having introduced the silphion or laser which became
a popular medicine and condiment with the ancients, and which was
long believed to have been their name for asafœtida, but which modern
authors have doubted, alleging that silphion was the product of Thapsia
silphion. Aristes is further said to have taught the art of collecting
honey and of cultivating the olive.

MEDEA.

Medea of Colchis is one of the most discussed ladies of mythical
history. Euripides, Ovid, and other poets represented her for the
purposes of their poems as a fiend of inhuman ferocity. Some more
trustworthy historians believe that she was a princess who devoted
a great deal of study to the medicinal virtues of the plants which
grew in her country, and that she exercised her skill on the poor
and sick of her country. Certainly the marvellous murders attributed
to her must have been planned by a tragic poet to whom no conditions
were impossible. Diodorus declares that the Corinthians stoned her
and her sons, and afterwards paid Euripides five talents to justify
their crime. Medea’s claim to a place in this section is the adopted
theory that she discovered the poisonous properties of colchicum,
which derived its name from her country. Colchis had the reputation of
producing many poisonous plants; hence the Latin expression “venena
Colchica.”

MORPHEUS.

Morpheus was, according to the Roman poets, the son or chief minister
of the god of sleep (Somnus). The god himself was represented as
living in Cimmerian darkness. Morpheus derived his name from Morphe,
(Gr., form or shape), from his supposed ability to mimic or assume
the form of any individual he desired to pose as in dreams. Thus Ovid
relates how he appeared to Alcyone in a dream as her husband, who had
been shipwrecked, and narrated to her all the circumstances of the
tragedy. Morpheus is represented with a poppy plant in his hand bearing
a capsule with which he was supposed to touch those whom he desired
to put to sleep. He also had the wings of a butterfly to indicate his
lightness. Sertürner adopted the term “morphium” as the name of the
opium alkaloid which he had discovered.

PYTHAGORAS.

Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century before Christ, has been
the subject of so many legends that it is difficult to separate the
philosopher in him from the charlatan. He is said to have tamed wild
beasts with a word, to have visited hell, to have recounted his
previous stages of existence from the siege of Troy to his own life,
and to have accomplished many miracles. Probably these were the myths
which often gather round great men, and it is certain that from him
or from his disciples in his name much exact learning, especially in
mathematics, has reached us. Pythagoras was famous in many sciences.
His chief contribution to pharmacy was the invention of acetum scillae.
According to Pliny he wrote a treatise on squills, which he believed
possessed magic virtues. Pliny also states that he attributed magic
virtues to the cabbage, but it is not certain that he meant the
vegetable which we call the cabbage. Aniseed was another of his magic
plants. Holding aniseed in the left hand he recommended as a cure
for epilepsy, and he prescribed an anisated wine and also mustard to
counteract the poisonous effect of the bites of scorpions. An Antidotum
Pythagoras is given in some old books, but there is no authority for
supposing that this was devised by the philosopher. It was composed
of orris, 18 drachms and 2 scruples; gentian, 5 drachms; ginger, 4½
drachms; black pepper, 4 drachms; honey, _q.s._

THE PATRON SAINTS OF PHARMACY.

Cosmas and Damien, who are regarded as the patron saints of pharmacy
in many Catholic countries, were two brothers, Arabs by birth, but who
lived in the city of Egea, in Cilicia, where they practised medicine
gratuitously. Overtaken by the Diocletian persecution in the fourth
century, they were arrested and confessed their faith. Being condemned
to be drowned, it is related that an angel severed their bonds so that
they could gain the shore. They were then ordered to be burnt, but
the fire attacked their executioners, several of whom were killed.
Next they were fastened to a cross and archers shot arrows at them.
The arrows, however, were turned from them and struck those who had
placed them on the crosses. Finally they were beheaded, and their souls
were seen mounting heavenward. For centuries their tomb at Cyrus, in
Syria, was a shrine where miracles of healing were performed, and in
the sixth century the Emperor Justinian, who believed he had been
cured of a serious illness by their intercession, not only beautified
and fortified the Syrian city, but also built a beautiful church in
their honour at Constantinople. Later, their relics were removed to
Rome, and Pope Felix consecrated a church to them there. Physicians
and pharmacists throughout Catholic Europe celebrated their memory on
September 27th for centuries.

FABLES OF PLANT MEDICINES.

The Mandrake (Atropa Mandragora) has been exceptionally famous in
medical history. Its reputation for the cure of sterility is alluded
to in the story of Leah and Rachel (Genesis xxx, 14-16). It is not,
however, certain that the Hebrew word “dudaim” should be translated
mandrake. Various Biblical scholars have questioned this which was
the Septuagint rendering. Lilies, violets, truffles, citrons, and
other fruits have been suggested. In Cant., vii, 14, the same plant
is described as fragrant, and the odour of the mandrake is said to be
disagreeable. Mandragora is described in Chinese books of medicine,
and from Hippocrates down to almost modern times every writer on the
art of healing treats it with reverence. Hippocrates asserts that a
small dose in wine, less than would occasion delirium, will relieve the
deepest depression and anxiety. The roots of the mandrake are often
of a forked shape and were supposed to represent the human form, some
being regarded as male and others as female. This fancy originated with
Pythagoras, who conferred on the mandrake the name of anthropomorphon.
It was said that when the roots were drawn from the earth they gave
a human shriek. Shakespeare in _Romeo and Juliet_ alludes to this
superstition:

And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth
That living mortals hearing them run mad.

In _Othello_ again Shakespeare refers to this medicine, and
particularly to its alleged narcotic properties:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world.

In _Antony and Cleopatra_, too, Cleopatra says, “Give me to drink
mandragora” (that she may sleep out the great gap of time while Antony
is away); and Banquo in _Macbeth_, when he asks, “Or have we eaten of
the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?” is believed to allude
to the mandrake.

There is a good deal of evidence that mandragora was used in ancient
and mediæval times not only as a soporific, but also as an anæsthetic.
Dioscorides explicitly asserts this property of the root more than
once. He describes a decoction of which a cupful is to be taken for
severe pains, or “before amputations, or the use of the cautery, to
prevent the pain of those operations.” Elsewhere he alludes to its
employment in parturition, and in another passage dealing with a wine
prepared from the external coat of the root, says, “The person who
drinks it falls in a profound sleep, and remains deprived of sense
three or four hours. Physicians apply this remedy when the necessity
for amputation occurs, or for applying the cautery.” Pliny refers
to the narcotic powers of the mandrake, and among later writers its
effects are often described. Josephus mentions a plant which he calls
Baaras, which cured demoniacs, but could only be procured at great
risk, or by employing a dog to uproot it, the dog being killed in the
process. This Baaras is supposed to have been mandrake. Dr. Lee in his
Hebrew Lexicon quotes from a Persian authority an allusion to a similar
root which, taken inwardly, “renders one insensible to the pain of even
cutting off a limb.”

Baptista Porta describes the power of the mandrake in inducing deep
sleep, and in A. G. Meissner’s “Skizzen,” published at Carlsruhe in
1782, there is a story of Weiss, surgeon to Augustus, King of Poland
and Elector of Saxony, who surreptitiously administered a potion (of
what medicine is not stated) to his royal master, and during his
insensibility cut off a mortifying foot.

AMARANTH, AMBROSIA, AND ATHANASIA.

Amaranth is the name which has been given to the genus of plants of
which Prince’s Feather and Love-Lies-Bleeding are species. This means
immortal and is the word used in the Epistle of St. Peter (v, 4),
the amaranthine crown of glory, or as translated in our version “the
crown of glory that fadeth not away.” Milton refers to the “immortal
amaranth, a flower which once in Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life
began to bloom.”

Ambrosia, the food of the gods, sometimes alluded to as drink, and
sometimes as a sweet-smelling ointment, was also referred to by
Dioscorides and Pliny as a herb, but it is not known what particular
plant they meant. It was reputed to be nine times sweeter than honey.
The herb Ambrose of the old herbalists was the Chenopodium Botrys, but
C. Ambroisioides (the oak of Jerusalem), the wild sage, and the field
parsley have also borne the name. The Ambroisia of modern botanists is
a plant of the wormwood kind.

Athanasia was abbreviated by the old herbalists into Tansy, and this
herb acquired the fame due to its distinguished designation. In
Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods, Jupiter tells Hercules to take with him
the beautiful Ganymede, whom he has stolen from earth, “and when he has
drunk of Athanasia (immortality) bring him back, and he shall be our
cupbearer.” Naturally the ancients sought for that herb, Athanasia,
which would yield immortality.

MYRRH.

Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyrus, King of Cyprus, having become
pregnant, was driven from home by her father, and fled to Arabia. The
story told by Ovid is that she had conceived a criminal passion for her
father, and that by deception she had taken her mother’s place by his
side one night. Lost in the desert and overcome by remorse, she had
prayed the gods to grant that she should no longer remain among the
living, nor be counted with the dead. Touched with pity for her, they
changed her into the tree which yields the gum which to this day bears
her name.

NEPENTHE.

Nepenthe, or more correctly Nepenthes, is described by Homer in the
Odyssey as an Egyptian plant which Helen, the wife of Menelaus, had
received from Polydamna, wife of Thonis, King of Egypt. The word is
compounded of _ne_, negation, and _penthos_, pain or affliction. Helen
mixed it for Telemachus in “a mirth inspiring bowl” which would

Clear the cloudy front of wrinkled care,
And dry the tearful sluices of despair.

Its effects would last all through one day. No matter what horrors
surrounded,

From morn to eve, impassive and serene
The man entranced would view the dreadful scene.

Much discussion of Homer’s drug has of course resulted from his
description of these effects. Was it a mere poetic fancy of Homer’s and
was the name his invention, or was there an Egyptian drug known in his
time to which the properties he describes were attributed? Plutarch,
Philostratus, and some other ancient commentators suppose that the poet
is only representing in a materialistic form the charm of Helen’s
conversation and manner. The difficulty about that interpretation is
that he explicitly states that the remedy came from Egypt. Theophrastus
credits the opopanax with similar properties to those which Homer
claims, and Dioscorides is believed to allude to the same gum under the
name of Nectarion, which he indicates to have been of Egyptian origin.
This has been adopted by some old critics as the true nepenthes. Pliny
asserts that Helenium was the plant which yielded the mirth-inspiring
drug, but it is not clear that he means our elecampane. Borage and
bugloss have also had their advocates, Galen supporting the latter.
Rhazes voted for saffron. Cleopatra is assumed to have meant mandragora
when she asked for some nepenthe to make her forget her sorrow while
she was separated from Antony. Opium has of course been selected by
many commentators, but it could hardly have furnished a mirth-inspiring
bowl. Indian hemp or haschish seems to meet the requirements of
the verse better than any other drug. There are also reasons for
choosing hyoscyamus or stramonium. The Indian pitcher plants to which
Linnaeus gave the name of nepenthes are out of the question. A learned
contribution to this study may be found in the _Bulletin de Pharmacie_,
Vol. V. (1813), by M. J. J. Virey.

BELLADONNA.

Atropa Belladonna is the subject of several legends. How it came by
its several names it would be interesting to know. Atropa, from the
eldest sister of the Fates, she who carried the scissors with which she
cut the thread of life, is appropriate enough but not more to this
than to any other poison plant. Belladonna--so-called because Italian
ladies made a cosmetic from the berries with which to whiten their
complexions; so-called because the Spanish ladies made use of the plant
to dilate the pupils of their brilliant black eyes; so-called because
Leucota, an Italian poisoner, used it to destroy beautiful women. These
are among the explanations of the name which the old herbalists gave
without troubling themselves about historical evidence. Belladonna
is supposed to have been described by Dioscorides under the name of
Morella furiosum lethale, and by Pliny as Strychnos manikon. It was
used by Galen in cancerous affections, and its employment for this
purpose was revived in the 17th century, infusions of leaves being
administered both internally and externally. That it figured among
the philtres of the sorcerers cannot be doubted. Like mandragora, it
did not act by exciting amorous passions, but by rendering the victim
helpless.

CENTAURY.

The lesser Centaury (_Erythraea Centaurium_) is alleged to owe its
name to Chiron the Centaur, who is supposed to have taught medicine to
Æsculapius. The story which associates Chiron with the plant has been
given already.

[Illustration: CENTAURY.]

MINT.

Mentha was a nymph of the infernal regions beloved of Pinto. Prosperine
out of jealousy caused her to be metamorphosed into the plant which
thus acquired her name.

DITTANY.

Dittany, the origanum Dictamnus, was reputed to possess wonderful
virtues for healing wounds. Æneas, wounded in a combat, was treated
by Iapyx, who had been specially taught by Apollo, but his simples
had no effect. Venus, touched by the sufferings of her son, thereupon
descended from heaven in a cloud, gathered some dittany on Mount Ida,
and secretly added it to the infusion with which Iapyx was vainly
trying to relieve the hero. She added some ambrosial elixir, and
suddenly the pain ceased, the flow of blood was arrested, the dart was
easily drawn from the wound, and Æneas recovered his strength.

MYTHICAL ANIMALS.

THE PHŒNIX.

The Phœnix was largely adopted by the alchemists as their emblem,
and afterwards was a frequent sign used by pharmacists. According to
Herodotus this bird, which was worshipped by the Egyptians, was of
about the size of an eagle, with purple and gold plumage, and a purple
crest. Its eyes sparkled like stars; it lived a solitary life in the
Arabian desert, and either came to Heliopolis, the city of the sun, to
die and be burned in the temple of that city, or its ashes were brought
there by its successor. There was only one phœnix at the same time, and
it lived for 500 years. The legends vary as to its longevity, but 500
years is the period usually assigned. When the phœnix knew that its
time had come, it made its own funeral pyre out of spiced woods, and
the sun provided the fire. Out of the marrow of its bones came a worm,
which quickly grew into a new phœnix, who, after burying its parent in
Egypt, returned to Arabia.

[Illustration: PHŒNIX.]

The Talmud relates some curious legends of the phœnix, which the Jews
believed to be immortal. One story is that when Eve had eaten the
forbidden fruit she gave some to all the animals in the Garden of Eden,
and that the phœnix was the only one which refused. Hence it escaped
the curse of death which overtook the rest of the animal creation.
Another legend is that when it was in the ark, and when all the
other animals were clamouring to be fed, the phœnix was quiet. Noah,
observing it, asked if it was not hungry, to which the phœnix replied,
“I saw you were busy, so would not trouble you,” an answer which so
pleased Noah that he blessed it with eternal life. In the book of Job,
xxix, 18, recalling his earlier glory, the patriarch says, “Then I said
I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand.” Many
Jewish scholars believe that the word translated sand should be phœnix,
and our Revised Version gives “phœnix” as an alternative rendering. It
is easy to appreciate how aptly this would express Job’s idea. Some of
the Hebrew commentators translate the verse in Ps. ciii, 5, “So that
thy youth is renewed like the eagle,” by substituting phœnix for eagle.

THE UNICORN

had not quite passed into the region of fable when Pomet wrote his
History of Drugs very early in the 18th century, for though he does
not believe in the animal himself, he quotes from other authors not
so very long antecedent to him who did. He states, however, that what
was then sold as unicorn’s horn was in fact the horn or tusk of the
narwhal, a tooth which extends to the length of six to ten feet. The
unicorn, or monoceros was referred to by Aristotle, Pliny, Aelian, and
other ancient writers, and in later times it was described by various
travellers who, if they had not seen it themselves, had met with
persons who had.

[Illustration: UNICORN (AFTER BOCHAUT’S HIEROZOICON).]

The details given by Aristotle are supposed to have been derived from
Ctesias, whose description of the Indian wild ass is what was adopted
with many embellishments for the fabulous unicorn. It is this author
who first notices the marvellous alexipharmic properties so long
attributed to the unicorn’s horn. Drinking vessels, he says, were made
of the horn, and those who used them were protected against poison,
convulsions, and epilepsy, provided that either just before or just
after taking the poison they drank wine or water from the cup made from
the horn. In the middle ages the horn of the unicorn was esteemed a
certain cure for the plague, malignant fevers, bites of serpents or of
mad dogs. It was to be made into a jelly to which a little saffron and
cochineal were to be added. Some writers allege that poisoned wounds
could be cured by merely holding the horn of a unicorn opposite the
wound. These horns are said, however, to have cost about ten times the
price of gold, so that not many sufferers could avail themselves of
them as a remedy.

The unicorn is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, the
translators of the Authorised Version having followed the Septuagint in
which the Hebrew word Re’em was rendered by the Greek term Monokeros,
which corresponds with our unicorn. It is agreed that the word in the
original had no reference to the fabulous animal, but that the wild
ox, or ox antelope, a strong untameable beast, known in Palestine, was
intended. In the Revised Version wild ox is uniformly substituted for
unicorn. This animal is believed to have been the Urus mentioned by
Julius Cæsar as existing in his time in the forests of Central Europe,
and not entirely extinct until some 500 or 600 years ago.

The translators evidently found a difficulty in associating the unicorn
with the Hebrew Re’em in Deut. xxxiii, 17, where we read of “the horns
of the unicorns.” In the Hebrew the horns are the plural but Re’em is
singular. But the horns of the unicorn would have been a contradiction
in terms.

The allusions to the unicorn in Shakespeare all seem to show unbelief
in the legends. In the _Tempest_ (Act 3, sc. 3) Sebastian says when
music is heard in the wood, “Now I will believe that there are
unicorns.” In _Julius Cæsar_ (Act 2, sc. 1), Decius Brutus, recounting
Cæsar’s superstitions, says, “He loves to hear that unicorns may be
betrayed with trees”; and Timon of Athens raves about the unicorn among
the legendary animal beliefs (Act 4, sc. 3). An authority on heraldry,
Guillim, in 1660, however, comments thus on the scepticism of his
contemporaries: “Some have made doubt whether there be any such beast
as this or not. But the great esteem of his horns (in many places to be
seen) may take away that needless scruple.”

The unicorn was introduced into the British royal arms by James I., who
substituted it for the red dragon with which Henry VII. had honoured
a Welsh contingent which helped him to win the battle of Bosworth
fighting under the banner of Cadwallydr. The unicorn had been a Scotch
emblem for several reigns before that of James I. (or VI.). The
Scottish pound of that period was known by the name of a unicorn from
the device stamped on it.

Pomet tells us that in 1553 a unicorn’s horn was brought to the King of
France which was valued at £20,000 sterling; and that one presented to
Charles I. of England, supposed to be the largest one known, measured
7 feet long, and weighed 13 lbs. It is also related that Edward IV.
gave to the Duke of Burgundy who visited him, a gold cup set with
jewels, and with a piece of unicorn’s horn worked into the metal. One
large unicorn’s horn was owned by the city of Dresden and was valued
at 75,000 thalers. Occasionally a piece was sawn off to be used for
medical purposes. It was a city regulation that two persons of princely
rank should be present whenever this operation was performed. This was
in the sixteenth century.

The unicorn was a frequent sign used by the old apothecaries. It was
also adopted by goldsmiths. The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are
supported by unicorns.

[Illustration: DRAGON.]

THE DRAGON

was only associated with pharmacy by means of the “blood” which took
his name and was at one time popularly supposed to be yielded by him. I
know of no evidence in support of this statement, but it is sometimes
so reported. According to Pharmacographia dragon’s blood was first
obtained from Socotra and taken with other merchandise by the Arabs
to China. Possibly it was there that it acquired the name of dragon’s
blood, for the dragon has always been a much revered beast in that
country. Dioscorides called this product cinnabar. I find in old books
that the fruit of the calamus draconis on which the resin collects
along with scales (and this is the source of our present supply), when
stripped of its skin shows a design of a dragon. Lemery quoting from
“Monard and several other authors,” says, “When the skin is taken off
from this fruit there appears underneath the figure of a dragon as it
is represented by the painters, with wings expanded, a slender neck,
a hairy or bristle back, long tail, and feet armed with talons. They
pretend,” he adds, “that this figure gave the name to tree. But I
believe this circumstance fabulous because I never knew it confirmed by
any traveller.”

[Illustration: THE DRAGON TREE (_Dracona Draco_).

The tree illustrated above is at Teneriffe, and is, perhaps, the oldest
tree in the world. Humboldt, in 1799, found its trunk was forty-eight
feet in circumference.]

Very likely the shrewd Arabs invented the name dragon’s blood to please
their Chinese customers, and it may be therefore that the tree acquired
its name from the resin, not the resin from the tree.

Dragon’s blood was given in old pharmacy as a mild astringent, and was
one of the ingredients in the styptic pills of Helvetius. It was also
included in the formula for Locatelli’s balsam. Now it is chiefly used
as a varnish colouring, as for example in varnishes for violins. In
some parts of the country it has a reputation as a charm to restore
love. Maidens whose swains are unfaithful or neglectful procure a
piece, wrap it in paper, and throw it on the fire, saying:

May he no pleasure or profit see
Till he come back again to me.

[Cuthbert Bede in _Notes and Queries_.
Series 1., Vol. II., p. 242.]

Dragons are mentioned many times in the Authorised Version of the Old
Testament. In most of these instances jackals are substituted in the
Revised Version, and only once, I think, the alternative of crocodiles
is suggested in the margin, though in many instances it would obviously
be a better rendering, as has been pointed out by many scholars.

THE SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY

which seeks to explain how the old myths, some poetical, many
disgusting, and all impossible, originated, is a modern study
which has fascinated a large number of learned scholars.
The old notion that they were merely allegorical forms of
representing facts and phenomena is not tenable in view of the
universality of the legends among the least cultivated races.
Professor Max Müller initiated a lively controversy some forty
years ago by suggesting that myths were a consequence of
language, a disease of language, as Mr. Andrew Lang has termed
it. He traced many of the Greek myths to Aryan sources, and
insisted that they had developed from the words or phrases
used to describe natural phenomena. Thus, for example, he
explained the myth of Apollo and Daphne (mentioned on page
9) by supposing that a phrase existed describing the Sun
following, or chasing, the Dawn. He even maintained that the
Sanskrit Ahana, dawn, was the derivation of Daphne. Words, of
course, were invented to convey some mental conception; that
conception, while it was intelligible, would (according to Max
Müller’s system) be developed into a story. The argument was
most ingeniously worked out, but it has not proved capable
of satisfying the conditions of the problem. How could it
suffice, for instance, to explain the occurrence of almost
identical myths treasured by the most degraded and widely
separated peoples? The more likely theory is that in a very
early stage of the savage mind the untrained imagination
tended inevitably to associate the facts of nature with
certain monstrous, obscene, and irrational forms. Perhaps
the most able exposition of this view, or something like it,
expounded within moderate limits, is to be found in an article
on Mythology contributed to the “Encyclopædia Britannica” by
Mr. Andrew Lang.

PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS

“Go up into Gilead and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt:
in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for
thee.”

So wrote the prophet Jeremiah (xlvi, 11), and the passage seems to
suggest that Egypt in his time was famous for its medicines. Herodotus,
who narrated his travels in Egypt some two or three hundred years
later, conveys the same impression, and the records of the papyri which
have been deciphered within the last century confirm the opinion.

Whatever may have been the case with other arts and sciences, it does
not appear that much progress was made in medicine in Egypt during
the thousands of years of its history which have been more or less
minutely traced. The discovery of remedies by various deities, by Isis
especially, or the indication of compounds invented for the relief of
the sufferings of the Sun-god Ra, before he retired to his heavenly
rest, is the burden of all the documents on which our knowledge of
Egyptian pharmacy is founded. It was criminal to add to or vary the
perfect prescriptions thus revealed, a provision which made advance
impossible to the extent to which it was enforced.

“So wisely was medicine managed in Egypt,” says Herodotus, “that no
doctor was permitted to practise any but his own branch.” That is to
say, the doctors were all specialists; some treated the eyes, others
the teeth, the head, the skin, the stomach, and so forth. The doctors
were all priests, and were paid by the Treasury, but they were allowed
to take fees besides. Their recipes were often absurd and complicated,
but there is reason to suppose that their directions in regard to diet
and hygiene were sensible, and there is evidence that they paid some
attention to disinfection and cleanliness.

The physicians were always priests, but all the priests were not
physicians; Clement of Alexandria says those who actually practised
were the lowest grade of priests. They prepared as well as prescribed
medicines, but relied perhaps more on magic, amulets, and invocations
than on drugs. The secrets of magic were, however, especially the
property of the highest grade of priests, the sages and soothsayers.
According to Celsus, the medical science of Egypt was founded on the
belief that the human body was divided into thirty-six parts, each one
being under the control of a separate demon or divinity. The art of
medicine consisted largely in knowing the names of these demons so as
to invoke the right one when an ailment had to be treated.

Symbolical names were given to many of the herbs used as medicines.
The plant of Osiris was the ivy, the vervain was called Tears of Isis,
saffron was the blood of Thoth, and the squill was the eye of Typhon.

Until the mystery of the Egyptian writings was unlocked, the key being
found about a century ago in the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, of
which Napoleon first took possession, and which was subsequently taken
from the French by the British, and is now a familiar object in the
British Museum, knowledge of Egyptian science and life was limited to
the information which came to us from Greek and Roman authors; and this
was often fabulous. Now, however, the daily life of the subjects of the
Pharaohs has been revealed in wonderful minuteness by the papyri which
have been deciphered.

Among the papyri preserved in various museums a number of medical and
pharmaceutical records have been found. Some medical prescriptions
inscribed on a papyrus in the British Museum (No. 10,059) are said to
be as old as the time of Khufu (Cheops), reckoned to have been about
3700 years B.C. Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, the Director of the
Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum,
informs me that these prescriptions have not been translated, and that
no photograph of them is available. The Papyrus itself may be of about
1400 B.C., but it refers to some medical lore of the time of
Khufu, as a modern English book might quote some prescriptions of the
time of Alfred the Great.

By far the most complete representation of the medicine and pharmacy
of ancient Egypt is comprised in the famous Papyrus Ebers, which was
discovered by Georg Ebers, Egyptologist and romancist, in the winter of
1872-3.

Ebers and a friend were spending that winter in Egypt, and during
their residence at Thebes they made the acquaintance of a well-to-do
Arab from Luxor who appeared to know of some ancient papyri and other
relics. He first tried to pass off to them some of no particular value,
but Ebers was an expert and was not to be imposed on. Ultimately the
Arab brought to him a Papyrus which he stated had been discovered
fourteen years previously between the knees of a mummy in the Theban
Necropolis. After examination Ebers was convinced of its genuineness
and bought it. His opinion was fully confirmed by all the authorities
when he brought it to Germany, and the contents have proved to be of
extreme value and interest in the delineation of the medical manners
and customs of the ancient Egyptians.

This papyrus was wrapped in mummy cloths and packed in a metal case. It
is a single roll of yellow-brown papyrus of the finest quality, about
12 inches wide and more than 22 yards long. It is divided into 108
columns each separately numbered. The numbering reaches actually 110,
but there are no numbers 28 and 29, though there is no hiatus in the
literary composition. Ebers supposes there may have been some religious
reason for not using the missing numbers. The writing is in black ink,
but the heads of sections and weights and measures are written with
red ink. The word “nefr” signifying “good” is written in the margin
against many of the formulæ in a different writing and in a paler ink,
evidently by someone who had used the book. It has been considered
possible that this was one of the six hermetic books on medicine
mentioned by Clement of Alexandria; but it is more likely to have been
a popular collection of medical formulæ from various sources.

Internal evidence, satisfactory to experts, the writing, the name of
a king, and particularly a calendar attached to one of the sections,
establish the date of this document. The king named was Tjesor-ka-Ra,
and his throne-name was Amen-hetep I., the second king of the 18th
dynasty. The date assigned to the papyrus is about the year 1552 B.C.,
which, according to the conventional scriptural chronology, would
correspond with about the 21st year of the life of Moses. If this
estimation is approximately correct it follows that the prescriptions
of the papyrus are considerably older than those given in the book
of Exodus for the holy anointing oil and for incense, which in old
works are sometimes quoted as the earliest records of “the art of the
apothecary.”

The papyrus begins by declaring that the writer had brought help from
the King of Eternity from Heliopolis; from the Goddess Mother to Sais,
she who alone could ensure protection. Speech had been given him to
tell how all pains and all mortal sicknesses might be driven away. Here
were chapters which would teach how to conjure away the diseases “from
this my head, from this my neck, from this my arm, from this my flesh,
from these my limbs. For Ra pities the sick; his teacher is Thuti”
(Thoth or Hermes) “who has given him words to make this book and to
save instructions to scholars and to physicians who will follow them,
so that what is dark shall be unriddled. For he whom the God loveth, he
maketh alive; I am one who loveth the God, and he maketh me alive.”

Here are the words to speak when preparing the remedies for all parts
of the body: “As it shall be a thousand times. This is the book of the
healing of all sicknesses. That Isis may make free, make free. May Isis
heal me as she healed Horus of all pains which his brother Set had done
to him who killed his father Osiris. Oh, Isis, thou great magician,
heal me and save me from all wicked, frightful, and red things, from
demoniac and deadly diseases and illnesses of every kind. Oh, Ra. Oh,
Osiris.”

The form of words to be said when taking a remedy:--“Come remedy,
come drive it out of this my heart, out of these my limbs; Oh strong
magic power with the remedy.” On giving an emetic the conjuration to
be spoken was as follows:--“Oh, Demon, who dwellest in the body of ...
son of ...; Oh, thou, whose father is called the bringer down of heads,
whose name is Death, whose name is accursed for all eternity, come
forth.”

The following shows how the Egyptian physicians diagnosed a liver
complaint: “When thou findest one with hardening of his re-het; when
eating he feels a pressure in the bowels, and the stomach is swollen;
feels ill while walking; look at him when lying outstretched, and if
thou findest his bowels hot, and a hardening in his stomach, say to
thyself, This is a liver complaint. Then make a remedy according to
the secrets of botanical knowledge from the plant pa-chestat and from
dates cut up. Mix it and put in water. The patient may drink it on
four mornings to purge his body. If after that thou findest both sides
of the bowels, namely, the right one hot and the left one cold, then
say, That is bile. Look at him again, and if thou findest his bowels
entirely cold then say to thyself, His liver is cleaned and purified;
he has taken the medicine, the medicine has taken effect.”

Superstitious notions in connection with medicine are not more apparent
in the Ebers Papyrus than they are in any English herbal of three or
four hundred years ago. The majority of the drugs prescribed are of
vegetable origin, but there is a fair proportion of animal products,
and as in comparatively modern pharmacopœias these seem to have been
valued as remedies in the ratio of their nastiness. Lizards’ blood,
teeth of swine, putrid meat, stinking fat, moisture from pigs’ ears,
milk from a lying-in woman; the excreta of adults, of children, of
donkeys, antelopes, dogs, cats, and other animals, and the dirt left by
flies on the walls, are among the remedies met with in the papyrus.

Among the drugs named in the papyrus and identified are oil, wine, beer
(sweet and bitter), beer froth, yeast, vinegar, turpentine, various
gums and resins, figs, sebestens, myrrh, mastic, frankincense, opium,
wormwood, aloes, cummin, peppermint, cassia, carraway, coriander,
anise, fennel, saffron, sycamore and cyprus woods, lotus flowers,
linseed, juniper berries, henbane, and mandragora.

There are certain substances, evidently metals by the suffixes, but
they have not been exactly identified. Neither gold, silver, nor tin
is included. One is supposed to be sulphur, another, electrum (a
combination of gold and silver), and another alluded to as “excrement
divine,” remains mysterious. Iron, lead, magnesia, lime, soda, nitre
and vermilion are among the mineral products which were then used in
medicine.

It need hardly be said that scores of drugs named have only been
guessed at, and in regard to a number of them, it has not been possible
to get as far as this.

Most of the prescriptions are fairly simple, but there are exceptions.
There is a poultice with thirty-five ingredients. Here is a specimen
of rather complicated pharmacy. It is ordered for what seems to have
been a common complaint of the stomach called setyt. Seeds of the sweet
woodruff, seeds of mene, and the plant called A’am, were to be reduced
to powder and mixed. Then seven stones had to be heated at a fire.
On these, one by one, some of the powder was to be sprinkled while
the stone was hot; it was then covered with a new pot in the bottom
of which a hole had been made. A reed was fitted to the hole and the
vapour inhaled. “Afterwards eat some fat,” says the writer.

[Illustration: REDUCED FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE PAPYRUS
EBERS.

The Papyrus Ebers has been reproduced by photography in
facsimile, and published in two magnificent volumes by Mr.
Wilhelm Engelmann, of Leipzig. Mr. Engelmann has kindly
permitted me to copy one of the pages from his work for this
book. The above is a reduced reproduction of page 47 of the
Papyrus. The photograph was taken at the British Museum.

The first line of this page is the end of the instructions for
applying a mixture of powders rubbed down with date wine to
wounds and skin diseases to heal them. That compound was made
by the god Seb, the god of the earth, for the god Ra. Then
follows a complicated prescription devised by the goddess Nut,
the goddess of heaven, also for the god Ra, and like the last
to apply to wounds. It prescribes brickdust, pebble, soda,
and sea-salt, to be boiled in oils with some groats and other
vegetable matter. Isis next supplies a formula to relieve Ra
of pains in the head. It contains opium, coriander, absinth,
juniper berries, and honey. This was to be applied to the
head. Three other formulas for pains in the head, the last
for a pain on one side of the head (migraine), are given,
and then there is a break in the manuscript, and afterwards
some interesting instructions are given for the medicinal
employment of the ricinus (degm) tree. The stems infused in
water will make a lotion which will cure headache; the berries
chewed with beer will relieve constipation; the berries
crushed in oil will make a woman’s hair grow; and pressed into
a salve will cure abscesses if applied every morning for ten
days. The paragraph ends (but on the next page), as many of
them do, with the curious idiom, “As it shall be a thousand
times.” The translation is given in full (in German) in Dr.
Joachim’s _Papyros Ebers_. _Das älteste Buch über Heilkunde_
(Berlin, Georg. Reimer. 1890).
]

To draw the blood from a wound:--Foment it four times with a mixture
made from wax, fat, date wine, honey, and boiled horn; these
ingredients boiled with a certain quantity of water.

To prevent the immoderate crying of children a mixture of the seeds of
the plant Sheben with some fly-dirt is recommended. It is supposed that
Sheben may have been the poppy. Incidentally it is remarked that if a
new-born baby cries “ny” that is a good sign; but it is a bad sign if
it cries “mbe.”

To prevent the hair turning grey anoint it with the blood of a black
calf which has been boiled in oil; or with the fat of a rattlesnake.
When it falls out one remedy is to apply a mixture of six fats, namely
those of the horse, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cat, the
snake, and the ibex. To strengthen it anoint with the tooth of a donkey
crushed in honey.

A few other prescriptions are appended.

As Purges:--Mix milk, one part, yeast and honey, two parts each. Boil
and strain. A draught of this to be taken every morning for four days.
Pills compounded of equal parts of honey, absinth powder, and onion.
In another formula “kesebt” fruits are ordered with other ingredients.
Ebers conjectures that kesebt may have been the castor oil tree.

For Headache:--Equal parts of frankincense, cummin, berries of u’an
tree and goosegrease are to be boiled together; the head to be anointed
with the mixture.

For Worms:--Resin of acanthus, peppermint flowers, lettuce, and “as”
plant. Equal parts to make a plaster.

For too much urine (diabetes):--Twigs of kadet plant ¼, grapes ⅛, honey
¼, berries of u’an tree ¹⁄₃₂, sweet beer 1⅙.

As a Tonic:--Figs, sebestens, grapes, yeast, frankincense, cummin,
berries of u’an tree, wine, goosegrease, and sweet beer are recommended.

An Application for Sore Eyes. Dried excrement of a child 1, honey 1, in
fresh milk.

To make the hair grow:--Oil of the Nile horse 1, powder of mentha
montana 1, myrrh 1, mespen corn 1, vitriol of lead 1. Anoint. Another
formula prescribed for the same purpose was prepared for Schesch (a
queen of the 3rd dynasty) and consisted of equal parts of the heel of
the greyhound (from Abyssinia), of date blossoms, and of asses’ hoofs
boiled in oil.

A long formula for an ointment “which the god Ra made for himself”
contains honey, wax, frankincense, onions, and a number of unidentified
plants. The dust of alabaster and powdered statues are prescribed as
applications for wounds.

To stop Diarrhœa:--Green bulbs (? onions) ⅛, freshly cooked groats ⅛,
oil and honey ¼, wax ¹⁄₁₆, water ⅓ dena (a dena is about a pint). Take
four days.

A plaster to remove pains from one side of the stomach:--Boil equal
parts of lettuce and dates in oil, and apply.

Medicines against worms are numerous. Heftworms, believed to be thread
worms, are treated with pomegranate bark, sea-salt, ricinus, absinth,
and other unidentified drugs. For tape worms, mandrake fruits, castor
oil, peppermint, a preparation of lead, and other drugs are prescribed.

Remedies which the God Su (god of the air), the God Seb (god of the
earth), the Goddess Nut (goddess of the sky), and other divinities had
devised are comprised in this collection. This is an application which
Isis prescribed for Ra’s headache:--Coriander, opium, absinth, juniper,
(another fruit), and honey.

Remedies are also prescribed in this papyrus for diseases of the
stomach, the abdomen, and the urinary bladder; for the cure of
swellings of the glands in the groin; for the treatment of the eye,
for ulcers of the head, for greyness of the hair, and for promoting
its growth; to heal and strengthen the nerves; to cure diseases of the
tongue, to strengthen the teeth, to remove lice and fleas; to banish
pain; to sweeten the breath; and to strengthen the organs of hearing
and of smell.

Quantities are indicated on the prescriptions by perpendicular lines
thus: | one, || two, ||| three. Each of these lines represents a unit.
Ebers calls the unit a drachm and supposes it to be equivalent to the
Arabic dirhem, about forty-eight English grains. The Egyptian system of
numeration was decimal. Up to nine lines were used; [symbol=bridge] was
ten, and two, three or more of these figures followed each other up to
ninety. Then came [symbol=C] a hundred, [symbol=lotus] a thousand, and
so on. Fractions were shown by the figure [symbol=oval], and this with
three dots under it meant one-third, with four dots one-fourth, or with
the 10 sign under it, [symbol=oval with bridge under] one-tenth. Half
was represented by [symbol=double horizontal bar]. The unit of liquid
measure is believed to have been the tenat, equal to three-fifths of a
litre, or rather more than an English pint.

In the British Museum “Guide” Dr. Budge quotes the following
prescription “for driving away wrinkles of the face,” and gives the
same in hieroglyphics:--“Ball of incense, wax, fresh oil, and cypress
berries, equal parts. Crush, and rub down, and put in new milk, and
apply it to the face for six days. Take good heed.” Generally medicines
are directed to be taken or applied for four days; the ingredients are
very often four; and in many cases incantations are to be four times
repeated. The Pythagoreans swore by the number 4, and probably their
master acquired his reverence for that figure from Egypt.

A sacred perfume called kyphi is prescribed to perfume the house
and clothes for sanitary reasons. It was composed of myrrh, juniper
berries, frankincense, cyprus wood, aloes wood, calamus of Asia,
mastic, and styrax.

Among the Greek Papyri discovered in the last decade of the 19th
century at Oxyrinchus one quoted by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in their
work on these papyri (Vol. II., p. 134) gives about a dozen formulas
for applications for the earache. These are believed to have been
written in the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. One is:--Dilute some
gum with balsam of lilies; add honey and rose-extract. Twist some wool
with the oil in it round a probe, warm, and drop in. Onion juice, the
gall of an ox, the sap of a fir tree, alum and myrrh, and frankincense
in sweet wine, are among the other applications recommended.

III

PHARMACY IN THE BIBLE

Pour bien entendre le Vieux Testament il est absolument
nécessaire d’approfondir l’Histoire Naturelle, aussi bien
que les mœurs des Orientaux. On y trouve à peu près trois
cents noms de végétaux; je ne sais combien de noms tirés du
règne animal, et un grand nombre qui désignent des pierres
précieuses.--T. D. MICHAELIS, _Göttingen_, 1790.

To some extent the habits and practices of the Israelites were
based on those of the Egyptians. But in the matter of medicines the
differences are more notable than the resemblances. In Egypt the
practice of medicine was entirely in the hands of the priesthood,
and was largely associated with magical arts. It appears, too, that
the Egyptian practitioners had acquired experience of a fairly wide
range of internal medicines. Among the Israelites the priests did not
practise medicine at all. Some of the prophets did, and they were
expected to exercise healing powers. Elijah and Elisha were frequently
called upon for help in this way, and the prescription of Isaiah of
a lump of figs to be laid on Hezekiah’s boil (2 Kings, xx, 7) will
be recalled. But among the Israelites physicians formed a distinct
profession, though it cannot be said that in all the history covered
by the Scriptures they performed the same functions. The physicians of
Joseph’s household whom he commanded to embalm his father (Genesis
1, 2) were rather apothecaries. That, of course, was in Egypt. There
is a curious allusion to physicians in 2 Chronicles, xvi, 12, where
it is said that when Asa was exceedingly ill with a disease in his
feet “he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.” Possibly
this means that he employed physicians who practised incantations.
Some commentators think, however, that the passage has reference to
himself, his name signifying a physician. In the apocryphal Book of
Ecclesiasticus physicians are alluded to in language which suggests
that at the time it was written there were doubts about the necessity
of physicians. Until recently this work was attributed to Joshua or
Jesus, the son of Sirach. It so appeared in the Greek manuscripts. But
a Hebrew manuscript discovered in 1896 shows that the author was Simon,
son of Jeshua, and critics agree that the date of its composition was
rather less than 200 years before Christ.

This book, “Ecclesiasticus,” is professedly a collection of the grave
and short sentences of wise men. Those relating to medicine and
physicians are brought together in the first part of the 38th chapter.
They appear to be quoted from different authors, and several of the
verses are merely parallels. Thus we have, “Honour a physician with
the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him; for the
Lord hath created him.” And again, “Then give place to the physician,
for the Lord hath created him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast
need of him.” But the author of a verse inserted between these appears
to regard the physician as less essential. He says, “My son, in thy
sickness be not negligent; but pray unto the Lord, and He will make
thee whole.” The 15th verse is somewhat enigmatic, and may or may
not be complimentary. It runs, “He that sinneth before his Maker, let
him fall into the hand of the physician.” In the recently discovered
manuscript is the passage not previously known, “He that sinneth
against God will behave arrogantly before his physician.” Probably into
this may be read the converse idea that he that behaves arrogantly
towards his physician sinneth before God.

In the same chapter we are told that “the Lord hath created medicines
out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them.” Possibly
this was directed against the Jewish prejudice against bitter flavours.
Then the writer asks, “Was not the water made sweet with wood?” and he
says “of such” (the medicines) men to whom God hath given skill heal
men and take away their pains; and “of such doth the apothecary make a
confection.”

The idea that physicians get their skill direct from God is prominent
in these passages, and is perhaps truer than we are willing to admit in
this age of curricula and examinations.

MEDICINES OF THE JEWS.

The Papyrus Ebers was supposed by its discoverer to have been compiled
about the time when Moses was living in Egypt, a century before the
Exodus. There is no evidence in the Bible that the Jews brought with
them from the land of their captivity any of the medical lore which
that and other papyri not much later reveal. It is not certain that in
the whole of the Bible there is any distinct reference to a medicine
for internal administration. It is assumed that Rachel wanted the
mandrakes which Reuben found to make a remedy for sterility, but
that is not definitely stated. Nor is it certain that the Hebrew word
Dudaim, translated mandrakes, meant the shrub we know by that name.
Violets, lilies, jasmin, truffles, mushrooms, citrons, melons, and
other fruits have been proposed by various critics. There are three
passages in Jeremiah where Balm of Gilead is mentioned in a way which
may have meant that it was to be used as an internal remedy. These are
c. viii. v. 12, c. xlvi. v. 11, and c. li. v. 8. In two of these the
expression “take balm” is used, but it is quite possible to understand
this as meaning employ balm, and in all the passages the sense is
metaphorical.

The Mishnah, the book of Jewish legends, which forms part of the
Talmud, mentions a treatise on medicines believed to have been compiled
by Solomon. Hezekiah is said to have “hidden” this work for fear that
the people should trust to that wisdom rather than to the Lord. The
Talmud also cites a treatise on pharmacology called Megillat-Sammanin,
but neither of these works has been preserved. In the Talmud an
infusion of onions in wine is mentioned as a means of healing an issue
of blood. It was necessary at the same time for someone to say to the
patient, “Be healed of thine issue of blood.” This remedy and the
formula to be spoken are strongly reminiscent of Egypt.

The Talmud, though it was compiled in the early centuries of our era,
undoubtedly reflects the Jewish life and thought of many previous
ages, and consequently indicates fairly enough the condition of
therapeutics among the ancient Hebrews. Among its miscellaneous items
are cautions against the habit of taking medicine constantly also
against having teeth extracted needlessly. It advises that patients
should be permitted to eat anything they specially crave after. Among
its aphorisms are salt after meals, water after wine, onions for worms,
peppered wine for stomach disorders, injection of turpentine for stone
in the bladder. People may eat more before 40, drink more after 40.
Magic is plentifully supplied for the treatment of disease. To cure
ague, for instance, you must wait by a cross-road until you see an ant
carrying a load. Then you must pick up the ant and its load, place them
in a brass tube which you must seal up, saying as you do this, “Oh ant,
my load be upon thee, and thy load be upon me.”

Towards the time of Christ the sect of the Essenes, ascetic in their
habits and communistic in their principles, cultivated, according to
Josephus, the art of medicine, “collecting roots and minerals” for this
purpose. Their designation may have been derived from this occupation.

THE APOTHECARY

is, or was, familiar to readers of the Old Testament, but in the
revised translation he has partially disappeared. The earliest allusion
to him occurs in Exodus xxx., 25, where the holy anointing oil is
prescribed to be made “after the art of the apothecary”; and in the
same chapter, v. 29, incense is similarly ordered to be made into a
confection “after the art of the apothecary, tempered together.” The
Revised Version gives in both cases “the art of the perfumer,” and
instead of the incense being “tempered together” (c. xxx, v, 35) the
instruction is now rendered “seasoned with salt.” A further mention of
the art of the apothecary, or in the Revised Version, the perfumer, is
found again in connection with the same compounds in Exodus xxxvii.,
29. In 2 Chronicles xvi., 14, the apothecaries’ art in the preparation
of sweet odours and divers kinds of spices for the burial of King Asa
is again alluded to, and this time without any apparent reason the
Revised Version retains the old term. The next quotation (Nehemiah,
iii, 8) is particularly interesting. The Authorised Version says
“Hananiah, the son of one of the apothecaries,” worked on the repair
of the walls of Jerusalem by the side of Haraiah of the goldsmiths. In
the Revised Version Hananiah is described as “one of the apothecaries.”
Hebrew scholars tell us that the idiom employed shows that these men
belonged to guilds of apothecaries and goldsmiths respectively; a
pretty little insight into ancient Jewish trade history.

In Ecclesiastes, x, 1, we come to the oft quoted parallel, “Dead flies
cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour,”
this being likened to a little folly spoiling a reputation for wisdom.
The revisers have substituted perfumer for apothecary in this text.
They certainly ought to have changed ointment for pomade in the same
text to explain their view of the meaning of the passage.

In the passage already quoted from the apocryphal book of
Ecclesiasticus, xxxviii, 8, “Of such doth the apothecary make a
confection,” and in xlix, 1, “The remembrance of Josias is like the
composition of the perfume made by the art of the apothecary,” the
revisers have not seen fit to alter the trade designation.

The words translated apothecary, compound, ointment, and confection in
the passages cited, and in many others in the Hebrew scriptures, are
all inflexions of the root verb, Rakach (in which the final ch is a
strong aspirate or guttural). Gesenius says of this root, “The primary
idea appears to be in making the spices small which are mixed with
the oil.” The apothecary, therefore, may be regarded as a crusher, or
pounder.

PHARMACY, DISGRACEFUL.

The Greek word, pharmakeia, the original of our “pharmacy,” had a
rather mixed history in its native language. It does not seem to have
exactly deteriorated, as words in all languages have a habit of doing,
for from the earliest times it was used concurrently to describe
the preparation of medicines, and also through its association with
drugs and poisons and the production of philtres, as equivalent to
sorcery and witchcraft. It is in this latter sense that it is employed
exclusively in the New Testament. St. Paul, for instance (in Galatians,
v, 20), enumerating the works of the flesh names it after idolatry.
The word appears as witchcraft in the Authorised, and as sorcery in
the Revised Version. Pharmakeia or one of its derivatives also occurs
several times in the Book of Revelations (ix, 21; xviii, 23; xxi, 8,
and xxii, 15), and is uniformly rendered sorcery or sorcerers in both
versions, and is associated with crime. Hippocrates uses the verb
Pharmakeuein with the meaning of to purge, but he elsewhere employs the
same word with the meaning of to drug a person, to give a stupefying
draught. In Homer the word “Pharmaka” appears in the senses of both
noxious and healing drugs, and also to represent enchanted potions or
philtres. The word “pharmakoi” in later times came to be used for the
criminals who were sacrificed for the benefit of the communities, and
thus it acquired its lowest stage of signification. It is remarkable
and unusual for a word which has once fallen as this one did to recover
its respectable position again.

DRUGS NAMED IN THE BIBLE.

BALM OF GILEAD

is now usually identified with the exudation from the Balsamum
Gileadense, known as Opobalsamum, a delicately odorous resinous
substance of a dark red colour, turning yellow as it solidifies. It
is not now used in modern pharmacy, except in the East. The London
Pharmacopœia of 1746 authorised the substitution of expressed oil of
nutmeg for it in the formula for Theriaca. Some Biblical commentators
have preferred to regard mastic as the original Balm of Gilead, and
others have thought that styrax has fulfilled the description. At this
day the monks of Jericho sell to tourists an oily gum extracted from
the Takkum, or Balanites Egyptiaca, as Balm of Gilead. It is put up
in tin cases, and is said to be useful in the treatment of sores and
wounds; but it cannot be the true Balm of the Bible.

The references to Balm of Gilead in the Old Testament show that it was
exported from Arabia to Egypt from very early times. The Ishmaelites
“from Gilead” who bought Joseph, were carrying it down to Egypt with
other Eastern gums and spices (Genesis, xxxvii, 25). “A little balm”
was among the gifts which Jacob told his sons to take to the lord of
Egypt (Genesis, xliii, 11). This was the same substance: tsora in
Hebrew. The translation “balm” in the Authorised Version is said
in the Encyclopedia Biblica to be “an unfortunate inheritance from
Coverdale’s Bible.” Why it is unfortunate is not clear, unless it is
that the English word suggests the idea of a medicine. In the Genesis
references to the substance there is no indication that the tsora was
employed as a remedy, but in the Book of Jeremiah it is mentioned
three times (viii, 22; xlvi, 11; li, 8), and in all these allusions
its healing virtues are emphasised. Wyclif translates tsora in Genesis
“sweete gum,” and, in Jeremiah, “resyn.” Coverdale adopts “triacle”
in Jeremiah. The Septuagint rendered the Hebrew tsora into the Greek
retiné, resin.

The text of the prophetic book leaves it open to doubt whether the balm
was for internal or external administration. Probably it was made into
an ointment.

Gilead was the country on the East of the Jordan, not very defined in
extent, a geographical expression for the mountainous region which
the Israelites took from the Amorites. But it is not necessary to
suppose that the balsam was produced in that district. Josephus states
that the Balsamum Gileadense, the Opobalsamum tree, was grown in the
neighbourhood of Jericho; but he also reports the tradition that it was
brought to Judea by the Queen of Sheba when she visited Solomon. This
is not incompatible with the much earlier record of the Ishmaelites
carrying it “from Gilead” to Egypt. For the Sabaeans who inhabited the
southern part of Arabia were from very early times the great traders of
the East, and they would have supplied the balm to these Ishmaelites
in the regular course of commerce. The Sabaeans are believed to
have colonised Abyssinia, and the Queen of Sheba may have come from
that country. But whether the tree was originally grown in Africa or
Arabia, there is no doubt about the esteem in which it was held by many
nations. Strabo (B.C. 230) says: “In that most happy land of
the Sabaeans grow frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon; and on the coast
that is about Saba, the balsam also.” Many later writers allude to its
costliness and to its medicinal virtues; Pliny tells us that it was
preferred to all other odours. He also states that the tree was only
grown in Judea, and there only in two gardens, both belonging to the
King.

INCENSE.

The formula for the holy incense given in Exodus, xxx, 35, is
sufficiently definite. Taking it as it is translated in the Revised
Version, the prescription orders stacte, onycha, galbanum and
frankincense, equal parts; seasoned with salt; powdered.

The word translated incense in that passage, and also in Deuteronomy,
xxxiii, 10, and in Jeremiah, xliv, 21, is Ketorah, which originally
meant a perfumed or savoury smoke. In the Septuagint the word used for
Ketorah is Thymiana. In other passages (Isaiah, xliii, 33, lx, 6, lxvi,
3; Jeremiah, vi, 20; xvii, 26, and xli, 5), the word used in Hebrew was
Lebonah. This in our Authorised Version appears each time as incense,
but in the Revised Version the name frankincense is uniformly adopted.
Lebonah meant whiteness, probably milkiness being understood in this
connection, and travellers state that when the gum exudes from the
tree it is milky-white. The Greek equivalent, libanos, occurs severed
times in the New Testament (Matt., ii, 11; Revelations, xviii, 3).
The Arabic term was luban, and apparently olibanum is a modification
of this Arabic name with the article prefixed, Al-luban. The common
trade term “thus” is the Greek word for incense, and is derived from
the verb thuein, to sacrifice. Thurible was the Greek equivalent of the
censer. The same word has been modified into fume in English. There
is, besides, a common gum thus, obtained from the pines which yield
American turpentine.

Olibanum, or frankincense, derived from various species of the
Boswellia, was greatly prized among many of the ancient nations,
especially by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Phœnicians. The
finest qualities were grown in Somaliland, but the stocks of these
were always bought up by the Arabs, who monopolised the commerce in
olibanum. It was believed for centuries that the shrub from which it
was obtained was a native of South Arabia, and an old Eastern legend
alluded to in the Apocalypse of Moses declares that Adam was allowed to
bring this tree with him when he was expelled from the Garden of Eden.
Bruce, the African traveller, first ascertained its African origin.
The historical notes on Olibanum in “Pharmacographia” are extremely
interesting and complete.

Stacte, in Hebrew Nataph, is frequently identified with opobalsamum,
and this interpretation is given in the margin of the Revised Version.
But there are reasons for regarding it as a particularly fine kind of
myrrh in drops or tears. Nataph meant something dropped or distilled.

Galbanum, it is not disputed, was the galbanum known to us by the same
name. Its Hebrew name was Helbanah or Chelbanah. It has been an article
of commerce from very early times, but the exact plant from which
it is obtained is very uncertain. Hanbury states that the Irvingite
chapels in London still use galbanum as an ingredient in their incense
in imitation of the ancient Jewish custom.

Onycha has been the subject of much discussion. The balance of learned
opinion favours the view that it is the operculum of a species of
sea-snail found on the shores of the Red Sea. It is known as Unguis
odoratus, blatta Byzantina, and devil’s claw. Nubian women to this
day use it with myrrh, cloves, frankincense, and cinnamon, to perfume
themselves.

The incense made from the formula just quoted was reserved specially
for the service of the tabernacle, and it was forbidden, under the
penalty of being cut off from his people, for any private person to
imitate it. It does not appear, however, that the Israelites continued
to use the same formula for their Temple services. Josephus states
that the incense of his day consisted of thirteen ingredients. These
were, as we learn from Talmudic instructions, in addition to the four
gums named in the Exodus formula, the salt with which it had to be
seasoned, myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, mace, cinnamon,
and a certain herb which had the property of making the smoke of the
incense ascend straight, and in the form of a date palm. This herb was
only known to the family of Abtinas, to whom was entrusted the sole
right of preparing the incense for the Temple. Rooms were provided
for them in the precincts, and they supplied 368 minas (about 368
lbs.) to the Temple for a year’s consumption; that was 1 lb. per day
and an extra 3 lbs. for the Day of Atonement. In the first century
(A.D.) this family were dismissed because they refused to
divulge their secret. The Temple authorities sent to Alexandria for
some apothecaries to succeed them, but these Egyptian experts could
not make the smoke ascend properly, so the Abtinas had to be re-engaged
at a considerably increased salary. They gave as a reason for their
secrecy their fear that the Temple would soon be destroyed and their
incense would be used for idolatrous sacrifices.

The incense now used in Catholic churches is not made according to
the Biblical formula. The following is a typical recipe in actual
use:--Olibanum, 450; benzoin, 250; storax, 120; sugar, 100; cascarilla,
60; nitre, 150.

OLIVE OIL.

Among all the ancient Eastern nations olive oil was one of the most
precious of products. It was used lavishly by the Egyptians for
the hair and the skin, as well as in all sorts of ceremonies. The
Israelites held it in the highest esteem before they went to Egypt, the
earliest allusion to it in the Scriptures being in Genesis, xxviii, 18,
where we read that Jacob poured oil on the stone which he set up at
Bethel, evidently with the idea of consecrating it. The Apocalypse of
Moses has a legend of Adam’s experience of its medicinal virtues in the
Garden of Eden. When he was in his 930th year he was seized with great
pain in his stomach and sickness. Then he told Eve to take Seth and go
as near as they could get to the Garden, and pray to God to permit an
angel to bring them some oil from the tree of mercy so that he might
anoint himself therewith and be free of his pain. Eve and Seth were,
however, met by the Archangel Michael, who told them to return to Adam,
for in three days the measure of his life would be fulfilled.

To the Israelites in the Desert the anticipation of the “corn and wine
and oil” of Canaan was always present, and throughout their history
there are abundant evidences of how they prized it.

The prescription for the “holy anointing oil” given in Exodus, xxx,
23, is very remarkable. It was to be compounded of the following
ingredients:--

Flowing myrrh 500 shekels.
Sweet cinnamon 250 "
Sweet calamus 250 "
Cassia (or costus) 500 "
Olive oil One hin.

It is the Revised Version which gives “flowing myrrh,” apparently the
gum which exudes spontaneously. The Authorised Version reads “pure
myrrh.” The Revised Version also suggests costus in the margin as an
alternative to cassia. This oil was to be kept very sacred. Any one who
should compound any oil like it was to be cut off from his people.

A hin was a measure equivalent to about 5½ of our quarts. The shekel
was nearly 15 lbs., and some of the Rabbis insist that the “shekel of
the sanctuary” was twice the weight of the ordinary shekel. At the
lowest reckoning, less than 6 quarts of oil were to take up the extract
from nearly 90 lbs. of solid substance. It will be seen on reference
that the shekel weights are not definitely stated, but the verses can
hardly be otherwise read. Some critics have suggested that so many
shekels’ worth is intended, but this reading under the circumstances
is almost inadmissible. Maimonides, a great Jewish authority, says the
method was to boil the spices and gum in water until their odours were
extracted as fully as possible, and then to boil the water and the
oil together until the former was entirely evaporated. Doubtless the
expression “after the art of the apothecary” (or “perfumer,” R.V.) was
a sufficient explanation to those Israelites who had practised that art
in Egypt. The consistence of the oil could not have been thick, for
when used it trickled down on Aaron’s beard.

Rabbinical legends say that the quantity of the holy oil prepared at
the time when it was first prescribed was such as would miraculously
suffice to anoint the Jewish priests and kings all through their
history. In the reign of Josiah the vessel containing the holy oil
was mysteriously hidden away with the ark, and will not be discovered
until the Messiah comes. Messiah, it need hardly be said, means simply
anointed; and Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word.

MANNA.

The manna of the wilderness provided for the children of Israel on
their journey towards Canaan has no claim to be regarded as a drug,
except that a drug has in modern times usurped its name. When the
Israelites first saw the small round particles “like hoar frost on
the ground” (Exodus, xvi, 14) they said, according to the Authorised
Version, “It is manna; for they wist not what it was.” The Revised
Version makes the sentence read more intelligibly by translating the
Hebrew word Man-hu interrogatively thus:--“What is it? For they wist
not what it was.” This Hebrew interrogation has been widely adopted
as the origin of the name, but it is more probable that the Hebrew
word man, a gift, is the true derivation. Ebers suggested the Egyptian
word “manhu,” food, as a probable explanation. The Arabic word for the
manna of Sinai is still “man.” This is the substance which scientific
investigators have agreed is the manna described in Exodus. It is an
exudation from the Tamarisk mannifera, a shrub which grows in the
valleys of the Sinai peninsula, the manna being yielded from the young
branches after the punctures of certain insects. Another Eastern manna,
a Persian product from a leguminous plant, Alhagi Maurorum, and a manna
yielded by an evergreen oak in Kurdistan, are still sold and used in
some Eastern countries for food and medicine. But in Europe, and to
some extent in the East also, Sicilian manna, the product of an ash
tree, Fraxinus ornus, has displaced the old sorts since the fifteenth
century. The commerce in this article and its history were investigated
by Mr. Daniel Hanbury and described by him in Science Papers and in
Pharmacographia.

The rabbinical legends concerning the manna of the wilderness are many
and strange. One is to the effect that when it lay on the ground all
the kings of the East and of the West could see it from their palace
windows. According to Zabdi ben Levi it was provided in such abundance
that it covered every morning an area of 2,000 cubits square and was
60 cubits in depth. Each day’s fall was sufficient to nourish the camp
for 2,000 years. The Book of Wisdom (xvi, 20, 21) tells us that the
manna so accommodated itself to every taste that it proved palatable
and pleasing to all. “Able to content every man’s delight, and agreeing
to every taste.” The rabbinical legends enlarge this statement and
assure us that to those Israelites who did not murmur the manna became
fish, flesh, fowl at will. This is in a degree based on the words in
Ps. lxxviii, 24, 25, in which it is described as “corn of heaven, bread
of the mighty, and meat to the full.” But the traditions say it could
not acquire the flavours of cucumbers, melons, garlic, or onions, all
of which were Egyptian relishes which were keenly regretted by the
tribes. It is also on record among the legends that the manna was pure
nourishment. All of it was assimilated; so that the grossest office of
the body was not exercised. It was provided expressly for the children
of Israel. If any stranger tried to collect any it slipped from his
grasp.

BDELLIUM.

Bdellium (Heb. Bedoloch) is mentioned in Genesis, ii, 12, as being
found along with gold and onyx in the land of Havilah, near the Garden
of Eden. The association with gold and onyx suggests that bdellium
was a precious stone. The Septuagint translates the word in Genesis,
anthrax, carbuncle; but renders the same Hebrew word in Numbers, xi, 7,
where the manna is likened to bdellium, by Krystallos, crystals. The
Greek bdellion described by Dioscorides and Pliny was the fragrant gum
from a species of Balsamodendron, and this word was almost certainly
derived from an Eastern source, and might easily have been originally
a generic term for pearls. Pearls would better than anything else fit
the reference in Numbers (“like coriander seed, and the appearance
thereof as the appearance of bdellium”), and this is the meaning
attached to the word in the rabbinical traditions. Some authorities
have conjectured that the “ד” (d) of bedolach may have been
substituted for “ר” (r) berolach, so that the beryl stone may
have been intended.

ALOES WOOD.

References to aloes are frequent in the Scriptures. The first allusion
is found in Numbers, xxiv, 6, when in his poetic prophecy Balaam
describes Israel flourishing “as lign-aloes which the Lord hath
planted.” The other allusions occur in Psalm xlv, 8, Proverbs, vii, 17,
Canticles, iv, 14, and John, xix, 39. In the four last-named passages
aloes is associated with myrrh as a perfume. Of course it is understood
that the lign or lignum aloes, the perfumed wood of the aquilaria
agallocha, the eagle wood of India, is meant, but as that tree is
believed not to have been known except in the Malayan peninsula in the
days of Balaam, critics have remarked on the extraordinary circumstance
that it should be used as a simile by an orator in Palestine who would
naturally select objects for comparison familiar to his hearers. It has
been suggested, and with much force, that the original word in Balaam’s
prophecy may have been the Hebrew word for the palm or date tree. The
Septuagint translates the word “tents.”

MYRRH.

It has been stated that the stacte ordered in the formula for incense
was probably a very fine kind of liquid myrrh (the flowing myrrh of
the holy oil formula). But myrrh (Heb. mur) is several times directly
mentioned. Esther purified herself for six months with oil of myrrh
(ii, 12); myrrh, aloes, and cassia are grouped as sweet odours in Ps.
xlv, 8; with cinnamon in the place of cassia in Prov., vii, 17, and in
numerous verses of the Song of Songs. In the New Testament it is named
among the gifts which the wise men brought to the Saviour. Nicodemus
brought myrrh and aloes to embalm the body of Jesus. On the cross St.
Matthew (xxvii, 34) names vinegar mixed with gall as a drink given
to Christ by the soldiers; in an apparently parallel passage in St.
Mark’s Gospel (xv, 23) wine with myrrh is the mixture described. It
is possible that Matthew writing in Syriac may have used the word mur
(myrrh) and that his translator into Greek read from his manuscript
Mar (gall). In Genesis, xxxvii, 25, and xliii, 11, the word translated
myrrh is Loth (not mur) in the Hebrew. The best opinion is that this
meant ladanum, the gum from the cistus labdaniferus which Dioscorides
states was scraped from the beards of goats which had fed on the leaves
of this shrub and had taken up some of the exuding gum.

WORMWOOD.

The Israelites had great objection to bitter flavours, and the coupling
of “gall and wormwood” expresses something extremely unpleasant. The
Hebrew word is La’anah, and the Septuagint twice renders this hemlock
(Hos., x, 4 and Amos, vi, 12) but in other places wormwood. The star
which fell from heaven and made the rivers bitter (Rev., viii, 11) was
called by the Greek name for wormwood, Apsinthos.

HYSSOP.

Hyssop is a word which has occasioned much difference of opinion among
interpreters. The Hebrew word hezob was translated in the Septuagint
by hyssopos, and this word is used twice in the New Testament. From
references used in the Pentateuch it is clear that “a bunch of hyssop”
was employed in the Israelitish ritual for sprinkling purposes (Exodus,
xii, 22; Leviticus, xiv, 4 and 6; Numbers, xix, 6 and 18). From 1
Kings, iv, 33, it appears that it was a shrub that grew in crevices of
walls; from Psalm li, 7, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean,”
it has been assumed to have possessed purgative properties, though it
is more likely that the allusion was to the ceremonial purification
of the law; according to St. John its stem was used to hand up the
sponge of vinegar to the Saviour on the cross, but St. Matthew and St.
Mark use the term calamus, or a reed. It may have been that a bunch
of hyssop was fixed to the reed and the sponge of vinegar placed on
the hyssop. Some learned commentators have conjectured that the word
hyssopos in St. John’s account was originally hysso, a well-known Greek
word for the Roman pilum or javelin. The other allusion in the New
Testament occurs in Hebrews, ix, 19, and is merely a quotation from the
Pentateuch.

It has been found impossible to apply the descriptions quoted to any
one plant. That which we now call hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) does
not grow in Palestine. It is generally agreed that it was not that
shrub. The caper has been suggested and strongly supported, but the
best modern opinion is that the word was applied generically to several
kinds of origanum which were common in Syria.

JUNIPER.

The Hebrew word rothem, translated juniper in our Authorised Version,
has given much trouble to translators. The Septuagint merely converted
the Hebrew word into a Greek one, and the Vulgate followed the
Septuagint. The allusions to the tree are in 1 Kings, xix, 4 and 5,
where Elijah slept under a juniper tree; Job, xxx, 4, speaks of certain
men so poor that they cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots
for their meat; and Psalm cxx, 4, “Sharp arrows of the mighty with
coals of juniper.” The tree alluded to was almost certainly the Broom,
and it is so rendered in the Revised Version either in the text or
in the margin in all the instances. The Arabic name for the broom is
ratam, evidently a descendant of rothem. The Genista roetam is said to
be the largest and most conspicuous shrub in the deserts of Palestine,
and would be readily chosen for its shade by a weary traveller. The
mallows in the Book of Job are translated salt wort in the Revised
Version. Renan gives “They gather their salads from the bushes.” Salads
were regarded as indispensable by the poorest Jews. The coals of
juniper (or broom) are supposed to have reference to the lasting fire
which this wood furnishes, but other translations suggest as the proper
reading of the verse “The arrows of a warrior are the tongues of the
people of the tents of Misram.”

JONAH’S GOURD.

The Gourd, of which we read in Jonah, iv, 6-10, is Kikaion in Hebrew,
and there has been some doubt what the plant could have been which grew
so rapidly and was so quickly destroyed. It is stated that the Lord
made this grow over the booth which the prophet had erected in a single
night, and provide a shade of which Jonah was “exceedingly glad.” The
next morning, however, a worm attacked it, and it withered.

The author of “Harris’s Natural History of the Bible,” Dr. Thaddeus
M. Harris, of Dorchester, Massachusetts (1824), quotes from an earlier
work, “Scripture Illustrated,” a curious account of a violent dispute
between St. Jerome and St. Augustine in reference to the identification
of this plant. According to this author “those pious fathers ... not
only differed in words, but from words they proceeded to blows; and
Jerome was accused of heresy at Rome by Augustine. Jerome thought the
plant was an ivy, and pleaded the authority of Aquila, Symmachus,
Theodotion, and others; Augustine thought it was a gourd, and he was
supported by the Seventy, the Syriac, the Arabic, &c. Had either of
them ever seen the plant? Neither. Let the errors of these pious men
teach us to think more mildly, if not more meekly, respecting our own
opinions; and not to exclaim Heresy, or to enforce the exclamation,
when the subject is of so little importance as--gourd _versus_ ivy.”

While endorsing the practical lesson which the author just cited
extracts from his rather unpleasant story, I think I ought to append to
this narrative another which is given in Gerard’s Herbal (1597) which
seems to be incompatible with the previously quoted account of the
quarrel. This is what Gerard writes:--

“Ricinus, whereof mention is made in the fourth chapter and sixt verse
of the prophecie of Jonas, was called of the Talmudists kik, for in the
Talmud we reade Velo beschemen kik, that is in English, And not with
the oile of kik; which oile is called in the Arabian toong Alkerua, as
Rabbi Samuel the sonne of Hofni testifieth. Moreover a certain Rabbine
mooveth a question saying What is kik? Hereunto Resch Lachisch maketh
answer in Ghemara, saying Kik is nothing else but Jonas his kikaijon.
And that this is true it appeareth by that name kiki which the ancient
Greeke phisicions and the Aegyptians used, which Greeke word cometh
of the Hebrew kik. Hereby it appeereth that the olde writers long
ago, though unwittingly, called this plant by his true name. But the
olde Latine writers knew it by the name Cucurbita which evidently is
manifested by an Historie which St. Augustine recordeth in his Epistle
to St. Jerome where in effect he writeth thus:--That name kikaijon is
of small moment yet so small a matter caused a great tumult in Africa.
For on a time a certaine Bishop having occasion to intreat of this
which is mentioned in the fourth chapter of Jonas his prophecie (in
a collation or sermon which he made in his cathedral church or place
of assemblie), said that this plant was called Cucurbita, a Gourde,
because it increased to so great a quantitie in so short a space, or
else (saith he) it is called Hedera. Upon the novelty and untruth of
this doctrine the people were greatly offended, and there arose a
tumult and hurly burly, so that the bishop was inforced to go to the
Jews to aske their judgement as touching the name of this plant. And
when he had received of them the true name which was kikaijon, he made
his open recantation and confessed his error, and was justly accused of
being a falsifier of Holy Scripture.”

I quote the letter as Gerard gives it without quite understanding it,
and I have not been able to trace its origin. But it is clear that if
St. Augustine thought it was such a small matter he would hardly have
quarrelled so violently with St. Jerome about it. Probably, however,
the story of the quarrel is founded on this letter. Moreover the
conclusion seems to be that the gourd was not a cucurbita but the Palma
Christi.

The importance of Jerome’s translation of the word representing the
plant to be Ivy (Hedera) is that he incorporated it into his Latin
version of the Bible known as the Vulgate. The much older Septuagint
(Greek) translation gives “kolokyntha,” the bottle gourd, as the
rendering of the Hebrew kikaion. The Swedish botanist and theologian
Celsius strongly supported the view that Jonah’s gourd was the Palma
Christi in his “Hierobotanicon; sive de Plantis Sacrae Scripturae,”
1746. But though this tree is of very rapid growth, and is planted
before houses in the East for its shade, and though philological
arguments are in its favour, Dr. Hastings (“Encyclopædia Biblica”)
rejects the suggestion and prefers the Septuagint version because
he thinks the passage clearly indicates that a vine is intended. He
considers there is no support, either botanical or etymological, for
the selection of ivy to represent the gourd.

THE WILD GOURDS

mentioned in 2 Kings, iv, 39, are generally supposed to have been
colocynth fruit, though the squirting cucumber (Ecbalium purgans) has
also been suggested. The plant on which this grows, however, would
hardly be called a wild vine, for it has no tendrils. The Jews were in
the habit of shredding various kinds of gourds in their pottage, and as
narrated, someone had brought a lapful of these gourds, the fruit of a
wild vine, and shredded them into the pottage which was being prepared
for the sons of the prophets. The mistake could hardly have been made
with the squirting cucumber, which is very common throughout Palestine,
but the colocynth only grew on barren sands like those near Gilgal,
and might easily be mistaken for the globe cucumber. The mistake was
discovered as soon as the pottage was tasted, and the alarm of “death
in the pot” was raised. Elisha, however, casting some meal in the pot
destroyed the bitter taste, and apparently rendered the pottage quite
harmless.

THE HORSE LEECH

mentioned in Proverbs, xxx, 15, “The horse-leech hath two daughters,
crying Give, Give,” is a translation of Hebrew Aluka, the meaning
of which is not without doubt. The Hebrew word is interpreted by
corresponding terms in Arabic, but of these there are two, one meaning
the leech, and the other fate or destiny. The latter word is supposed
to have been derived from the former from the idea that every person’s
fate clings to him. Another similar Arabic word is Aluk, a female ghul
or vampire, who, it was believed, sucked the blood of those whom she
attacked.

NITRE

is mentioned twice in the Old Testament, first in Proverbs, xxv, 20,
“As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.”
In the Revised Version soda is given instead of nitre in the margin.
The other reference is in Jeremiah, ii, 22, “Though thou wash thee
with nitre, and take thee much sope.” In this passage the Revised
Version changes nitre to lye. The Hebrew word is Nether, the natrum
of the East, an impure carbonate of sodium which was condensed from
certain salt lakes, or obtained from marine plants. Vinegar would cause
effervescence with this substance, but not with nitrate of potash. The
soap in the same passage in Jeremiah, in Hebrew Borith, was either the
soap wort or a salt obtained from the ashes of herbs by lixiviation.

MUSTARD SEEDS

are mentioned twice by the Saviour as illustrations of something very
small: first as the small seed which grows into a tree, and second as
the measure of even a minute degree of faith. The weed did in fact grow
in Palestine to some ten or twelve feet in height.

VINEGAR.

Homez in Hebrew, Oxus in Greek, is mentioned five times in the Old
Testament, and five times in the New Testament. It was used as a relish
by the Jews, the food being dipped into it before eating. The passages
where vinegar is mentioned in the accounts of the Crucifixion in the
several Gospels are not fully explained by Biblical scholars. The first
administration of vinegar to the Saviour was, according to St. Matthew,
vinegar mixed with gall; according to St. Mark, vinegar mixed with
myrrh. There are linguistic reasons for assuming that the additional
ingredient may have been opium, given with a merciful intention. But
both evangelists state that Jesus refused it. The second time vinegar
was given to him on a sponge, and St. Luke seems to suggest that this
was given in mockery. It is supposed that the vinegar was the posca, a
sour wine which was largely drunk by the Roman soldiers.

ANETHON.

All translators agree that dill and not anise was the “anethon” named
with mint and cummin in the passage, Matthew, xxiii, 23. Anise was
never grown in Palestine. The other herbs were common in gardens,
and the allusion to paying tithe on them, and to rue in a similar
connection in Luke, xi, 42, appears to refer to the scrupulous
observance of the letter of the law by the Pharisees, even down to
such an insignificant matter as the tithe on these almost valueless
herbs. The law did not, in fact, require tithe to be paid except on
productions which yielded income. It was therefore rather to satisfy
their own self-righteousness that the Pharisees insisted on paying the
contribution on mint and anise and cummin.

SAFFRON

is only mentioned in the Song of Solomon, iv, 14, as one of the many
valuable products of an Eastern garden. There is not much doubt that
this was the crocus sativa known to medicine from the earliest times.
The Hebrew word, karkum, was kurkum in ancient Arabic, and this is
given in Arab dictionaries as equivalent to the more modern za-faran
from which our word is derived.

POMEGRANATES

are always referred to in the Scriptures as luxuries. The spies sent
by Moses to see the land of Canaan brought back pomegranates with figs
and grapes (Numbers, xiii, 23); the same fruits are promised in Deut.
(viii, 8); the withering of the pomegranate tree is, with that of the
vine and fig tree, noted by the prophet Joel (i, 12) as a sign of
desolation. It is still highly prized as a fruit in the East.

THE POULTICE OF FIGS

applied to Hezekiah’s boil (2 Kings, xx, 7) is an interesting
reminiscence of Israelitish home medicine. The fig tree often appears
in the Bible. Some very learned Biblical commentators (Celsius,
Gesenius, Knobel, among them) have believed that the fig leaves with
which Adam and Eve made aprons were in fact the very long leaves of the
banana tree. This, however, is scarcely possible, as the banana is a
native of the Malay Archipelago, and there is no evidence that it was
known to the Jews at the time when the Pentateuch was written.

SPIKENARD

is mentioned three times in the Song of Songs (i, 12, iv, 13, iv, 14),
and in the New Testament on two occasions (Mark xiv, 3, and John xii,
3), a box of spikenard ointment, “very costly” and “very precious” is,
in the instance recorded by St. Mark, poured on the Saviour’s head,
and in the narrative of St. John, is used to anoint His feet. On both
occasions we are told that the value of this box or vase was three
hundred pence. It is explained in the Revised Version that the coin
named was equivalent to about 8½d. The price of the ointment used was
therefore over ten pounds.

In the Greek text the word used is nardos pitike. It has been variously
conjectured that the adjective may have meant liquid, genuine or
powdered; the word lends itself to either of those meanings. Or it may
have been a local term, or possibly it may have been altered from a
word which would have meant what we understand by “spike” in botany.
The most likely meaning is “genuine,” for we know that this product
was at that period a perfume in high esteem, and that there were
several qualities, the best, and by far the costliest, being brought
from India. The ointment employed was really an otto, and it was
imported into Rome and other cities of the Empire in alabaster vessels.
Dioscorides and Galen refer to it as nardostachys. The Arab name for it
was Sumbul Hindi, but this must not be confounded with the sumbul which
we know. The word sumbul simply means spike. The botanical origin of
the Scripture spikenard, the nardostachys of Dioscorides, was cleared
up, it is generally agreed, by Sir William Jones in 1790. He traced
it to a Himalayan plant of the valerian order which was afterwards
exactly identified by Royle. A Brahman gave some of the fibrous roots
to Sir William Jones, and told him it was employed in their religious
sacrifices.

Pliny mentions an ointment of spikenard composed of the Indian nard,
with myrrh, balm, custos, amomum, and other ingredients, but the
“genuine” nard alluded to in the Gospels was probably the simple otto.
Pliny also states that the Indian nard was worth, in his time, in Rome,
one hundred denarii per pound.

Horace mentions an onyx box of nard which was considered of equal value
with a large vessel of wine:

Nardo vinum merebere
Nardi parvus onyx eliciet cadum.

EASTERN IMAGERY.

In Ecclesiastes, xii, 5, the familiar words “and desire shall fail,”
have been changed in the Revised Version to “the caper-berry shall
fail.” This alteration does not strike the ordinary reader as an
improvement, but it appears that the Revised Version translation is a
reversion to that of the Septuagint, and is probably exactly correct.
It is supposed to mean the same thing. The caper has always been
recognised as a relish to meat, as we use it; and there is evidence
that it was given as a stimulating medicine among the Arabs in the
Middle Ages, and perhaps from very ancient times. The idea would be
therefore that even the caper-berry will not now have any effect. The
Revisers also suggest in the margin “burst” for “fail.” It is only a
question of points in Hebrew which word is intended, and some think
that the berry when fully ripe and bursting may have been an emblem of
death.

The other clauses in the same verse have given rise to much difference
of opinion. “The almond tree shall flourish” is generally supposed
to indicate the white locks of the old man. But against this it is
objected that the almond blossom is not white, but pink; and by a
slight alteration of the original it is possible to read “the almond
(the fruit) shall be refused” or rejected; it is no longer a tempting
morsel.

The almond and the almond tree (the same word may mean either) are
mentioned several times in the Bible. Jacob’s gifts to Joseph from
Canaan to Egypt included almonds. They were grown in Canaan and were
a luxury in Egypt. In Jeremiah, i, 11, the almond branch is used as
symbolical of hastening or awakening, which is the primary meaning of
the word, derived from the early appearance of the blossoms on the
almond tree.

The third clause, “the grasshopper shall be a burden,” similarly
presents difficulties, but these hardly concern us here. Probably all
the metaphors conveyed distinct ideas to Eastern readers at that time,
but have lost their point to us.

The interpretation of the beautiful Hebrew poetry of the twelfth
chapter of Ecclesiastes, as given in Leclerc’s “History of Medicine,”
may be of interest. Leclerc says the chapter is an enigmatic
description of old age and its inconveniences, followed by death. The
sun, the light, the moon, and the stars are respectively the mind, the
judgment, the memory, and the other faculties of the soul, which are
gradually fading. The clouds and the rain are the catarrhs and the
fluxions incident to age. The guards of the house and the strong man
are the senses, the muscles, and the tendons. The grinders are the
teeth; those who look out through the windows is an allusion to the
sight. The doors shall be shut in the streets, and the sound of the
grinding is low, means that the mouth will scarcely open for speaking,
and that eating must be slow and quiet. The old man must rise at the
voice of the bird, for he cannot sleep. There is no more singing, and
reading and study are no longer pleasures. The fear of climbing, even
of walking, are next expressed; the white hair is signalised by the
almond blossom, and the flesh falling away by the grasshopper, though
the word burden may indicate the occasional unhealthy fattening of old
persons. The caper failing indicates the loss of the various appetites.
The silver cord represents the spinal marrow, the golden bowl the brain
or the heart; the pitcher, the skull; and the wheel, the lung. The long
home is the tomb.

THE PHARMACY OF HIPPOCRATES.

When we search into the history of medicine and the
commencement of science, the first body of doctrine that
we meet with is the collection of writings attributed to
Hippocrates. Science ascends directly to that origin and there
stops. Everything that had been learned before the physician
of Cos has perished; and, curiously, there exists a great
gap after him as well as before him.... So that the writings
of Hippocrates remain isolated amongst the ruins of ancient
medical literature.--LITTRÉ. Introduction to the
_Translation of the Works of Hippocrates_.

About eight hundred years separated the periods of Æsculapius and
Hippocrates. During that long time the study of medicine in all its
branches was proceeding in intimate association with the various
philosophies for which Greece has always been famous. Intercourse
between Greece and Egypt, Persia, India, and other countries brought
into use a number of medicines, and probably these were introduced and
made popular by the shopkeepers and the travelling doctors, market
quacks as we should call them.

Leclerc has collected a list of nearly four hundred simples which he
finds alluded to as remedies in the writings of Hippocrates. But these
include various milks, wines, fruits, vegetables, flits, and other
substances which we should hardly call drugs now. Omitting these and
certain other substances which cannot be identified I take from the
author named the following list of medicines employed or mentioned in
that far distant age;--

Abrotanum.
Absinthe.
Adiantum (maidenhair).
Agnus castus.
Algae (various).
Almonds.
Althaea.
Alum.
Amber.
Ammoniac.
Amomum.
Anagallis (a veronica).
Anagyris.
Anchusa.
Anemone.
Anethum.
Anise.
Anthemis.
Aparine (goose grease).
Aristolochia.
Armenian stone.
Asphalt.
Asphodel.
Atriplex.
Baccharis.
Balm.
Basil.
Bistort.
Blite.
Brass (flowers, filings, ashes).
Briar.
Bryony.
Burdock.
Cabbage.
Cachrys.
Calamus aromaticus.
Cantharides.
Capers.
Cardamom.
Carduus benedictus.
Carrot.
Castoreum.
Centaury.
Centipedes.
Chalcitis (red ochre).
Chenopodium.
Cinnamon.
Cinquefoil.
Clove.
Colocynth.
Coriander.
Crayfish.
Cress.
Cucumber (wild).
Cummin.
Cyclamen.
Cytisus.
Dictamnus.
Dog.
Dracontium.
Earths (various).
Elaterium.
Elder.
Erica.
Euphorbia.
Excrement of ass, goat, mule, goose, fox.
Fennel.
Fig tree (leaves, wood, fruit).
Foenugreek.
Frankincense.
Frogs.
Galbanum.
Galls.
Garlic.
Germander.
Goat (various parts).
Hawthorn.
Heather.
Hellebore (white and black).
Hemlock.
Henbane.
Honey.
Horehound.
Horns of ox, goat, stag.
Hyssop.
Isatis.
Ivy.
Juniper.
Laserpitium.
Laurel.
Lettuce.
Licorice.
Linseed.
Loadstone.
Lotus.
Lupins.
Magnesian stone.
Mallow.
Mandragora.
Mecon (?).
Melilot.
Mercurialis.
Minium.
Mints (various).
Mugwort.
Myrabolans.
Myrrh.
Myrtle.
Narcissus.
Nard.
Nitre.
Oak.
Oenanthe.
Oesypus.
Olive.
Onions.
Origanum.
Orpiment.
Ostrich.
Ox-gall.
Ox (liver, gall, urine).
Panax.
Parthenium.
Pennyroyal.
Peony.
Pepper.
Persea (sebestens).
Persil.
Peucedanum.
Phaseolus.
Philistium.
Pine.
Pitch.
Pomegranate.
Poppy.
Quicklime.
Quince.
Ranunculus.
Red spider.
Resin.
Rhamnus.
Rhus.
Ricinus.
Rock rose.
Rose.
Rosemary.
Ruby.
Rue.
Saffron.
Sagapenum.
Sage.
Salt.
Samphire.
Sandarach.
Scammony.
Sea water.
Secundines of a woman.
Sepia.
Serpent.
Sesame.
Seseli.
Silver.
Sisymbrium.
Solanum.
Spurge.
Squill.
Stag (horns, &c.).
Stavesacre.
Styrax.
Succinum.
Sulphur.
Sweat.
Tarragon.
Tetragonon.
Thaspia.
Thistles (various).
Thlapsi.
Thuja.
Thyme.
Torpedo (fish).
Trigonum.
Tribulus.
Turpentine.
Turtle.
Umbilicus veneris.
Verbascum.
Verbena.
Verdigris.
Verjuice.
Violet.
Wax.
Willow.
Woad.
Worms.
Worm seed.

This list may be taken to have comprised pretty fairly the materia
medica of the Greeks as it was known to them when Hippocrates
practised, and as it is not claimed that he introduced any new
medicines it may be assumed that these formed the basis of the remedies
used in the temples of Æsculapius, though perhaps some of them were
only popular medicines.

The temples of Æsculapius were in all those ages the repositories of
such medical and pharmaceutical knowledge as was acquired. The priests
of these temples were called Asclepiades, and they professed to be the
descendants of the god. Probably the employment of internal medicines
was a comparatively late development. Plato remarks on the necessarily
limited medical knowledge of Æsculapius. Wounds, bites of serpents, and
occasional epidemics, he observes, were the principal troubles which
the earliest physicians had to treat. Catarrhs, gout, dysentery, and
lung diseases only came with luxury. Plutarch and Pindar say much the
same. The latter specially mentions that Æsculapius had recourse to
prayers, hymns, and incantations in mystic words and in verses called
epaioide, or carmina, from which came the idea and name of charm.

In later times these temples were beautiful places, generally situated
in the most healthy localities, and amid lovely scenery. They were
either in forests or surrounded by gardens. A stream of pure water ran
through the grounds, and the neighbourhood of a medicinal spring was
chosen if possible. The patients who resorted to them were required to
purify themselves rigorously, to fast for some time before presenting
themselves in the temple, to abstain from wine for a still longer
preliminary period, and thus to appreciate the solemnity of the
intercession which was to be made for them. On entering the temple
they found much to impress them. They were shown the records of cures,
especially of diseases similar to their own; their fasts had brought
them into a mental condition ready to accept a miracle, the ceremonies
which they witnessed were imposing, and at last they were left to sleep
before the altar. That dreams should come under those circumstances was
not wonderful; nor was it surprising that in the morning the priests
should be prepared to interpret these dreams. Not unfrequently the
patients saw some mysterious shapes in their dreams which suggested to
the priests the medicines which ought to be administered. For no doubt
they did administer medicines, though for many centuries they observed
the strictest secrecy in reference to all their knowledge and practices.

It need hardly be added that offerings were made to the god, to the
service of the temple, and to the priests personally by grateful
patients who had obtained benefit. At one of the temples it is said
it was the custom to throw pieces of gold or silver into a well for
the god. At others pieces of carving representing the part which had
been the seat of disease were sold to those who had been cured, and
these were again presented to the temple, and, it may be surmised, sold
again. That cures were effected is likely enough. The excitement, the
anticipation, the deep impressions made by the novel surroundings had
great influence on many minds, and through the minds on the bodies.
Records of these cures were engraved on tablets and fixed on the walls
of the temples.

Sprengel gives a translation of four of these inscriptions found at the
Temple of Æsculapius which had been built on the Isle of the Tiber,
near Rome. The first relates that a certain Gaius, a blind man, was
told by the oracle to pray in the temple, then cross the floor from
right to left, lay the five fingers of his right hand on the altar,
and afterwards carry his hand to his eyes. He did so, and recovered
his sight in the presence of a large crowd. The next record is also a
cure of blindness. A soldier named Valerius Aper was told to mix the
blood of a white cock with honey and apply the mixture to his eyes for
three successive days. He, too, was cured, and thanked the god before
all the people. Julian was cured of spitting of blood. His case had
been considered hopeless. The treatment prescribed was mixing seeds
of the fir apple with honey, and eating the compound for three days.
The fourth cure was of a son of Lucius who was desperately ill with
pleurisy. The god told him in a dream to take ashes from the altar, mix
them with wine, and apply to his side.

The legend of the foundation of this Roman temple is curious. In the
days of the republic on the occasion of an epidemic in the city the
sibylline books were consulted, with the result that an embassy was
sent to Epidaurus to ask for the help of Æsculapius. Quintus Ogulnius
was appointed for this mission. On arriving at Epidaurus the Romans
were astonished to see a large serpent depart from the temple, make its
way to the shore, and leap on the vessel, where it proceeded at once
to the cabin of Ogulnius. Some of the priests followed the serpent and
accompanied the Romans on the return journey. The vessel stopped at
Antium, and the serpent left the ship and proceeded to the Temple of
Æsculapius in that city. After three days he returned, and the voyage
was continued. Casting anchor at the mouth of the Tiber the serpent
again left the vessel and settled itself on a small island. There it
rolled itself up, thus indicating its intention of settling on that
spot. The god, it was understood, had selected that island as the site
for his temple, and there it was erected.

As might be expected, some of the less reverent of the Greek writers
found subjects for satire in the worship of Æsculapius. Aristophanes
in one of his comedies makes a servant relate how his master, Plautus,
who was blind, was restored to sight at the Æsculapian temple. Having
placed their offerings on the altar and performed other ceremonies,
this servant says that Plautus and he laid down on beds of straw. When
the lights were extinguished the priest came round and enjoined them to
sleep and to keep silence if they should hear any noise. Later the god
himself came and wiped the eyes of Plautus with a piece of white linen.
Panacea followed him and covered the face of Plautus with a purple
veil. Then on a signal from the deity two serpents glided under the
veil, and having licked his eyes Plautus recovered his sight.

It cannot be doubted that in the course of the centuries a large
amount of empiric knowledge was accumulated at these temples, and
probably the pretence of supernatural aid was far more rare than we
suppose. In an exhaustive study of the subject recently published
by Dr. Aravintinos, of Athens, that authority expresses the opinion
that the temples served as hospitals for all kinds of sufferers, and
that arrangements were provided in them for prolonged treatment. He
thinks that in special cases the treatment was carried out during the
mysterious sleep, when it was desired to keep from the patient an exact
knowledge of what was being done; but generally he supposes a course
of normal medication or hygiene was followed. Forty-two inscriptions
have been discovered, but on analysing these Dr. Aravintinos comes to
the conclusion that they record in most cases only cures effected by
rational means, and not by miracles. He finds massage, purgatives,
emetics, diaphoresis, bleeding, baths, poulticing, and such like
methods indicated, and though the sleeps, possibly hypnotic, are often
mentioned, this is not by any means the case invariably.

About a century before Hippocrates wrote and practised, the Asclepiads
began to reveal their secrets. The revolt against the mysteries and
trickeries of the temples was incited by the infidelity to their oaths
of certain of the Italian disciples of Pythagoras. The school of
philosophy and medicine founded by that mystic aimed also to keep his
doctrines secret, but when the colony he had established at Crotona,
in South Italy, was dispersed by the attacks of the mob, a number of
the initiates travelled about under the title of Periodeutes practising
medicine often in close proximity to an Æsculapian temple. The first
of the Asclepiads to yield to this competition were those of Cnidos,
but the school of Cos was not long after them. The direct ancestors of
Hippocrates were among the teachers of the temple who became eager to
make known the accumulated science in their possession, and thus by the
time when the famous teacher was born (460 B.C.) the world was
ripe for his intellect to have free play.

HIPPOCRATES.

Hippocrates was born in Cos, as far as can be ascertained, about the
year 460 B.C., and is alleged to have lived to be 99, or, as
some say, 109 years of age. It is claimed that his father, Heraclides,
was a direct descendant of Æsculapius, and that his mother, Phenarita,
was of the family of Hercules. His father and his paternal ancestors
in a long line were all priests of the Æsculapian temples, and his
sons and their sons after them also practised medicine in the same
surroundings. The family, traceable for nearly 300 years, among whom
were seven of the name of Hippocrates, were all, it would appear,
singularly free from the charlatanism which the Greek dramatists
attributed to the Æsculapian practitioners, from the superstition which
overlaid the medical science of so many older and later centuries, and
especially from the fantastic pharmacy which was to develop to such an
absurd extent in the following five hundred years.

It is not possible to distinguish with any confidence the genuine
from the spurious writings attributed to Hippocrates which have come
down to us. But the note which even his imitators sought to copy was
one of directness, lucidity, and candour. He tells of his failures as
simply as of his successes. He does not seek to deduce a system from
his experience, and though he is reputed to be the originator of the
theory of the humours, he does not allow the doctrine to influence his
treatment, which is based on experience.

[Illustration:

This portrait of Hippocrates, which is given in Leclerc’s
“History of Medicine,” is stated to be copied from a medal
in the collection of Fulvius Ursinus, a celebrated Italian
connoisseur. It is believed that the medal was struck by the
people of Cos at some long distant time in honour of their
famous compatriot. A bust in the British Museum, found near
Albano, among some ruins conjectured to have been the villa
of Marcus Varro, is presumed to represent Hippocrates on the
evidence of the likeness it bears to the head on this medal.
]

The medical views of Hippocrates do not concern us here except as
they affect his pharmaceutical practice; but a very long chapter
might be written on his pharmacy, that is to say, on the use he made
of drugs in the treatment of disease. Galen believed that he made
his preparations with his own hand, or at least superintended their
preparation. Leclerc’s list of the medicaments mentioned as such in the
works attributed to Hippocrates have been already quoted, and it will
be found that after deducting the fruits and vegetables, the milks of
cows, goats, asses, mules, sheep, and bitches, as well as other things
which perhaps we should hardly reckon as medicaments, there remain
between one hundred and two hundred drugs which are still found in our
drug shops. There are a great many animal products, some copper and
lead derivatives, alum, and the earths so much esteemed; but evidently
the bulk of his materia medica was drawn from the vegetable kingdom.

Hippocrates was considerably interested in pharmacy. Galen makes him
say, “We know the nature of medicaments and simples, and make many
different preparations with them; some in one way, some in another.
Some simples must be gathered early, some late; some we dry, some we
crush, some we cook,” &c. He made fomentations, poultices, gargles,
pessaries, katapotia (things to swallow, large pills), ointments, oils,
cerates, collyria, looches, tablets, and inhalations, which he called
perfumes. For quinsy, for example, he burned sulphur and asphalte with
hyssop. He gave narcotics, including, it is supposed, the juice of
the poppy and henbane seeds, and mandragora; purgatives, sudorifics,
emetics, and enemas. His purgative drugs were generally drastic ones:
the hellebores, elaterium, colocynth, scammony, thapsia, and a species
of rhamnus.

Hippocrates describes methods for what he calls purging the head and
the lungs, that is, by means of sneezing and coughing. He explains how
he diminishes the acridity of spurge juice by dropping a little of it
on a dried fig, whereby he gets a good remedy for dropsy. He has a
medicine which he calls Tetragonon, or four-cornered. Galen conjectures
that this was a tablet of crude antimony. Leclerc more reasonably
suggests that it was a term for certain special kinds of lozenges, and
points out that not long after Hippocrates physicians used a trochiscus
trigonus, or three-cornered lozenge for another purpose.

Although he used many drugs, Hippocrates is especially insistent on
Diet as the most important aid to health. He claims to have been the
first physician who had written on this subject, and this assertion is
confirmed by Plato, who, however, somewhat grimly commends the ancient
doctors for neglecting this branch of treatment, for, he says, the
modern ones have converted life into a tedious death. Barley water is
repeatedly recommended by the physician of Cos, with various additions
to suit the particular case under consideration. Oxymel is the usual
associate, but dill, leeks, oil, salt, vinegar, and goats’ fat also
figure.

Particular instructions are also given about the wine to be drunk,
the kind, and the quantity of water with which it is to be diluted in
spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In one place, at the end of the
3rd Book on Diet, a word is used which apparently means that persons
fatigued with long labour should “drink unto gaiety” occasionally; but
there is some doubt about the correct translation of that word.

FROM HIPPOCRATES TO GALEN.

Medicine is a science which hath been more professed
than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced; the
labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than
in progression. For I find much iteration, but small
addition.--BACON, “Advancement of Learning.”--Book 2.

The fame of Hippocrates caused naturally a great multiplication of
works attributed to him. The Ptolemies when founding the Library of
Alexandria, which they were determined should be more important than
that of Pergamos, commissioned captains of ships and other travellers
to buy manuscripts of the Greek physician at almost any price; an
excellent method of encouraging forgeries. The works attributed to
Hippocrates have been subject to the keenest scrutiny by scholars, but
even now the verdict of Galen in regard to their genuine or spurious
character is the consideration which carries the greatest weight. Even
the imitations go to prove how free the physician of Cos was from
superstitious practices or prejudiced theories.

Between him and Galen an interval of some six hundred years elapsed
and, especially in the latter half of that period, pharmacy developed
into enormous importance. Not that it necessarily advanced. But the
faith in drugs, and especially in the art of compounding them, and
the wild polypharmacy which grew up in Alexandria and Rome in the
first two centuries of our era, of which Galen shows so much approval,
add inestimably to the chronicles of pharmacy. It was during the
interval between Hippocrates and Galen that the many sects of ancient
medicine, the Dogmatics, the Stoics, the Empirics, the Methodics,
and the Eclectics were born and flourished. Some of these encouraged
the administration of special remedies. But probably a far greater
influence was exercised on the pharmacy of the ancient world by the new
commerce with Africa and the East which the Ptolemies did so much to
foster, and by the travelling quacks and the prescribing druggists who
exploited the drugs of foreign origin which now came into the market.

Serapion of Alexandria, one of the most famous of the Empirics, who is
supposed to have lived in the second century, was largely responsible
for the introduction of the animal remedies which were to figure so
prominently in the pharmacy of the succeeding seventeen centuries.
Among his specifics were the brain of a camel, the excrements of the
crocodile, the heart of the hare, the blood of the tortoise, and the
testicles of the wild boar.

The Empirics were the boldest users of drugs, and so far as can be
judged, were the practitioners who brought opium into general medicinal
esteem. One of the most famous doctors of this sect, Heraclides, made
several narcotic compounds which are commended by Galen. One of these
formulæ prescribed for cholera was 2 drms. of henbane seeds, 1 drm.
of anise, and ½ drm. of opium, made into 30 pills, one for a dose.
Another which was recommended for coughs was composed of 4 drms. each
of juice of hemlock, juice of henbane, castorum, white pepper, and
costus; and 1 drm. each of myrrh and opium.

Musa, a freed slave of Augustus, and apparently a sort of medical
charlatan, but a great favourite with the Emperor, is alleged to have
introduced the flesh of vipers into medical use especially for the cure
of ulcers.

Celsus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, whose works are recognized as the
storehouses of the science of Imperial Rome, belonged to the period
under review. Celsus wrote either a little before or a little after the
commencement of our era. He was the first eminent author who wrote on
medicine in Latin. Pliny died A.D. 79, suffocated by the gases
from Vesuvius, which in his eagerness to observe he had approached too
near during an eruption. Dioscorides is supposed to have lived a little
before Pliny, who apparently quotes him, but curiously never mentions
his name, though usually most scrupulous in regard to his authorities.

Themison, who lived at Rome in the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and
who is said to have been the first physician to have distinguished
rheumatism from gout, is noted in pharmacy as the author of the formulæ
for Diagredium and Diacodium. He praised the plantain as a universal
remedy, and is also the earliest medical writer to mention the use of
leeches in the treatment of illness.

Several of the writers on medical subjects of this period adopted
the method of prescribing their formulas and the instructions for
compounding them in verse. The most famous instance is that of
Andromachus, physician to Nero, whose elegiac verses describing
the composition of his Theriakon are quoted by Galen. The idea
was that the formula thus presented was less likely to be tampered
with. Theriakon as invented contained 61 ingredients. Its principal
improvement on the more ancient Mithridatum was the addition of dried
vipers. Andromachus appears to have acquired a large and lucrative
practice in Rome at the time when wealth was most lavishly squandered.

Among other medical verse writers were Servilius Damocrates, who
lived in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, and who invented a famous
tooth powder, a number of malagmata, (emollient poultices), acopa
(liniments for pains), electuaries, and plasters; and Herennius Philon,
a physician of Tarsus (about A.D. 50), whose fame rests on his
philonium, a compound designed to relieve colic pains, which appear
to have been specially frequent at that period. This philonium was
composed of opium, saffron, pyrethrum, euphorbium, pepper, henbane,
spikenard, and honey.

Menecrates, physician to Tiberius, and said to have written 155 works,
was the inventor of diachylon plaster, but his diachylon was a compound
of many juices (as the name implies) along with lead plaster.

The Romans were curiously badly off for regular doctors until Julius
Cæsar specially tempted some to come from Greece and Egypt by offers
of citizenship. Augustus, too, warmly encouraged the settlement in the
city of trained medical men.

PHARMACY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

The separation of the practices of medicine, pharmacy, and surgery,
which became general though never universal, was of course a gradual
process. Galen expresses the opinion that Hippocrates prepared the
medicines he prescribed with his own hands, or at least superintended
the production of them. According to Celsus, it was in Alexandria and
about the year 300 B.C. that the division of the practice of
medicine into distinct branches was first noticeable. The sections he
names were Dietetics, Surgery and Pharmaceutics.

The physicians who practised dietetics were like our consultants,
only more so. They were above all things philosophers, the recognised
successors of the Greek thinkers and theorists, and but too often
their imitators. Although they owed their designation to their general
authority on régime, they prescribed and invented medicines. The
pharmaceutical section came to be called in Latin medicamentarii,
and their history corresponds closely with that of our English
apothecaries. At first they prepared and administered the medicines
which the physicians ordered. But in Alexandria and Rome they gradually
assumed the position of general practitioners. To another class,
designated by Pliny Vulnerarii, was left the treatment of wounds, and
probably of tumours and ulcers. The necessity of a lower grade of
medical practitioners in Rome is manifest from a remark of Galen’s to
the effect that no physician, meaning a person in his own rank, would
attend to diseases of minor importance.

It is worthy of note that the Latin designation medicamentarius, which
was nearly equivalent to the Greek pharmacopolis, was similarly used
to mean a poisoner, while pharmakon in Greek and medicamentus in Latin
might mean either a medicine or a poison.

It is noted elsewhere (page 52) that the word pharmakeia when it occurs
in the New Testament is universally translated in our versions by the
term sorcery or some similar word. At the time when the Apostles wrote
this was evidently the prevalent meaning attached to the term. But
in earlier Greek literature the reputable and the disgraceful ideas
associated with the word seem to have run side by side for centuries.
Homer uses pharmakon in both senses; Plato makes pharmakeuein mean to
administer a remedy, while Herodotus adopts it to signify the practice
of sorcery. Apparently this word came from an earlier, pharmassein,
which was derived from a root implying to mix, and the gradual sense
development was that of producing an effect by means of drugs. They
might produce purging, they might produce a colour, or they might
produce love.

The multiplication of names for the various classes connected with
medicine and pharmacy in the Roman world is rather confusing. As the
language of medicine up to and including Galen was largely Greek, many
of the designations employed were those which had been drawn from that
tongue. The name Pharmacopeus, used in Greek to denote certain handlers
of drugs, had always a sinister signification. It suggested a purveyor
of noxious drugs, a compounder of philtres, a vendor of poisons.
The men who kept shops for the sale of drugs generally were called
pharmacopoloi. This term was not free from reproach, because it was a
common appellation, not only of the shopkeepers strictly so-called, but
was also applied to the periodeutes, or agyrtoi, travelling quacks or
assembly gatherers, or as they came to be named in Latin, circulatores
or circumforanei.

These itinerant drug sellers are occasionally referred to by the
classic authors. Lucian speaks of one hawking a cough mixture about
the streets; and Cicero, in his Oratia pro Cluentio, suggests that the
travelling pharmacopolists who attended the markets of country towns
were not unwilling to sell poisons as well as medicines when they were
wanted. One of these is specifically named, Lucius Clodius, and the
orator suggests that he was bribed to supply medicines to a certain
lady which were to have a fatal effect.

The designation Periodeutes meant originally, and always in strict
legal terminology, physicians who visited their patients. The term was
also used among the Christians to describe the ministers charged to
visit the sick and poor in their dioceses.

The tramp doctor in time gets tired of his vagabond life, and, it may
be, a little weary of hearing his own voice. If he has saved a little
money, therefore, the attractions of a shop in the city, where he can
exercise his healing on people who seek him, appeal strongly to him.
So in Greece and in the Roman Empire the charlatans settled in little
shops and were called iatroi epidiphrioi or sellularii medici, meaning
sedentary doctors. But all these were pharmacopoloi.

Peculiarly interesting is the suggestion made by Epicurus and intended
as a sneer, that Aristotle was one of these pharmacopoloi in his
younger days. According to Epicurus the philosopher having first
wasted his patrimony in riotous living and then served as a soldier,
afterwards sold antidotes in the markets up to the time when he joined
Plato’s classes.

Seplasia was the ordinary name in Rome for a druggist’s shop, and
those who kept them were designated Seplasiarii or Pigmentarii. These
names appear to have been used without much recognition of their
original meanings. Strictly the Seplasiarii were ointment makers,
and though the Pigmentarii were no doubt at first sellers of dyes and
colours, they evidently came to include medicines in their stocks of
pigments, and Coelius Aurelianus, in writing on stomach complaints,
alludes to aloes as a pigment. Greek designations corresponding to
those just quoted were Pantopoloi and Kadolikoi (the latter used
by Galen in referring to the trader who supplied the drugs for the
theriacum prepared in the palace of the Emperor Antoninus). Kopopoloi,
and Migmatopoloi, both of which words meant dealers in all sorts of
small wares, were like the mercers in this country when shopkeeping
first began. The shops of perfumers were myropolia or myrophecia, the
perfumers themselves were myrepsi. A general term in Latin for any sort
of shop where medicines were sold or surgical operations performed was
Medicina. This was in the days before the Empire, when there was no
usual distinction between the branches of the healing art.

Pharmacotribae, strictly drug-grinders, may have been compounders, and
it has also been conjectured that they were the assistants employed by
the Seplasiarii or Roman druggists.

Herbalists were of very ancient Greek lineage, under the names of
Botanologoi, who were collectors of simples, and who, to enhance the
price of their wares, pretended to have to gather them with many
superstitious observances; and Rhizotomoi, or root-cutters. The name
Apothek, which came to be appropriated to the warehouse where medicinal
herbs were kept, and which is to-day the German equivalent of our
pharmacy, or chemist’s shop, meant originally any warehouse, and from
it has been derived the French boutique and the Spanish bodega.

The earlier Greek and Roman physicians were in the habit of themselves
preparing the medicines they prescribed for their patients. But
naturally they did not gather their own herbs, and as many of those
used for medicine were exotics, it is obvious that they could not have
done so if they had wished. The herbalists who undertook this duty
(botanologoi in Greek) developed into the seplasiarii, pharmacopoloi,
medicamentarii, and pigmentarii already mentioned. Beckmann says they
competed with the regular physicians, having acquired a knowledge of
the healing virtues of the commodities they sold, and the methods
of compounding them. This could not help happening, but it ought to
be remembered that the physicians of all countries had themselves
developed from herbalists, that is, if we abandon the theories of
miraculous instruction which are found among the legends of Egypt,
Assyria, India, and Greece.

How similar the relations of the doctors and druggists of ancient Rome
were with those still prevailing in this country may be gathered from
a reproach levelled by Pliny against physicians contemporary with him
(Bk. xxxiv, 11) to the effect that they purchased their medicines from
the seplasiarii without knowing of what they were composed.

ARAB PHARMACY.

In the science of medicine the Arabians have been deservedly
applauded. The names of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and
Avicenna, are ranked with the Grecian masters; in the city
of Bagdad 860 physicians were licensed to exercise their
lucrative profession; in Spain the lives of the Catholic
princes were entrusted to the skill of the Saracens;
and the School of Salerno, their legitimate offspring,
revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of the healing
art.--GIBBON: “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,”
Chap. LII.

No period of European history is more astonishing than the records
of the triumphant progress of the Arab power under the influence of
the faith of Islam. From the earliest times this grand Semitic race
was distinguished for learning of a certain character, for gravity,
piety, superstition, a poetic imagination, and eloquence. Centuries
of independence, jealously guarded, and innumerable local feuds made
the material of perfect soldiers, and when Mohammed had grafted on the
native religious character his own faith and missionary zeal the Arab
army, the Saracens, as they came to be called, filled with fanatic
fervour, and utterly indifferent to death, or, rather, eager for it as
the introduction to the Paradise which their prophet had seen and told
them of, formed such an irresistible force as on a small scale has only
been reproduced by Cromwell in our nation.

But the rapidity of the conquests of Mohammedanism was perhaps less
remarkable than the extraordinary assimilation of ancient learning and
the development of new science among these hitherto unlettered Arabs.
Mohammed was born in the year 569 of our era. The Koran was the first
substantial piece of Arabic literature. Alexandria was taken and Egypt
conquered by the Moslems under Amrou in A.D. 640, Persia and
Syria having been previously subdued. Amrou was himself disposed to
yield to the solicitations of some Greek grammarians, who implored him
to spare the great Library of the city, the depository of the learning
of the ancient world. But he considered it necessary to refer the
request to the Caliph Omar. The reply of the Commander of the Faithful
is one of the most familiar of the stories in Gibbon’s fascinating
history. “If the writings support the Koran they are superfluous; if
they oppose it they are pernicious; burn them.” It is declared that the
papers and manuscripts served as fuel for the baths of the city for six
months.

The destruction of the Alexandrian Library is often alluded to as a
signal triumph of barbarism over civilisation. Gibbon cynically remarks
that “if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were
indeed consumed in the public baths a philosopher may allow with a
smile that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind.” But at
least the spirit which animated Omar in 640 may be noted for comparison
with the encouragement of learning which was soon to characterise the
Arab rulers.

Only a lifetime later, in A.D. 711, the sons of the Alexandrian
conquerors invaded Spain, and within the same century made their
western capital, Cordova, the greatest centre of learning,
civilisation, and luxury in Europe. The following quotation from Dr.
Draper’s “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe” will give
an idea of this achievement:

Scarcely had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain than
they commenced a brilliant career. Adopting what had become
the established policy of the Commanders of the Faithful
in Asia, the Emirs of Cordova distinguished themselves as
patrons of learning, and set an example of refinement strongly
contrasting with the condition of the native European Princes.
Cordova under their administration, at the highest point of
their prosperity, boasted of more than two hundred thousand
houses, and more than a million inhabitants. After sunset a
man might walk through it in a straight line for ten miles by
the light of the public lamps. Seven hundred years after this
time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. Its
streets were solidly paved. In Paris, centuries subsequently,
whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped
up to his ankles in mud. Other cities, as Granada, Seville,
Toledo, considered themselves rivals of Cordova. The palaces
of the Khalifs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns
might well look down with supercilious contempt on the
dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and England, which
were scarcely better than stables--chimneyless, windowless,
with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the
wigwams of certain Indians.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MOSQUE, CORDOVA.]

About the same time the passion for learning was growing in the East.
Bagdad was founded A.D. 762, and about the year 800 Haroun
Al-Raschid founded the famous university of that city. Libraries
and schools were established throughout the two sections of the
Saracenic dominions. Greek and Latin works of philosophy and science
were translated, but the licentious and blasphemous mythology of the
classical poets was abhorred by this serious nation, and no Arabic
versions of Olympian fables were ever made. Astronomy, mathematics,
metaphysics, and the arts of agriculture, of horticulture, of
architecture, of war, and of commerce, were advanced to an extent
which this century does not realise, while amid all this progress the
study of chemistry, medicine, and pharmacy was pursued with particular
eagerness.

Curiously the Arabs owed their instruction in these branches of
knowledge to those whom we are accustomed to regard as their
traditional foes. The dispersion of the Nestorians after the
condemnation of their doctrines by the Council of Ephesus in
A.D. 431 resulted in the foundation of a Chaldean Church and
the establishment of famous colleges in Syria and Persia. In these the
science of the Greeks, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the medical
teaching of Hippocrates were kept alive when they had been banished by
the Church from Constantinople. The Jews had also acquired special
fame for medical skill throughout the East, and they and the Nestorians
appear to have associated in some of the schools. It was to these
teachers the Arabs turned when, having assured their military success,
they demanded intellectual advancement. The Caliphs not only tolerated,
they welcomed the assistance of the “unbelievers,” and, in fact,
depended on them for the equipment of their own schools, and for the
private tuition of their children. To John Mesuë, a Nestorian, and a
famous writer on medicine and pharmacy, Haroun Al-Raschid entrusted the
superintendence of the public schools of Bagdad.

The first Nestorian college is believed to have been established in the
city of Dschondisabour in Chuzistan (Nishapoor), before the revelation
of Mohammed. Theology and Medicine were particularly studied at this
seat of learning, and a hospital was established to which the medical
students were admitted, but they had first to be examined in the
Psalms, the New Testament, and in certain books of prayers.

It was the Caliph Almansor and his immediate successor, Haroun
Al-Raschid, who between them made Bagdad a centre of study. Students
and professors came thither from all parts of the then civilised world,
and the Caliphs welcomed, and indeed invited, both Christians and Jews
to teach there. Hospitals were established in the city, and the first
public pharmacies or dispensaries were provided in Bagdad by Haroun
Al-Raschid. It is on record that in A.D. 807 envoys from that
monarch came to the court of Charlemagne bringing gifts of balsams,
nard, ointments, drugs, and medicines.

Arabic medicine was based on the works of Hippocrates and Galen,
which were for the most part translated first into Syriac, and then
into Arabic. It does not come within the scope of this work to narrate
or estimate the advance in medicine which may be accredited to the
Arabian writers and practitioners. Medical historians do not allow that
they contributed much original service to either anatomy, physiology,
pathology, or surgery; but it is admitted by every student that their
maintenance of scholarship through the half dozen centuries during
which Europe was sunk in the most abject ignorance and superstition
entitles them to the gratitude of all who have lived since. The
medicine of Avicenna was perhaps much the same as that of Galen. Both
were accepted by the physicians of England, France, and Germany with
the slavish deference which the long burial of the critical faculties
had made inevitable, and which needed the vigorous abuse of Paracelsus
to quicken into activity.

Whatever may have been the case with medicine it cannot be denied that
the Arabs contributed largely to the development of its ministering
arts, chemistry and pharmacy. The achievements attributed to Geber in
the eighth century were probably not due to any single adept. Tradition
assigned the glory to him and, likely enough, if such a chemist really
lived and acquired fame, other investigators who followed him for a
century or two adopted the pious fraud so frequently met with in other
branches of study in the early centuries of our era of attributing
theories or discoveries to some venerated teacher in order to assure
for them immediate acceptance. However this may be, it is not the less
established that the chemistry of Geber, or of Geber and others, was in
fact the fruit of Arab industry and genius.

Our language indicates to some extent what Pharmacy owes to the
Arabs. Alcohol, julep, syrup, sugar, alkermes, are Arabic names;
the general employment in medicine of rhubarb, senna, camphor,
manna, musk, nutmegs, cloves, bezoar stones, cassia, tamarinds,
reached us through them. They first distilled rose water. They first
established pharmacies, and from the time of Haroun Al-Raschid there
is evidence that the Government controlled the quality and prices of
the medicine sold in them. Sabor-Ebn-Sahel, president of the school
of Dschondisabour, was the author of the earliest pharmacopœia, which
was entitled “Krabadin”; and Hassan-Ali-Ebno-Talmid of Bagdad in the
tenth century, and Avicenna (Al-Hussein-Ben-Abdallah-Ebn-Sina) in the
eleventh century prepared collections of formulas which were used as
pharmacopœias.

It was the Arabs who raised pharmacy to its proper dignity. We do not
read of any noted pharmacists among them who were not physicians, but
the latter were all keen students of the materia medica, and occupied
themselves largely with pharmaceutical studies. But it is evident that
there was a distinct profession of pharmacy. We read of Avicenna,
for example, taking refuge with an apothecary at Hamdan, and there
composing some of his famous works. Elsewhere a quotation from Rhazes
gives some indication of the irregular practice of medicine which has
prevailed in every country and among all nations; and Sprengel quotes
some translated items from various Arabic authors which show that
as early as the ninth century the Government sanctioned the book of
pharmaceutical formulas, compiled by Sabor-Ebn-Sahel, director of the
School of Dschondisabour, already mentioned. His work was frequently
imitated in later times. The first London Pharmacopœia was professedly
based largely on the Formulary of Mesuë.

There is also evidence that both in civil life and in the army the
pharmacists were closely supervised. Their medicines were inspected,
and the prices at which they were sold to the public were controlled by
law.

The development and progress of medicine and its associated sciences
among the Arabs may be very concisely sketched. The flight of
Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, the Hejira as it is called, from which
the Mohommedan era is dated, corresponds in our chronology with
A.D. 622. The prophet died in 632. Contemporary with him lived
a priest at Alexandria named Ahrun or Aaron, who compiled from Greek
writers thirty books which he called the Pandects of Physic. These
were translated into Syriac and Arabic about 683 by a Jew of Bassora
named Maserdschawaih-Ebn-Dschaldschal. It is not in existence, and is
only known by references to it made by Rhazes. The first allusion to
small-pox known to history was contained in these Pandects. Serapion
quotes a number of formulas which he says were invented by Ahrun.
In 772 Almansor, the Caliph who founded the city of Bagdad, brought
thither from Nishabur (Dschondisabour) in Persia, a famous Christian
physician named George Baktischwah, who stayed for some time, and
at the request of Almansor translated into Arabic certain books on
Physic. He then returned to his own land, but his son was afterwards
a physician in great favour with the two succeeding Caliphs, Almohdi
and Haroun Al-Raschid. Freind states that when the elder Baktischwah
returned to Persia Almansor presented him with 10,000 pieces of gold,
and that Al-Raschid paid the younger Baktischwah an annual salary
of 10,000 drachmas. The last-named ruler also brought to Bagdad the
Nestorian Christian, Jahiah-Ebn-Masawaih, who, under the name of Mesuë
the Elder, retained a reputation for his formulas even up to the
publication of the London Pharmacopœia.

Mesuë is noted for his opposition to the violent purgative medicines
which the Greek and Roman physicians had made common, and he had much
to do with the popularisation, if not with the introduction of, senna,
cassia, tamarinds, sebestens, myrabolans, and jujube. He modified the
effects of certain remedies by judicious combinations, as, for example,
by giving violet root and lemon juice with scammony. He gave pine bark
and decoction of hyssop as emetics, and recommended the pancreas of the
hare as a styptic in diarrhœa.

A disciple of Mesuë’s, Ebn-Izak, added greatly to the medical resources
of the Arabs by translations of the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny,
Paul of Egineta, and other Greek authors.

Abu-Moussah-Dschafar-Al-Soli, commonly called Geber, the equivalent
of his middle name, is supposed to have lived in the eighth century.
It has already been remarked that the chemical discoveries attributed
to this philosopher were probably the achievements of many workers,
and were afterwards collected and passed on to posterity as his alone.
From him are dated the introduction into science, to be adopted later
in medicine, of corrosive sublimate, of red precipitate, of nitric and
nitro-muriatic acids, and of nitrate of silver.

These chemical discoveries must have been made within the hundred years
from 750 to 850, because Rhazes, who wrote in the latter half of the
ninth century, mentions them. Geber has been supposed to have claimed
to have discovered the philosopher’s stone, and to have made the
universal medicine. But it is not at all certain that he contemplated
medicine at all. His language is highly figurative, and probably when
he says his gold had cured six lepers he meant only that he had, or
thought he had, extracted gold from six baser metals.

Rhazes, whose Europeanised name is the modification of Arrasi, which
was the final member of a long series of Eastern patronymics, was of
Persian birth, and commenced his studies in that country with music
and astronomy. When he was thirty he removed to Bagdad, and it was not
until then that he took up the sciences of chemistry and medicine.
Subsequently he was made director of the hospital of Bagdad, and
his lectures on the medical art were attended by students from many
countries. His principal work was entitled Hhawi, which has been
translated Continent, apparently because it was supposed to contain
all there was to know about medicine. The style of this treatise is
that of notes without method, and it is certain that it could not have
been written entirely by Rhazes, as authorities are named who did not
live until after he had died. The theory is that Rhazes left a quantity
of notes of his lectures and cases, and that some of his disciples
afterwards published them with additions, but without much editing.

Among the methods of treatment for which Rhazes is responsible may
be mentioned that of phthisis, with milk and sugar; of high fever,
with cold water; of weakness of the stomach and of the digestive
organs, with cold water and buttermilk; and he advises sufferers
from melancholia to play chess. He states that fever is not itself
a disease, but an effort of nature to cast out a disease. He was
particularly careful in the use of purgatives, which he said were apt
to occasion irritation of the intestinal canal, and in dysentery he
relied usually on fruits, rice, and farinaceous food, though in severe
cases he ordered quicklime, arsenic, and opium. In Freind’s History
of Medicine (1727) a translation of some comments of Rhazes on the
impostors of his day shows better than the citations already given how
just and, it may be said, modern were the ideas of this practitioner of
more than a thousand years ago. It may be added that Freind is not very
complimentary to Rhazes generally. I append an abbreviation of this
interesting notice of the quackery of the ninth century.

There are so many little arts used by mountebanks and
pretenders to physic that an entire treatise, had I mind to
write one, would not contain them. Their impudence is equal to
their guilt in tormenting persons in their last hours. Some
of them profess to cure the falling sickness (epilepsy) by
making an issue at the back of the head in form of a cross,
and pretending to take something out of the opening which
they held all the time in their hands. Others give out that
they will draw snakes out of their patients’ noses; this they
seem to do by putting an iron probe up the nostril until the
blood comes. Then they draw out an artificial worm, made of
liver. Other tricks are to remove white specks from the eye,
to draw water from the ear, worms from the teeth, stones from
the bladder, or phlegm from various parts of the body, always
having concealed the substance in their hands which they
pretend to extract. Another performance is to collect the evil
humours of the body into one place by rubbing that part with
winter cherries until they cause an inflammation. Then they
apply some oil to heal the place. Some assure their patients
they have swallowed glass. To prove this they tickle the
throat with a feather to induce vomiting, when some particles
of glass are ejected which were put there by the feather. No
wise man ought to trust his life in their hands, nor take any
of their medicines which have proved fatal to many.

Rhazes writes of aqua vitæ, but it is now accepted that he only means
a kind of wine. The distillation of wine was not practised till a
century after him. Mercury in the form of ointment and corrosive
sublimate were applied by him externally, the latter for itch; yellow
and red arsenic and sulphates of iron and copper were also among his
external remedies. Borax (which he called tenker), saltpetre, red
coral, various precious stones, and oil of ants, are included among the
internal remedies which he advises.

[Illustration: AVICENNA.

As represented on the diploma of the Pharmaceutical Society.]

The Arab author who acquired by far the greatest fame in Western
lands, and who, indeed, shared with Galen the unquestioning obedience
of myriads of medical practitioners throughout Europe until
Paracelsus shook his authority five hundred years after his death,
was Al-Hussein-Abou-Ali-Ben-Abdallah-Ebn-Sina, which picturesque name
loses its Eastern atmosphere in the transmutation of its two concluding
phrases into Avicenna. This famous man was born at Bokhara in 980; at
twelve years of age he knew the Koran by heart; at sixteen he was a
skilful physician; at eighteen he operated on the Caliph Nuhh with
such brilliant success that his fame was established. In the course
of a varied life he was at one time a Vizier, and soon afterwards
in prison for being concerned in some sedition. He escaped from
prison and lived for a long time concealed in the house of a friendly
apothecary, where he wrote a large part of his voluminous “Canon.” He
spent the later years of his life at Ispahan, where he was in great
favour with the Caliph Ola-Oddaula, and he died at Hamdan in 1038 in
the fifty-eighth year of his age. He had led an irregular life, and it
was said of him that all his philosophy failed to make him moral, and
all his knowledge of medicine left him unable to take care of his own
health.

Competent critics who have studied the medical teaching of Avicenna
have not been able to discover wherein its merits have justified the
high esteem to which it attained. The explanation appears to be that
what Avicenna lacked in originality he made up in method. The main
body of his “Canon” is a judicious selection from the Greek and Latin
physicians, and from Rhazes and other of his Arabic predecessors.
He wrote a great deal on drugs and remedies, but it has been found
impossible to identify many of the substances of his Materia Medica, as
in many cases the names he gives evidently do not apply to those given
by Serapion, Rhazes, and other writers. He often prescribed camphor,
and alluded to several different kinds; a solution of manna was a
favourite medicine with him; he regarded corrosive sublimate as the
most deadly of all poisons, but used it externally; iron he had three
names for, probably different compounds; he had great faith in gold,
silver, and precious stones; it was probably he who introduced the
silvering and gilding of pills, but his object was not to make them
more pleasant to take, but to add to their medicinal effect.

Serapion the younger, and Mesuë the younger, who both lived soon after
the time of Avicenna, were principally writers on Materia Medica, from
whose works later authors borrowed freely.

The subsequent Arab authorities of particular note came from among
the Western Saracens. Albucasis of Cordova, Avenzoar of Seville, and
Averrhoes of Cordova, who are all believed to have flourished in the
twelfth century, were the most celebrated. Albucasis was a great
surgeon and describes the operations of his period with wonderful
clearness and intelligence. Avenzoar was a physician who interested
himself largely in pharmacy. He was reputed to have lived to the age of
135 and to have accumulated experience from his 20th year to the day
of his death. Averrhoes knew Avenzoar personally, but was younger. He
was a philosopher and somewhat of a freethinker who interested himself
in medical matters. We are naturally more concerned with Avenzoar than
with the others.

It is evident from the books left by Avenzoar, whose full name was
Abdel-Malek-Abou-Merwan-Ebn-Zohr, that in his time the practices of
medicine, surgery, and pharmacy were quite distinct in Spain, and he
apologises to the higher branch of the profession for his interest
in those practices which were usually left to their servants. But he
states that from his youth he took delight in studying how to make
syrups and electuaries, and a strong desire to know the operation
of medicines and how to combine them and to extract their virtues.
He writes about poisons and antidotes; has a chapter on the oil
alquimesci, which Freind renders oil of eggs, and Sprengel calls
oil of dates. Avenzoar says his father brought it from the East, and
that it was a marvellous lithontryptic. He tells how mastic corrects
scammony, and sweet almonds colocynth. He is the earliest writer
to refer to the medicinal virtues of the bezoar stones. He gives a
different account of the origin of these stones from that of other
authors. The best, he says, comes from the East and is got from the
eyes of stags. The stags eat serpents to make them strong, and at once
to prevent any injury their instinct impels them to run into streams
and stand in the water up to their necks. They do not drink any water.
If they did they would die immediately; but standing in the stream
gradually reduces the force of the poison, and then a liquor exudes by
the eyelids which coagulates and forms a stone which may grow to the
size of a chestnut, which ultimately falls off. According to another
Arab author, Abdalanarack, the bezoar stone acquired such a celebrity
in Spain that a palace in Cordova was given in exchange for one.

Moses Maimonides, the most famous Jewish scholar and theologian of the
middle ages, must be mentioned among the exponents of Arab pharmacy.
He was born at Cordova in 1139, and studied medicine under Averrhoes,
but when he was twenty-five the then Mohammedan ruler of Spain required
him to be converted or quit the kingdom. Maimonides therefore went
to Cairo, and became physician to Saladin, the well-known hero of
Crusade wars, who was then Sultan of Egypt. Among his duties he had
to superintend the preparation of theriaca and mithridatium for the
Court. The drugs for these compounds, Maimonides says, had to be
brought from the East and the West at great expenditure of time and
money. Consequently, “the illustrious Kadi Fakhil,” (who was apparently
one of Saladin’s ministers), “whose days may God prolong, ordered the
most humble of his servants in 595 (A.D. 1198) to compose a
treatise, small, and showing what ought to be done immediately for a
person bitten by a venomous animal.” The treatise which Maimonides
composed, in obedience to this order, he called “Fakhiliteh.” This
small popular manual reflects in general the pharmacy of Spain and is
of no particular interest. The author considers that for all kinds of
poisons and venoms the most efficacious antidote is an emerald, laid on
the stomach or held in the mouth; and he notes the virtues of theriaca,
mithridatium, and of bezoar. But the Kadi was thinking of poor people,
and therefore more ordinary remedies were also named. A pigeon killed
and cut in two pieces might be applied to painful wounds, but if
this was not available warm vinegar with flour and olive oil might
be substituted. Vomiting must be excited, and to destroy the virus a
mixture of asafœtida, sulphur, salt, onions, mint, orange-pips, and the
excrement of pigeons, ducks, or goats, compounded with honey and taken
in wine, was recommended. The wisdom of Rhazes, of Avenzoar, and of
other great authorities was also drawn from.

VII

FROM THE ARABS TO THE EUROPEANS

“Mediciners, like the medicines which they employ, are often
useful, though the one were by birth and manners the vilest
of humanity, as the others are in many cases extracted from
the basest materials. Men may use the assistance of pagans and
infidels in their need, and there is reason to think that one
cause of their being permitted to remain on earth is that they
might minister to the convenience of true Christians.”--The
Archbishop of Tyre in Sir Walter Scott’s _Talisman_.

It would require a very long chapter and would be outside the scope of
this work to attempt to trace in any detail the manner in which the
ancient wisdom and science of the Greek and Latin authors, which was
so marvellously preserved by the iconoclastic Arabs, was transferred,
when their passion for study and research began to fail, to European
nations. It has been alleged that the Crusades served to bring the
attainments of the Eastern Saracens to the knowledge of the West
through learning picked up by the physicians and others who accompanied
the Christian armies against the Mohammedans.

But there is no evidence and not much probability that Europeans
acquired any Eastern science of value through the Crusades. Indirectly
medicine ultimately profited greatly by the commerce which these
marvellous wars opened up between the East and the West, and the
diseases which were spread as the consequence of the intimate
association of the unwholesome hordes from all the nations concerned,
resulted in the establishment of thousands of hospitals all over
Europe. The provision of homes for the sick was far more common among
the Mohammedans than among the Christians of that period. Activity of
thought was stimulated, and medical science must have shared in the
effects of spirit of inquiry. Some historians have supposed that the
infusion of astrological superstitions into the teaching and practice
of medicine was largely traceable to the communion with the East in
these Holy Wars: but this idea is not supported by anything that we
know of the Arab doctors. “I have not found the union of astrology
with medicine taught by any writer of that nation,” says Sprengel; and
his authority is very great. On the other hand the philosophers and
theologians of that age were only too eager to seize upon anything
mystic, and plenty of materials for their speculations were found in
the Greek and Latin manuscripts handed down to them. Superstitions
entered into the mental furniture of the age much more directly from
Rome and Alexandria than from Bagdad.

That the Arabs of the East could have taught their Christian foes much
useful knowledge cannot be doubted. The letter from the Patriarch of
Jerusalem to Alfred the Great (see page 131), for example, is proof of
the pharmaceutical superiority of the Syrians over the Saxons at that
time.

M. Berthelot has shown by abundant evidence in his “History of Alchemy”
that the Latin works dealing with chemistry of the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries which were very numerous in
Christendom, were almost exclusively drawn from Arabic sources. Such
chemical learning as the Arabs had collected from Greek writers, as
well as that which they had added from their own investigations, in
this way found its way back to the heirs of the original owners as they
may be called.

We read likewise of Constantine the African, who, about the year 1050,
came to Salerno after a long residence in the East, and gave to the
medical school of that city the translations he had made from Arab
authors. But, notwithstanding these evidences of Eastern culture, it
is certain that the actual introduction of pharmacy into the Northern
European countries is much more largely due to the Spanish Mohammedans.
In the Middle Ages poor Arabs and Jews who had studied medicine in the
schools of Cordova and Seville tramped through France and Germany,
selling their remedies, and teaching many things to the monks and
priests who, in spite of repeated papal edicts forbidding them to sell
medicines, did in fact cultivate all branches of the art of healing,
including many superstitions. The edicts themselves are evidence that
they sold their services to those who could afford to pay for them.

The Medical School of Salerno, already mentioned, was the principal
link between the later Greek physicians and the teaching institutions
which remain with us to this day, as, for instance, the universities
of Paris, Naples, Oxford, Padua, Vienna, and others of later fame. The
origin of the school of Salerno is unknown, but it was certainly in
existence in the ninth century. It was long supposed to have developed
from a monastic institution, but it is now generally believed to have
been always a secular school. Its historian, Mazza of Naples, 1681,
quotes an ancient chronicle which names Rabbi Elinus (a Jew), Pontus
(a Greek), Adala (a Saracen), and Salernus (a Roman) as its founders,
but there is no evidence of the epoch to which this refers. Although
other subjects were taught at Salerno, it became specially noted for
its medical school, and in the ninth century it had assumed the title
of Civitas Hippocratica. William of Normandy resorted to Salerno prior
to his conquest of England, and a dietetic treatise in verse exists
dedicated to his son Robert. It has been claimed that the works of
Hippocrates and Galen were studied at Salerno from its earliest days,
but so far as this was the case it was by the intermediary of Jewish
doctors, who themselves derived their knowledge from Arab sources, that
these were available. The original texts of the Greek and Latin authors
were not in the hands of European scholars till Aldus of Venice began
to reproduce them early in the sixteenth century.

The pharmaceutical knowledge to which the famous school attained may
be judged by the reputation which attended the Antidotary of Nicolas
Prepositus, who was director of the school in the first half of the
twelfth century. In this Antidotary are found the absurd formulas
pretending to have been invented or used by the Apostle Paul and
others. “Sal Sacerdotale quo utebantur sacerdotales tempore Heliae
prophetae” is among these. In the course of the next century or
two medical students from England, Germany, Italy, and France went
to Cordova, Toledo, and Seville, and there wrote translations of
the medical works used in those schools. These translations by the
end of the thirteenth century were so universally accepted as to
eclipse Salerno, which from then began to decline in fame, Bologna,
Montpellier, Padua, and Leyden gradually partitioning among themselves
its old reputation. But the medical school of Salerno actually existed
until 1811, when it was dissolved by a decree of Napoleon I.

As evidence of the monopoly of Avicenna in the medical schools of
Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and doubtless for
a long period previously, the following from the preface to a Latin
translation of the works of Paulus Egineta is quoted by Leclerc:--

Avicenna, who is regarded as the Prince and most excellent of
all physicians, is read and expounded in all the schools; and
the ninth book of Rhazes, physician to the Caliph Almansor,
is similarly read and commented on. These are believed to
teach the whole art of healing. A few later writers, such
as Betruchius, Gatinaria, Guaynerius, and Valescus, are
occasionally cited, and now and then Hippocrates, Galen,
and Dioscorides are quoted, but all the other Greek writers
are unknown. The Latin translations of a few of the books
of Galen and Hippocrates which are in use are very corrupt
and barbarous, and are only admitted at the pleasure of the
Arabian Princes, and this favour is but rarely conceded.

The most notable event in the history of pharmacy after the earlier
Crusades was an edict regulating the practice of both medicine and
pharmacy issued by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of
Sicily. This monarch, probably the ablest ruler in the Middle Ages, who
died in 1250, had great esteem for Arab learning. Mohammedans and Jews
were encouraged to come to Naples during his reign, and he facilitated
by all means in his power the introduction of such innovations as had
been acquired from Cordova and Bagdad.

The edict referred to mentions “apotheca,” meaning thereby only the
warehouses where prepared medicines were stored. Those who compounded
the medicines were termed “confectionarii,” the places or shops where
they were sold were called “stationes,” and the persons who supplied
them, “stationarii.” It is not quite clear whether the confectionarii
and the stationarii were the same persons. Probably they were
sometimes, but not necessarily always. Apparently the stationarii
were generally the drug importers and dealers, and the confectionarii
were the compounders. Both had to be licensed by the Medical School
of Salerno; and among the duties imposed upon the physician, one
was to inform the authorities if he came to discover that any
“confectionarius” had falsified medicines. Longfellow alludes to this
provision in the “Golden Legend”--

To report if any confectionarius
Mingles his drugs with matters various.

The physician was strictly forbidden to enter into any arrangement
with a druggist whereby he would derive any profit by the sale of
medicaments, and he was not permitted himself to conduct a pharmacy.
The “confectioners” were required to take an oath to prepare all
medicines according to the Antidotary of the Salernian School. Their
profits were limited and graduated, less being allowed on those of
frequent consumption than on those which they had to keep for more
than a year. Pharmacies were only allowed in the principal cities,
and in each such city two notable master-apothecaries were appointed
to supervise them. The “confectioners” had to make their syrups
and electuaries and other compounds in the presence of these two
inspectors, and if they were detected in any attempt at fraud their
property was subject to confiscation. If one of the inspectors was
found to have been a party to the fraud his punishment was death.

“It is well known,” says Beckmann in “Ancient Inventions,”
“that almost all political institutions on this side the Alps,
and particularly everything that concerned education, were
copied from Italian models. These were the only patterns then
to be found; and the monks despatched from the papal court
saw they could lay no better foundation for the Pontiff’s
power and their own aggrandizement than by inducing other
States to follow the examples set them in Italy. Medical
establishments were formed, therefore, everywhere at first
according to the plan of that at Salerno. Particular places
for vending medicines were more necessary in other countries
than in Italy. The physicians of that period used no other
drugs than those recommended by the ancients; and as these had
to be procured from the Levant, Greece, Arabia, and India,
it was necessary to send thither for them. Besides, herbs,
to be confided in, could only be gathered when the sun and
planets were in certain constellations, and certificates of
their being so were necessary to give them reputation. All
this was impossible without a distinct employment, and it
was found convenient to suffer dealers in drugs gradually to
acquire monopolies. The preparation of medicines was becoming
more difficult and expensive. The invention of distillation,
sublimation, and other chemical processes necessitated
laboratories, furnaces, and costly apparatus; so that it was
thought proper that those who devoted themselves to pharmacy
should be indemnified by an exclusive trade; and monopolists
could be kept under closer inspection so that the danger
of their selling improper drugs or poisons was lessened or
entirely removed. They were also allowed to deal in sweetmeats
and confectionery, which were then great luxuries; and in some
places they were required to give presents of these delicacies
to the magistrates on certain festivals.”

This extract shows how the German provision of protected pharmacy
originated. In many of the chief cities the apothecaries’ shops
were established by, and belonged to, the King or Queen, or the
municipality. Sometimes, as at Stuttgart, there was a contract between
the ruler and the apothecary, the former agreeing to provide a certain
quantity of wine, barley, and rye; while the apothecary in return was
to supply the Court with its necessary confectionery.

[Illustration: THE REPRODUCTION OF A SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHARMACY IN
THE GERMANIC MUSEUM AT NUREMBERG.]

Beckmann gives much minute information concerning the establishment of
apothecaries’ shops in the chief cities of Germany.[1] He mentions a
conjecture that there was a pharmacy at Augsburg in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, but exact dates begin with the fifteenth century.
There was a female apothecary established at Augsburg in 1445, and the
city paid her a salary. At Stuttgart, in 1458, Count Ulric authorised
one Glatz to open a pharmacy. There was one existing at Frankfort
in 1472. The police regulations of Basle in 1440 mention the public
physician and his duty, adding that “what costly things people may wish
to have from the apothecary’s shop they must pay for.” The magistrates
of Berlin, in 1488, granted to one Hans Zebender a free house, a
certain provision of rye, no taxes, and the assurance that no other
apothecary should reside in the city. But the Elector Joachim granted a
new patent to another apothecary in 1499. At Halle there was only one
apothecary. In that year the Archbishop, with the confirmation of the
Chapter, granted to his physician, von Wyke, the privilege of opening
another, but gave at the same time the assurance that no more should be
permitted in the city “to eternity.”

In France apothecaries were in business as such certainly before
1250. A charter of the church of Cahors, dated 1178, describes the
retail shopkeepers of the town as “apothecarii,” the term being used
evidently as “boutiquiers” is now, and signifying nothing more than
shopkeepers. The meaning, however, soon became restricted to dealers in
drugs and spices. In the middle of the next century John of Garlande
alludes to “appotecarii,” who sold confections and electuaries, roots
and herbs, ginger, pepper, cumin, and other spices, wax, sugar, and
licorice. Officially, however, these tradesmen were classed at that
time among the “espiciers.” The two guilds, indeed, continued in
formal association until 1777, but royal ordinances of 1484 and 1514
clearly established the distinction between them. Even in 1271 the
Faculty of Medicine of Paris forbade “herborists and apothecaries” to
practise medicine. Special responsibilities, duties, and privileges
were expressly provided for the apothecaries, and in the ordinance of
1514 it is specifically declared that though the apothecary is always a
grocer, the grocer is not necessarily an apothecary. (“Qui est espicier
n’est pas apothicaire, et qui est apothicaire est espicier.”)

In the fourteenth century the apothecaries of Paris were required to
subscribe to a formal oath before they were permitted to practise.
They swore to live and die in the Christian faith, to speak no evil of
their teachers or masters, to do all in their power for the honour,
glory, ornament, and majesty of medicine, to give no remedy or purge
without the authority of a physician, to supply no drugs to procure
abortion, to prepare exactly physicians’ prescriptions, neither
adding, subtracting, nor substituting anything without the express
permission of the physician, to avoid the practices of charlatans as
they would the plague, and to keep no bad or old drug in their stocks.
An ordinance of 1359 provides that no one shall be granted the title of
master-apothecary unless he can show that he can read recipes.

The edict of 1484, issued during the minority of Charles VIII, sets
forth that, “We, of our certain science, especial grace, full power,
and royal authority, do say, declare, statuate, and ordain” the
curriculum to be observed by those who desire to learn the trade
of an apothecary. A four years’ apprenticeship was essential, and
the aspirant had to dispense prescriptions, recognise drugs, and
prepare “chefs d’œuvres” in wax and confectionery in the presence of
appointed master-apothecaries. Latin was added to the examination in
1536, and ten years’ experience after the apprenticeship was also
insisted upon ultimately before the candidate could be admitted as
a master-apothecary. One of the ordinances of the sixteenth century
gave to the apothecaries the monopoly in the manufacture and sale of
gingerbread.

These edicts all related particularly to the apothecaries of Paris.
There were similar ones in the provinces, with some peculiarities. At
Dijon, for example, it was provided that no apothecary could receive a
legacy from one of his clients. _En revanche_ he had the first claim
on the estate of a deceased debtor for the payment of his account.

In 1629 the Hotel de Ville of Paris granted to the apothecaries of
that city a banner and blazon, the latter, which I do not venture to
translate, being thus described:--“Couppé d’azur et d’or, et sur l’or
deux nefs de gueulle flottantes aux bannieres de France, accompagnés
de deux estoiles a cinq poincts de gueulle avec la devise ‘Lances et
pondera servant,’ et telles qu’elles sont cy-dessous empreinctes.”

In 1682, under Louis XV, after the Brinvilliers panic, the poison
register was introduced, and regulations were framed forbidding
apothecaries to sell any arsenic, sublimate, or drug reputed to be a
poison except to persons known to them, and who signed the register
stating what use they intended to make of their purchase. Earlier in
the same reign the practice of pharmacy was strictly forbidden to
persons professing the reformed religion.

The last of the royal edicts applying to pharmacy was issued in 1777
by Louis XVI, and, as already stated, this was the authority which
finally separated the apothecaries from the grocers. Then came the
Revolution, and in 1791 all restrictions on trades or professions,
including pharmacy, were abolished. Some accidents having occurred, the
Assembly passed an ordinance on April 14, 1791, declaring that the old
laws, statutes, and regulations governing the teaching and practice of
pharmacy should remain in force until a new code should be framed. This
did not appear until April, 1803, under Napoleon’s Consulate, and the
law, which is still in force, is to this day cited in legal proceedings
as the law of Germinal, year XI.

VIII

PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

For none but a clever dialectician
Can hope to become a great physician:
That has been settled long ago.
Logic makes an important part
Of the mystery of the healing art;
For without it how could you hope to show
That nobody knows so much as you know.
--LONGFELLOW: “Golden Legend.”

BRITISH PHARMACY IN SAXON ENGLAND.

The condition of medicine and pharmacy in Saxon times has been
carefully portrayed in three volumes published, in 1864, under the
authority of the Master of the Rolls at the expense of the Treasury.
These were edited by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne, M.A., and appeared
under the title of “Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft.” Many old
documents were translated and explained, and from these the ideas of
medicine in these islands a thousand years ago were made manifest.

Mr. Cockayne gave at length a Saxon Herbarium, written, he supposed,
about the year 1000, and professing to be a translation from
Apuleius, a Roman physician of the second century, with additions
from Dioscorides, and some from native science. A few specimens will
suffice to show the character of the herb treatment in England before
the Conquest.

CRESS, WATERCRESS (Nasturtium officinale).

1. This wort is not sown, but it is produced of itself in wylls
(springs), and in brooks, also it is written that in some lands it will
grow against walls.

2. In the case that a man’s hair fall off take juice of the wort which
one nameth nasturtium, and by another name cress; put it on the nose;
the hair shall wax (grow).

3. For sore of head, that is for scurf and for itch, take seed of this
same wort and goose grease. Pound together. It draws from the head the
whiteness of the scurf.

4. For soreness of the body (the Latin word is ad cruditatem,
indigestion) take this same wort nasturtium, and pennyroyal; seethe
them in water, give to drink; then amendest thou the soreness of the
body, and the evil departs.

5. Against swellings, take this same wort, and pound it with oil; lay
over the swellings; then take leaves of the same wort, and lay them
thereto.

6. Against warts, take this same wort and yeast, pound together, lay
thereto, they be soon taken away.

MAYTHE (Anthemis nobilis).

For sore of eyes, let a man take ere the upgoing of the sun, the wort
which is called Chamaimelon, and by another name Maythe, and when a man
taketh it let him say that he will take it against white specks, and
against soreness of the eyes; let him next take the ooze, and smear the
eyes therewith.

POPPY (Papaver somniferum).

1. For sore of eyes, that is what we denominate blearedness, take the
ooze of this wort, which the Greeks name Makona and the Romans Papaver
album, and the Engles call white poppy, or the stalk with the fruit;
lay it to the eyes.

2. For sore of temples or of the head, take ooze of this same wort,
pound with vinegar, and lay upon the sore; it alleviates the sore.

3. For sleeplessness, take ooze of this same wort, smear the man with
it, and soon thou sendest the sleep on him.

* * * * *

Many of the herbs named in the Herbarium were employed for other
purposes than those for which they were used in later practice. Comfrey
is recommended for one “bursten within.” It was to be roasted in hot
ashes and mixed with honey; then to be taken fasting. But nothing is
said of its bone-setting property. Mullein, subsequently famous as
a pectoral medicine, is recommended in the Herbarium as an external
application in gout, and to carry about to prevent the attacks of wild
beasts. Dill is prescribed as a remedy against local itching; fennel in
cough and sore bladder; and madder for broken legs, which it would cure
in three days.

To prevent sea-sickness the traveller had to smear himself with a
mixture of pennyroyal and wormwood in oil and vinegar. Peony laid over
a lunatic would soon cause him to upheave himself whole; and vervain or
verbena if carried on the person would ensure a man from being barked
at by dogs.

A PROFESSED TRANSLATION.

The next document presented is the Medicina de Quadrupedibus of Sextus
Placitus, an unknown personage, who adds to the interest of his
narrative by pretending that “a king of the Egyptians, Idpartus he was
highten,” sent this treatise to the Emperor Octavius Cæsar, “for,” he
said, “I wist thee worthy of this.” Probably this manuscript was not
a translation at all; if it was, the pretended authors were almost
certainly fictitious. Most of the instructions here given relate to the
medicinal uses of animals. The idea that foxes’ lungs will strengthen
ours is hardly dead yet. Here it is in this old Saxon document:--

“For oppressive hard drawn breathing, a fox’s lung sodden and put into
sweetened wine, and administered, is wonderfully healthy.”

The fox had many other uses. Foxes’ grease would heal many kinds
of sores. His sinews soaked in honey would cure a sore throat; his
“naturam” wrapped round the head would banish headache; his “coillon”
rubbed on warts would break them up and remove them; and dimness of
sight could be relieved by his gall mingled with honey. The worst
recipe is:

For disease of joints. Take a living fox and seethe him till the bones
alone are left. Let the man go down therein frequently, and into
another bath. Let him do so very oft. Wonderfully it healeth.

There are scores of cures from parts of animals, some of them very
disgusting. A few more specimens of decent ones must suffice.

For oversleeping, a hare’s brain in wine is given for a drink.
Wonderfully it amendeth.

To get sleep a goat’s horn laid under the head turneth waking into
sleep.

For sleep lay a wolf’s head under the pillow; the unhealthy shall sleep.

Let those who suffer apparitions eat lion’s flesh; they will not after
that suffer any apparition.

For any fracture, take a hound’s brain laid upon wool and bind upon the
broken place for fourteen days; then will it be firmly amended, and
there shall be a need for a firmer binding up.

If thou frequently smearest and touchest children’s gums with bitches’
milk, the teeth wax without sore.

VARIOUS LEECHDOMS.

Some “Fly-Leaf Leechdoms” of unknown authorship follow. In these
information concerning the four humours is given, hot and cold, moist
and dry remedies are distinguished, and we are told of the forty-five
dies caniculares “in which no leech can properly give aid to any
sick man.” It is carefully noted that the same disorder may occur
from different causes, and quite scientifically the practitioner is
advised to vary his treatment accordingly. Thus, for example, dealing
with “host” (cough) we are told that “it hath a manifold access, as
the spittles are various. Whilom it cometh of immoderate heat, whilom
of immoderate cold, whilom of immoderate dryness.” The remedies must
depend on the causes of the complaint. The “tokens” of “a diseased
maw” of “a half head’s ache” (megrims) and of other distempers are set
forth with graphic simplicity, and often sensible advice as to diet
and medicine is given. But not infrequently the remedy may not be an
easily procurable one. For instance “If one drink a creeping thing in
water, let him cut open a sheep instantly and drink the sheep’s blood
hot”; and “if a man will eat rind which cometh out of Paradise no venom
will damage him.” The writer considerately adds that such rind is “hard
gotten.”

The following is apparently adapted from Alexander of Tralles, or some
other of the later classical authors.

“Against gout and against the wristdrop; take the wort hermodactylus,
by another name titulosa, that is in our own language the great crow
leek; take this leek’s heads and dry them thoroughly, and take thereof
by weight of two and a half pennies, and pyrethrum and Roman rinds, and
cummin, and a fourth part of laurel berries, and of the other worts,
of by weight of a halfpenny, and six pepper corns, unweighed, and
grind all to dust, and add wine two egg-shells full; this is a true
leechcraft. Give it to the man to drink till that he be hole.”

A few other recipes in the Leechbooks may be quoted:--

For headache take a vessel full of leaves of green rue, and a spoonful
of mustard seed, rub together, add the white of an egg, a spoonful,
that the salve may be thick. Smear with a feather on the side which is
not sore.

For ache of half the head (megrim) take the red nettle of one stalk,
bruise it, mingle with vinegar and the white of an egg, put all
together, anoint therewith.

For mistiness of the eyes take juice of fennel and of rose and of rue,
and of dumbledores’ honey; (the dumbledore is apis bombinatrix); and
kid’s gall, mixed together. Smear the eyes with this. Again, take live
periwinkles burnt to ashes; and let him mix the ashes with dumbledores’
honey.

For sore and ache of ears take juice of henbane, make it lukewarm, and
then drip it on the ear; then the sore stilleth. Or, take garlic and
onion and goose fat, melt them together, squeeze them on the ear. Or,
take emmets’ eggs, crush them, squeeze them on the ear.

For the upper tooth ache:--Take leaves of withewind (convolvulus),
wring them on the nose. For the nether tooth ache, slit with the
tenaculum till they bleed.

For coughs, mugwort, marrubium, yarrow, red nettle, and other herbs are
recommended generally boiled in ale, sometimes in milk.

Pock disease (small-pox) is dealt with, but not very seriously. It
is of interest because the classical writers do not mention it. The
Arab Rhazes wrote a treatise on it about A.D. 923. A few herb
drinks are prescribed in the Leechbooks, and to prevent the pitting
“one must delve away each pock with a thorn, then drip wine or alder
drink within them, then they will not be seen.”

Against lice:--One pennyweight of quicksilver and two of old butter.

Against itch:--Take ship tar, and ivy tar, and oil, rub together, add a
third part of salt; smear with that.

In case a man should overdrink himself, let him drink betony in water
before his other drink.

For mickle travelling over land, lest he tire, let him take mugwort to
him in hand or put it in his shoe, lest he should weary, and when he
will pluck it, before the upgoing of the sun, let him say these words,
“I will take thee, artemisia, lest I be weary on the way.” Sign it
with the sign of the cross when thou pullest it up.

HELIAS TO ALFRED.

In one of the Leechbooks translated by Mr. Cockayne is found a letter
on medicines from Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to King Alfred the
Great. Mr. Cockayne believes it to be authentic. There was a patriarch
of that name at Jerusalem contemporary with Alfred, and the medicines
he recommends are such as were obtainable in the Syrian drug shops
at that date. It is to be presumed that the information was given in
reply to a request for some recipes from the king. Helias recommends
scammony, ammoniacum, gum dragon, aloes, galbanum, balsam, petroleum,
triacle, and alabaster. Of petroleum he writes:--

“It is good to drink simple for inward tenderness, and to smear on
outwardly on a winter’s day, since it hath very much heat; hence one
shall drink it in winter; and it is good if for anyone his speech
faileth, then let him take it; and make the mark of Christ under his
tongue, and swallow a little of it. Also if a man become out of his
wits, then let him take part of it, and make Christ’s mark on every
limb, except the cross on the forehead, that shall be of balsam, and
the other on the top of his head.”

The patriarch had strong faith in Theriaca, and the directions he gives
for its administration are minute, and would be explicit if he had only
explained how much he meant by “a little bit.”

“Theriaca,” he says, “is a good drink for all inward tenderness, and
the man who so behaves himself as is here said, he may much help
himself. On the day on which he will drink Triacle he shall fast until
midday, and not let wind blow on him that day; then let him go to the
bath, let him sit there till he sweat; then let him take a cup, put a
little warm water in it, then let him take a little bit of the triacle,
and mingle with the water, and drain through some thin raiment, then
drink it, and let him then go to his bed and wrap himself up warm, and
so lie till he sweat well; then let him arise and sit up and clothe
himself, and then take his meat at noon (three hours after midday), and
protect himself earnestly against the wind that day; then I believe to
God it will help the man much.”

EARLY ENGLISH MEDICAL PRACTICE.

In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the great man of science, wrote
on medicine, alchemy, magic, and astrology, as well as most other
sciences. He believed that a universal remedy was attainable, and urged
Pope Clement IV to give his powerful aid to its discovery. Nothing
particular remains of his medical studies.

Gilbert Anglicanus, who was a contemporary of Bacon, and wrote a
Compendium of Medicine, a tedious collection of the most fantastic
theories of disease, was more advanced in pharmacy than in the
treatment of disease. He describes at considerable length the manner of
extinguishing mercury to make an ointment, recommending particularly
the addition of some mustard seed to facilitate the process. He gives
particulars of the preparation of the oil of tartar per deliquium, and
proposes a solution of acetate of ammonia in anticipation of Mindererus
four hundred years later. Gilbert’s formula is thus expressed:--

“Conteratur sal armoniacum minutim, et superinfundatur frequenter et
paullatim acetum, et cooperiatur et moveatur, ut evanescet sal.”

Ant’s eggs, oil of scorpions, and lion’s flesh is his prescription for
apoplexy, but he does not explain how the last ingredient was to be
obtained in England. Several of his formulas are quoted in the first
London Pharmacopœia. For the expulsion of calculi he prescribes the
blood of a young goat which has been fed on diuretic herbs such as
persil and saxifrage.

Chaucer, whose writings belong to the latter half of the fourteenth
century, has left on record a graphic picture of the “Doctour of
Phisike” of his day, and the old poet is as gently sarcastic about his
pilgrim’s “science” as a writer of five hundred years later might have
been. “He was grounded in astronomy,” we are told, and--

Well could he fortune the ascendant
Of his images for his patient
He knew the cause of every malady
Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry,
And where engendered and of what humour.
He was a very perfect practisour.

His library was a wonderful one considering the rarity of books at that
time.

Well knew he the olde Esculapius
And Dioscorides, and eek Rufus
Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galien,
Serapyon, Razis, and Avicen,
Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn,
Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn.

The doctor was careful about his food, “his study was but little on the
Bible,” he dressed well, but was inclined to save in his expenses.

He kept that he won in the pestilence.
For gold in phisike is a cordialle
There fore he loved gold in special.

The original of Chaucer’s “Doctour of Phisike” has been sometimes
supposed to have been the well-known John of Gaddesden, physician
to Edward II, Professor of Medicine at Merton College, Oxford, a
Prebendary of the Church, and the author of “Rosa Anglicana.” This
work, although full of absurdities and crude ideas of medicine
and pharmacy, became the popular medical treatise in England, was
translated into several European languages, and reprinted many times
in this country during the two hundred years which followed its first
appearance. The author named it the Rose, he says, because, as the
rose has five sepals, his book is divided into five parts; and as the
rose excels all other flowers, so his book is superior to all other
treatises on medicine. It was probably published between 1310 and 1320.

John of Gaddesden’s work well illustrates the pharmacy of the period,
for he was great on drugs. He taught that aqua vitæ (brandy) was a
polychrest, or complete remedy; that swines’ excrement was a sovereign
cure for hæmorrhage; that a sponge steeped in a mixture of vinegar,
roses, wormwood, and rain-water, and laid on the stomach, would check
vomiting and purging; that toothache and other pains might be cured by
saying a Paternoster and an Ave for the souls of the father and mother
of St. Phillip; a boar’s bladder, taken when full of urine and dried
in an oven, is recommended as a cure for epilepsy; a wine of fennel
and parsley for blindness; and a mixture of whatever herbs came into
his mind--for example, “apium, petroselinum, endive, scolopendron,
chicory, liver-wort, scariola, lettuce, maidenhair, plantain, ivory
shavings, sandal wood, violets, and vinegar”--is ordered as a digestive
drink. Add to such senseless recipes as these a number of equally
unintelligent charms, and a fair idea of the condition of medical
science in England in the fourteenth century is obtained. It does not
compare at all favourably with the condition to which the Arabs in
Spain had elevated the art two and three hundred years before.

Bernard of Gordon, who wrote from Montpellier, but is believed to have
been a Scotchman, was the author of the “Lilium Medicinæ,” published
about 1307 or 1309. The work was known to John of Gaddesden, for he
quotes from it. Perhaps he had it in his mind when he observed that
the rose excels all other flowers. Mainly it was a compilation from
Arabic writers with the addition of many scholastic subtleties and
astrological reveries. It is noticeable in this author and in John of
Gaddesden how careful both are to distinguish between the treatment of
the rich and the poor. The latter, for example, states that dropsy can
be cured by spikenard, but he advises practitioners never to give this
costly medicine without first receiving pay for it. Gordon recommends
for a poor person’s cough that he should be ordered to hold his breath
frequently during the day for as long as possible, and if that does not
cure he is to breathe fire.

John Mirfield also wrote his “Breviarium Bartholomei” in the latter
part of the fourteenth century. Dr. Norman Moore in his “History of
the Study of Medicine” has freely quoted from this old work, and gives
several facsimile pages from some of the earliest manuscript copies of
it. Dr. Moore regards the Breviarium with special interest as it is
the first book on medicine in any way connected with his hospital, the
oldest in London. Mirfield, relating some of the cures performed by
his master, mentions that a woman came to him having lost her speech.
The master rubbed her palate with some “theodoricon emperisticon”
and with a little “diacostorium.” She soon recovered. An apothecary
brought a youth to the hospital with a carbuncle on his face, and his
throat and neck swollen beyond belief. The master said the youth must
go home to die. “Is there then no remedy?” asked the apothecary. The
physician replied, “I believe most truly that if thou wert to give
tyriacum in a large dose, there would be a chance that he might live.”
The apothecary gave two doses of ʒij. each, which caused a
profuse perspiration, and in due course the youth recovered. He advises
smelling and swallowing musk, aloes wood, storax, calamita, and amber
to prevent infection in cold weather, and in warm weather sandal wood,
roses, camphor, acetositas citri, sour milk, and vinegar, taking syrup
of vinegar in the morning and syrup of violets at midday. For gout he
prescribes an ointment the principal constituent of which is goose
grease. The preparation of this remedy is explained metrically. The
verses begin thus:--

Anser sumatur, Veteranus qui videatur,
Post deplumetur, Intralibus evacuetur.

Rheumatism was to be treated with olive oil, and the pharmacist is
directed to warm it while he repeats the Psalm “Quare fremerunt gentes”
as far as “Postula a me et dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam,” then the
Gloria and two prayers. This recitation was to be repeated seven times.
There were no clocks available at that time, and this therefore was the
method of prescribing the length of an operation. Dr. Moore says he
finds this direction would cover about a quarter of an hour.

Medical treatises in verse were frequent and popular in England in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are several in the British
Museum. A curious specimen is preserved in the Royal Library at
Stockholm, and it is reproduced in readable English in “Archeologia,”
Vol. XXX, with notes by the translator, Mr. George Stephens, and by Dr.
Pettigrew. They both believe it was written in the fourteenth century.
It consists of 1485 lines. Of these it will suffice to give the first
four, and one specimen of its sections. It begins thus:--

In foure parties of amā
Be gynneth ye sekenesse yt yie han
In heed, in wombe, or i ye splene
Or i bleddyr, yese iiij I mene.

The following is entitled in the margin “Hed werk.”

Amedicyn I hawe i Myde
For hedwerk to telle as I fynde
To taken eysyl pulyole ryale
And camamyle to sethe wt all;
And wt ye jous anoyte yi nosthryll well
A make aplaister of ye toyerdel;
And do it in a good grete clowte
And wynde yi heed yer wt abowte;
As soon as it be leyde yeron
All yi hedwerk xal away gon.

Two other specimens of these early poetical recipes from other authors
may be quoted:--

ffor defhed of ye hed.
For defhed of hed & for dullerynge
I fynde wrete dyuers thynge
Take oporcyon (a portion) of boiys vryne
And mege it wt honey good & fyne
And i ye ere late it caste
Ye herynge schal amede in haste.

ffor to slepe well
Qwo so may not slepe wel
Take egrimonye afayre del
And ley it vnder his heed on nyth
And it schall hym do slepe aryth
For of his slepe schal he not wakyn
Tyll it be fro vnder his heed takyn.

THE EARLY ENGLISH DRUG TRADE.

The development of pharmacy as a separate organisation was later in
England than on the Continent, and was very gradual. In the Norman
period the retail trade in drugs and spices and most other commodities
was in the hands of the mercers. These were, in fact, general
shopkeepers, deriving their designation from merx, merchandise. They
attended fairs and markets, and in the few large towns had permanent
booths. Under the Plantagenets a part of the south side of “Chepe”
roughly extending from where is now Bow Church to Friday Street was
occupied by their stores, and was known as the Mercery. Behind these
booths were the meadows of Crownsild, sloping down to what it may be
hoped was then the silvery Thames. Probably sheep and cattle fed on the
pastures which Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street have since usurped.

But English traders were beginning to feel their feet, and other guilds
were pushing forward. The Easterlings (East Germans from the Baltic
coasts and the Hanse towns) brought goods from the East and placed
them on the English market, and the Pepperers and Spicers distributed
them to the public. The Easterlings, it may be mentioned, have left us
the word sterling to commemorate their sojourn among us. The Mercers
meanwhile were getting above the shop. They were becoming merchant
adventurers, and had no desire to contest the trade in small things
with the Pepperers of Sopers’ Lane, or the Spicers of Chepe. Their
other small wares fell into the hands of the Haberdashers.

There is evidence of a guild of Pepperers in London as early as 1180.
As a company they appear to have been ruined by the demands of Edward
III for subsidies for his French and Scottish campaigns. From their
ashes, including those of the Spicerers, arose the Grocers, the sellers
“en gros.” They are heard of in the fourteenth century, and were
apparently incorporated by letters patent from Edward III in 1345,
but their first known charter was granted by Henry VI in 1429, while
in 1453 that King conferred on them the charge of the King’s beam, by
which all imported merchandise was weighed, a charge of 1d. per 20 lbs.
being authorised for the service. In 1457 they were given the exclusive
power of garbling (cleansing and separating) drugs, spices, and other
imported merchandise, and they also had the duty of examining the drugs
and medicinal wares sold by the apothecaries. The law requiring certain
drugs to be officially “garbled” before they could be sold was repealed
by an Act passed in the sixth year of Queen Anne’s reign.

The earliest record of the exercise of their authority over
apothecaries is found in 1456, when the minutes of the Company show
that they imposed a fine on John Ashfield “for making untrue powder of
ginger, cinnamon, and saunders.” Other similar items appear from time
to time. In 1612 Mr. Lownes, apothecary to Prince Charles, complained
to the Company that Michael Easen, a grocer-apothecary, “had supplied
him with divers defective apothecaries’ wares,” and the offender was
committed to the Poultry Comptoir.

BUCKLERSBURY.

Bucklersbury was the centre and headquarters of the London drug trade,
at least from the Tudor to the Hanoverian periods. Shakespeare in “The
Merry Wives of Windsor” makes Falstaff refer to “the lisping hawthorn
buds that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury
in sample time.” Stow (1598) says of this thoroughfare that “This
whole street on both sides throughout is possessed of grocers and
apothecaries.” Ben Jonson calls it “Apothecarie Street.” This dramatist
in “Westward Ho!” makes Mrs. Tenderhook say “Go into Bucklersbury and
fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken
in the shop when he weighs it.” Later in a self-asserting poem to his
bookseller, Ben Jonson says of one of his books, objecting to vulgar
advertising methods,

If without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there ’twill well.

In Charles II’s reign Mouffet speaks of Bucklersbury being replete with
physic, drugs, and spicery, and says it was so perfumed at the time of
the plague with the pounding of spices, melting of gums, and making of
perfumes, that it escaped that great plague. A quotation from Pennant
in Cassell’s “Old and New London” shows that in the reign of William
III Bucklersbury was the resort of ladies of fashion to purchase teas,
furs, and other Indian goods; and the king is said to have been angry
with the queen for visiting these shops, which appear from some lines
of Prior to have been sometimes perverted to places of intrigue.

The street acquired its name from a family called the Bokerells or
Buckerells, who lived there in the thirteenth century. Stow gives a
different account. He states that there was a tower in the street named
Carnet’s Tower, and that a grocery named Buckle who had acquired it
was assisting in pulling it down, intending to erect a goodly frame of
timber in its place, when a part fell on him, which so sore bruised him
that it shortened his life.

A CHEMIST’S ADVERTISEMENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

A London chemist’s advertisement (about 1680-1690) runs thus:--

“Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, chemist in London, Southampton Street,
Covent Garden, continues faithfully to prepare all sorts of remedies,
chemical and galenical. He hopes that his friends will continue their
favours. Good cordials can be procured at his establishment, as well as
Royal English drops, and other articles such as Powders of Kent, Zell,
and Contrajerva, Cordial red powder, Gaskoins powder, with and without
bezoar, English smelling salts, true Glauber’s salt, Epsom salt, and
volatile salt of ammonia, stronger than the former. Human skull and
hartshorn, essence of Ambergris, volatile essence of lavender, musk
and citron, essence of viper, essence for the hair, vulnerary balsam,
commendeur, balsam for apoplexy, red spirit of purgative cochliaria,
spirit of white cochliaria, and others. Honey water, lavender water of
two kinds, Queen of Hungary water, orange flower water, arquebusade.

“For the information of the curious, he is the only one in London
who makes inflammable phosphorus, which can be preserved in water.
Phosphorus of Bolognian stone, flowers of phosphorus, black phosphorus,
and that made with acid oil, and other varieties. All unadulterated.
Every description of good drugs he sells, wholesale and retail.

“Solid phosphorus, wholesale, 50s. an ounce, and retail, £3 sterling,
the ounce.”

THE ENGLISH APOTHECARIES.

Although the Grocers were the recognised drug dealers of this country,
apothecaries who were associated in their Guild were also recognised.
Some authorities name Richard Fitznigel as apothecary to Henry II
before he was made Bishop of London. But this evidence cannot be
trusted. The first definite allusion to an apothecary in England occurs
in 1345, when Edward III granted a pension of sixpence a day for life
to Coursus de Gangeland, an apothecary of London, in recognition of
his services in attending on the king during his illness in Scotland.
The record of this grant is found in Rymer’s “Foedera,” which was not
published until 1704, but Rymer was historiographer royal, appointed
by William III, and his work was a compilation from official archives.
An earlier mention of an apothecary is found in the Scottish Exchequer
Rolls wherein it appears that on the death of Robert the Bruce, in
1329, payments were made to John the Apothecary, presumably for
materials for embalming the king’s body. Dr. J. Mason Good, who wrote
a “History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the Profession of the
Apothecary,” in 1795, mentions, on the authority of Regner, that J.
de Falcand de Luca publicly vended medicines in London in 1357, while
Freind (“History of Medicine,” 1725) states that Pierre de Montpellier
was appointed Apothecary to Edward III in 1360.

It is clear, therefore, that the apothecary was a familiar professional
personage in England five hundred years ago. Conclusive evidence of his
practice is given by Chaucer, who, in the Prologue to the “Canterbury
Tales” (written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century),
describing a “Doctour of Phisike” says--

Ful reddy hadde he his apothecaries
To send him dragges and his lettuaries
For eche of hem made other for to Winne.

The satirical suggestion of the mutual obligations of physicians and
apothecaries has been familiar for all these centuries.

It seems certain that in Henry VIII’s reign the apothecaries were
doing a considerable amount of medical practice, besides selling
drugs. The Act of 1511 incorporating the College of Physicians and
giving them the exclusive right to practise physic in London and
for seven miles round, was largely used, if not intended, against
apothecaries. In 1542, however, an Act was passed which rather modified
the severe restrictions of the original statute, and under the new law
apothecaries became more aggressive. In Mary’s reign the Physicians
again got the legislative advantage, and there is a record in the
archives of the College of Physicians (preserved by Dr. Goodall, who
wrote “A History of the Proceedings of the College against Empiricks,”
in 1684) stating that in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the President and
Censors of the College summoned the Wardens of the Grocers’ Company
and all the apothecaries of London and the suburbs to appear before
them, “and enjoyned them that when they made a dispensation of medicine
they should expose their several ingredients (of which they were
composed) to open view in their shops for six or eight days that so the
physicians passing by might judge of the goodness of them, and prevent
their buying or selling any corrupt or decayed medicines.” The grocers
and apothecaries do not appear to have raised any objection to this
decree. Whether they obeyed it or not is not stated.

INCORPORATION OF THE APOTHECARIES.

The first Charter of Incorporation was granted to the apothecaries by
James I in 1606, but this did not separate them from their old foes,
the grocers. They continued their efforts, however, and with the aid of
friends at Court they obtained a new Charter in 1617, which gave them
an entirely independent existence as a City Guild under the title of
the Society of the Apothecaries. This is the only London guild which
has from its incorporation to the present time admitted only actual
apothecaries to its fraternity.

Another peculiarity claimed by one of the Company’s historians (Dr. J.
Corfe: “The Apothecary”) is that the Guild of Apothecaries is the only
City Company which is called a Society. He believes that this may be
attributed to the supposed fact that the corporation was modelled on a
similar association founded at Naples in 1540 under the name of Societa
Scientifica.

[Illustration: SIR THEODORE MAYERNE.

The original painting by Rubens, of which the above is a copy,
was in the collection of Dr. Mead, and was sold in 1754 for
£115. It passed into the possession of the Earl of Bessborough
and the Marquis of Lansdowne, and then through the hands of
some dealers, and in 1848 was bought by the Royal College of
Physicians for £33 12_s._
]

Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the King’s first physician, and Gideon de
Laune, pharmacien or apothecary to the Queen, Anne of Denmark, were
the supporters of the apothecaries in rescuing them from the control
of the grocers. Both of these men deserve honourable mention in the
chronicles of British pharmacy. It happens that both were of foreign
origin and of the Protestant faith, two of that eminent crowd of
immigrants of high principle and distinguished ability who served
England so well in the seventeenth century when they found themselves
“not wanted” in France.

Mayerne was a Swiss by birth, but a Frenchman by education and
adoption, and had been physician to Henri IV. But he incurred the
bitter animosity of the Paris Faculty, led by the fanatic Gui Patin,
partly on account of his religious heresy, and partly because he
prescribed chemical medicines. By a unanimous vote the Paris College
of Physicians resolved in 1603 that he must not be met by any of
its members in consultation. He continued, however, to practise in
Paris until an English peer whom he had treated took him to London
and introduced him to James I, who made him physician to the Queen.
Mayerne, however, soon returned to Paris, but in 1611 he settled in
London on the invitation of the King, who made him his first physician.
He had a great deal to do with the compilation of the first London
Pharmacopœia, and is reputed to have introduced calomel and black wash
into medical practice. Subsequently he was appointed physician to
Charles I and Queen Henriette, but after the execution of the King he
retired into private life, and though nominally physician to Charles II
he never practised at that Court. He died at Chelsea in 1665.

Gideon de Laune was also a man of considerable influence. Dr. Corfe
regards him as almost the founder of the Society of Apothecaries, but
Mr. Barrett, who recently wrote a history of that Society, suggests
that he could not have been so much thought of by his contemporaries,
as he was only elected to the Mastership some years after the Charter
had been granted, and then only after a contest. At any rate the
apothecaries must have largely owed the Charter to his influence. He
lived in Blackfriars and called himself a “Pharmacopœius,” but we also
read of him as an importer of drugs, and it is probable that he traded
as a merchant. That he was a man of position is evident from the fact
that on one occasion he fetched the Queen, Anne of Denmark, from Norway.

Gideon de Laune was born at Rheims in 1565, and was brought to England
as a boy by his father, who was a Protestant pastor. A Nonconformist
writer of the same surname who got into trouble in the reigns of
Charles II and James II, and was befriended by De Foe, referring to
Gideon as a relative, says of him that when he died at the age of 97
he had near as many thousands of pounds as he had years; that he had
thirty-seven children by one wife; and that his funeral was attended
by sixty grandchildren. It has been ascertained, however, that his
children only numbered seventeen, and that he died at the age of 94; so
that the later De Laune who wrote in 1681 cannot be implicitly relied
upon when figures are concerned. Another thing he tells us of Gideon is
that “his famous pill is in great request to this day notwithstanding
the swarms of pretenders to pill-making.”

The Grocers’ Company warmly resented the secession of the apothecaries
who had been their subordinate partners so long, but their formal
petition of complaint called forth a cruel snub from the King. Grocers
were but merchants, said James, the business of the apothecaries was
a mystery; “Wherefore I think it fitting they should be a corporation
of themselves.” The grocers, however, got some of their own back a few
years later when James demanded a subsidy from the city for the relief
of the Palatinate. The grocers and the apothecaries were assessed at
£500 between them. Towards this the apothecaries, pleading poverty,
offered £20. The grocers ridiculed this offer, and having paid £300 as
their share, left their old associates to find the other £200, which
they had to do somehow.

About the same time the new corporation vigorously opposed an
application for a Charter made by the distillers of London. The
grocers supported the distillers, and the apothecaries failed in
their opposition. Sir Theodore Mayerne told them that their monopoly
of distillation was only intended to extend to the distillation of
medicinal spirits and waters. Mr. Barrett quotes from the old records
another curious instance of the contest for monopolies which was
characteristic of the period. In 1620, one John Woolf Rumbler having
obtained from the King a concession of the sole right of making
“mercuric sublimate,” applied to the Court of Apothecaries that he
might enjoy the same without their contradiction. This “upon advised
consideration,” the Court refused to grant. It is not stated whether
the will of the King or that of the apothecaries prevailed in the end.

The story of the jealousies which arose between the physicians and the
apothecaries is a long and tedious one; innumerable pamphlets were
written on both sides of the controversy, and the dispute figures in
English literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pope
very neatly expressed the views of the physicians in the familiar verse
in the “Essay on Criticism” in which, comparing the old critics of
Greece who “fanned the poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to
admire,” with those of his own day who

Against the poets their own arms they turned
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learn’d,

illustrated the position by introducing the

Modern pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors’ bills to play the doctors’ part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.

This was written in 1709.

The apothecaries strengthened their position as medical practitioners
in the public esteem by remaining at their posts during the Great
Plague in London in 1665 when most of the physicians fled from the
stricken city. Between this date and the end of the seventeenth century
the quarrel between the two sections of the profession constantly
grew in bitterness. Some of the allegations of extortion made against
the apothecaries are almost incredible. In Dr. Goodall’s “Historical
Account of the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians against
Empiricks and Unlicensed Practisers” (1684), it is reported that George
Buller who gave the college some trouble in 1633 had charged 30_s._
each for 25 pills; £37 10_s._ for the boxful. Three were given to a
Mrs. Style for a sore leg, and she died the same night. A Dr. Tenant
prosecuted by the college in James I’s reign “was so impudent and
unconscionable in the rating of his medicines that he charged £6 for
one pill and the same for an apozeme.”

Dr. R. Pitt, F.R.S., in “Crafts and Frauds of Physic Exposed,” 1703
(a book written expressly to defend the establishment of dispensaries
by the Physicians), states that apothecaries had been known to make
£150 out of a single case, and that in a recent instance (which had
apparently come before the law courts) the apothecary had made £320.
In every bill of £100 Dr. Pitt says the charges were £90 more than the
shop prices for the medicine.

In Jacob Bell’s “Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great
Britain” an apothecary’s bill for medicines for one day, supplied to a
Mr. Dalby of Ludgate Hill, is quoted from a pamphlet called “The Wisdom
of the Nation is Foolishness.” It is as follows:

An Emulsion, 4_s._ 6_d._ A Mucilage, 3_s._ 4_d._ Gelly of
Hartshorn, 4_s._ Plaster to dress Blister, 1_s._ An Emollient
Glister, 2_s._ 6_d._ An ivory pipe, armed 1_s._ A Cordial
Bolus, 2_s._ 6_d._ The same again, 2_s._ 6_d._ A cordial
draught, 2_s._ 4_d._ The same again, 2_s._ 4_d._ Another
bolus, 2_s._ 6_d._ Another draught, 2_s._ 4_d._ A glass of
cordial spirits, 3_s._ 6_d._ Blistering plaster to the arm,
5_s._ The same to the wrists, 5_s._ Two boluses again, 5_s._
Two draughts again, 4_s._ 8_d._ Another emulsion, 4_s._ 6_d._
Another pearl julep, 4_s._ 6_d._

Mr. Dalby’s bill for five days came to £17 2_s._ 10_d._, and this was
declared to be not an isolated case but illustrative of the practice of
apothecaries when attending patients of the higher classes.

CONTEST BETWEEN THE PHYSICIANS AND APOTHECARIES.

In 1687 the College of Physicians adopted a resolution binding all
Fellows, Candidates, and Licentiates of the College to give advice
gratis to their neighbouring sick poor when desired within the city
of London or seven miles round. But in view of the gross extortions
of the apothecaries it was asked, What was the use of the physicians’
charity if the cost of compounding the medicines was to be prohibitory?
The apothecaries, of course, denied that the examples of their
charges which were quoted were at all general, and probably they
were not. It was not to the interest of the apothecaries to destroy
free prescribing. Indeed a proposal was made to the physicians on
behalf of a numerous body of London apothecaries to accept a tariff
for medicines dispensed for the poor to be fixed by the physicians
themselves.

The relations of the two bodies had become, however, so strained that
arrangement was no longer possible. The apothecaries had in fact
obtained the upper hand. They treated many cases themselves, and
calling in the physician was largely within their discretion. At this
time (about 1700) the ordinary fee paid to a physician was 10_s._
University graduates expected more, but they too, in the majority
of cases, were only too glad to take the half sovereign, and it was
alleged that they would sometimes pay the apothecary who called them a
percentage off this.

Such was the condition of affairs when in 1696 an influential section
of the physicians, fifty-three of them, associated themselves in the
establishment of Dispensaries, where medicines should be compounded
and supplied to the poor at cost price. The fifty-three subscribed ten
pounds each, and Dispensaries were opened at the College premises in
Warwick Lane, in St. Martin’s Lane, and St. Peter’s Alley, Cornhill.

Needless to say, the war now waxed fiercer than ever. The physicians
were divided among themselves, and the anti-dispensarians refused to
meet the dispensarians in consultation. The apothecaries naturally
recommended the anti-dispensarians to their patients, and consequently
it was only the independent ones who could afford to maintain the
struggle. Scurrilous pamphlets were written on both sides, and one
long poem, Garth’s Dispensary, which was less venomous than most of
the literature on the subject, but which as a poem had no merits which
could justify the reputation it attained, complicated the struggle
from the physicians’ point of view. Johnson says that in addition to
its intrinsic merit it “co-operated with passions and prejudices then
prevalent.” His sympathies are indicated by his remark that “it was on
the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular
learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority.” One
line in the book (the last in the passage quoted below) has attained
currency in the English language. Expressing satirically the complaints
of the apothecaries, Garth says:

Our manufactures now the doctors sell,
And their intrinsic value meanly tell;
Nay, they discover too (their spite is such)
That health, than crowns more valued, costs not much;
Whilst we must shape our conduct by these rules,
To cheat as tradesmen or to fail as fools.

THE APOTHECARIES WIN.

Notwithstanding the sympathy of Dr. Johnson, Pope, and many other
famous contemporaries, the quarrel ended in the comparative triumph of
the apothecaries.

The physicians, though reluctant to enforce what they believed to be
their statutory powers, were goaded into law, and at last brought
an action against a London apothecary named William Rose, who they
alleged had infringed the Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. Rose
had attended a butcher in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields named Seale, and
had administered “proper medicines” to him. He had no licence from
the Faculty, and in his treatment of Seale had not acted under the
direction of any physician. He had neither taken nor demanded any fee
for his advice.

Those were the facts found by the jury who first heard the case. The
College claimed a penalty of five pounds per month for the period
during which Rose had thus practised. The Charter granted to the
physicians in the tenth year of Henry VIII, and confirmed by an Act of
Parliament passed in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of that reign,
contained a clause forbidding any person not admitted by the College
to practise the faculty of medicine in London or within seven miles
thereof under a penalty of one hundred solidi for every month during
which he should thus infringe the law.

The jury having found the facts already quoted, referred to the
Court of Queen’s Bench the legal question whether the acts performed
constituted the practice of medicine within the meaning of the Act. The
case was argued three times in the Court of Queen’s Bench--(so it is
stated in the report of the proceedings in the House of Lords),--and
ultimately the judges decided unanimously in favour of the contention
of the College. Thereupon, on behalf of Rose a writ of error was moved
for in the House of Lords demanding a reversal of the judgment. The
counsel who argued the appeal were S. Dodd for Rose, and F. Brown for
the College. The case was heard on the 15th of March, 1703.

In support of the appeal it was argued that if the judgment
were allowed to stand it would ruin not only Rose but all other
apothecaries. That the Act was a very old one, and that the constant
usage and practice ought to be taken into account. That if this
judgment were right the apothecary would not dare to sell a few
lozenges or a little electuary to any person asking for a remedy for
a cold, or in other common cases where a medicine had a known and
certain effect. That to give a monopoly in the treatment of disease
to physicians would have most mischievous consequences; both rich and
poor would be seriously taxed, and in the case of sudden accidents or
illnesses in the night when apothecaries were so frequently sent for,
the danger of not permitting them to supply the necessary medicine
might often be most serious.

To these contentions the counsel for the College replied that by
several orders physicians had bound themselves to attend the poor
free, either at their own offices, or, if sent for, at the patient’s
house. That out of consideration for the poor they had gone further by
establishing Dispensaries where the medicines they prescribed could be
obtained at not more than one-third of the price which the apothecaries
had been in the habit of charging. That in sudden emergencies an
apothecary or anyone else was justified in doing his best to relieve
his neighbours, but that in London, at least, a skilled physician
was as available as an apothecary, and that this emergency argument
ought not to be used to permit apothecaries to undertake all sorts of
serious diseases at their leisure. That there was nothing to prevent
apothecaries selling whatever medicines they were asked for, but that
to permit them to treat cases however slight involved both danger and
expense, because a mistake made at the beginning of a distemper might
lead to a long illness, and in any case the apothecary would charge for
much more medicine than was necessary.

After hearing the arguments “it was ordered and adjudged that the
judgment given in the Court of Queen’s Bench be reversed.”

THE APOTHECARIES AND THE CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS.

From this period the apothecaries became recognised medical
practitioners, the Society granted medical diplomas, and a hundred
years later (1815) they obtained an Act which gave them powers against
other persons similar to those which the physicians thought they
possessed against them. Persons not qualified by them were forbidden
to “act or practise as apothecaries” under a penalty of £20; and the
courts have held that to practise as an apothecary is to judge of
internal disease by symptoms, and to supply medicine to cure that
disease. The chemists and druggists who had largely succeeded to the
old business of the apothecaries opposed this provision, and the
apothecaries, to buy off their opposition, offered to insert a clause
in their Act which would allow all persons who should at that time
or thereafter carry on that business to do so “as fully and amply to
all intents and purposes as they might have done in case this Act had
not been made.” The chemists were not content with this provision,
and drafted another which defined their business as consisting in the
“buying, preparing, compounding, dispensing and vending drugs, and
medicinal compounds, wholesale and retail.” The apothecaries accepted
this alteration, and subsequently obtained penalties from chemists who
had prescribed remedies for customers. Such prescribing would have
been legal if the druggists had accepted the provision proposed by
the apothecaries; but they had limited themselves out of it. In the
actions which the Society of Apothecaries have brought against chemists
the apothecaries have often reproduced with scrupulous fidelity the
arguments used against themselves by the physicians in Rose’s case.

The Dispensaries established by the physicians were not long
maintained, but apparently they provided the material of the modern
chemist and druggist. “We have reason to believe,” writes Jacob Bell in
his Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain,
“that the Assistants employed and instructed by the Physicians at these
institutions became dispensing chemists on their own account; and that
some of the apothecaries who found their craft in danger followed the
example, from which source we may date the origin of the chemists and
druggists.”

In the course of the eighteenth century chemists and druggists had to a
large extent replaced apothecaries as keepers of shops where medicines
were sold and dispensed, and even when the businesses were owned by
apothecaries, they usually styled themselves chemists and druggists.
In the year 1841 an attempt was made to get a Bill through Parliament
which would have made it penal to recommend any medicine for the sake
of gain. The Bill was introduced by a Mr. Hawes, and the chemists
and druggists of London opposed it with such vigour that it was
ultimately withdrawn. In order to be prepared against future attacks
the victorious chemists and druggists then formed the Pharmaceutical
Society of Great Britain, which was incorporated by Royal Charter in
1842. An Act protecting the title of pharmaceutical chemist was passed
in 1852, and in 1868 another Act, requiring all future chemists and
druggists to pass examinations and be registered, and restricting to
them the sale of poisons, became law.

MAGIC AND MEDICINE

“Amulets and things to be borne about I find prescribed, taxed
by some, approved by others. Look for them in Mizaldus, Porta,
Albertus, etc. A ring made with the hoof of an ass’s right
forefoot, carried about, etc. I say, with Renodeus, they are
not altogether to be rejected. Piony doth help epilepsies.
Pretious stones most diseases. A wolf’s dung carried about
helps the cholick. A spider an ague, etc. Such medicines are
to be exploded that consist of words, characters, spells,
and charms, which can do no good at all, but out of a strong
conceit, as Pomponatious proves, or the devil’s policy, that
is the first founder and teacher of them.”
BURTON: “Anatomy of Melancholy.”

Charms, enchantments, amulets, incantations, talismans, phylacteries,
and all the armoury of witchcraft and magic have been intimately mixed
up with pharmacy and medicine in all countries and in all ages. The
degradation of the Greek term pharmakeia from its original meaning of
the art of preparing medicine to sorcery and poisoning is evidence
of the prevalence of debasing superstitions in the practice of
medicine among the cultivated Greeks. Hermes the Egyptian, Zoroaster
the Persian, and Solomon the Hebrew were famous among the early
practitioners and teachers of magic. These names served to conjure
with. Those who bore them were probably wise men above the average
who were above such tricks as were attributed to them. But it suited
the purpose or the business of those who made their living out of the
superstitions of the people to pretend to trace their practices to
universally revered heroes of a dim past.

Not that the whole of the magical rites associated with the art of
healing were based on conscious fraud. The beliefs of savage or
untutored races in demons which cause diseases is natural, it may
almost be said reasonable. What more natural when they see one of their
tribe seized with an epileptic fit than to assume the presence of an
invisible foe? Or if a contagious plague or small-pox or fever attacks
their village, is it not an inevitable conclusion that angry spirits
have attacked the tribe, perhaps for some unknown offence? From such a
basis the idea of sacrifice to the avenging fiend follows obviously.
In some parts of China if a person accidentally kicks a stone and soon
afterwards falls ill the relatives go to that stone and offer fruit,
wine, or other treasures, and it may be that the patient recovers. In
that case the efficacy of the treatment is demonstrated, and only those
who do not desire to believe will question it; if the patient should
die the proof is not less conclusive of the demon’s malignity.

In some primitive peoples, among the New Zealand natives, for example,
it is believed that a separate demon exists for each distinct disease;
one for ague, one for epilepsy, one for toothache, and so forth. This
too, seems reasonable. Each of those demons has something which will
please or frighten him. So amulets, talismans, charms come into use.
The North American Indians, however, generally attribute all disease to
one evil spirit only. Consequently, their treatment of all complaints
is the same.

EGYPTIAN, JEWISH, AND ARABIC MAGIC.

The Egyptians, according to Celsus, believed that there were thirty-six
demons or divinities in the air, to each of whom was attributed a
separate part or organ of the human body. In the event of disease
affecting one of these parts the priest-physician invoked the demon,
calling him by his name, and requiring him in a special form of words
to cure the afflicted part.

Solomon was credited among many Eastern people with having discovered
many of the secrets of controlling diseases by magical processes.
According to Josephus he composed and bequeathed to posterity a book of
these magical secrets. Hezekiah is said to have suppressed this work
because it was leading the people to pray to other powers than Jehovah.
But some of the secrets of Solomon were handed down in certain families
by tradition. Josephus relates that a certain Jew named Eleazor drew
a demon from the nose of a possessed person in the presence of the
Emperor Vespasian and a number of Roman officers, by the aid of a magic
ring and a form of invocation. In order to prove that the demon thus
expelled had a real separate existence, he ordered it to upset a vessel
of water which stood on the floor. This was done. Books professing to
give Solomon’s secrets were not uncommon among Christians as well as
Jews. Goethe alluded to such a treatise in “Faust” in the line

Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.

Throughout their history the Jewish people have studied and practised
magic as a means of healing. According to the Book of Enoch the
daughters of men were instructed in “incantations, exorcisms, and the
cutting of roots” by the sons of God who came to earth and associated
with them. The Greeks and Romans always held Jewish sorcery in the
highest esteem, and the Arabs accepted their teaching with implicit
confidence. The Talmud is full of magical formulas, and the Kaballah, a
mystic theosophy which combined Israelitish traditions with Alexandrian
philosophy, and began to be known about the tenth century, was
unquestionably the foundation of the sophistry of Paracelsus and his
followers.

In the Middle Ages, and in some communities until quite recent times,
belief in the occult powers of Jews, which they had themselves
inculcated, was firm and universal, and became the reason, or at
least the excuse, for much of the persecution they had to suffer. For
the punishment of sorcery and witchcraft was not based on a belief
that fraud had been practised, but resulted from a conviction of the
terrible truth of the claims which had been put forward.

The Jews of Western Europe have lost or abandoned many of the
traditional practices which have been associated with their popular
medicines from time immemorial. But in the East, especially in Turkey
and Syria, quaint prayers and antiquated materia medica are still
associated as they were in the days of the Babylonian captivity. Dogs’
livers, earthworms, hares’ feet, live ants, human bones, doves’ dung,
wolves’ entrails, and powdered mummy still rank high as remedies, while
for patients who can afford it such precious products as dew from
Mount Carmel are prescribed. Invocations, prayers, and superstitious
practices form the stock in trade of the “Gabbetes,” generally elderly
persons who attend on the sick. They have a multitude of infallible
cures in their repertoires. Powdered, freshly roasted earthworms in
wine, or live grasshoppers in water, are given by them for biliousness.
For bronchial complaints they write some Hebrew letters on a new plate,
wash it off with wine, add three grains of a citron which has been
used at the Tabernacle festival, and give this as a draught. Dogs’
excrements made up with honey form a poultice for sore eyes, mummy or
human bones ground up with honey is a precious tonic, and wolves’ liver
is a cure for fits. But the administration of these remedies must be
accompanied by the necessary invocation, generally to the names of
patriarchs, angels, or prophets, but often mere gibberish, such as
“Adar, gar, vedar, gar,” which is the formula for use with a toothache
remedy.

The phylacteries still worn by modern Jews at certain parts of
their services, now perhaps by most of them only in accordance
with inveterate custom, have been in all ages esteemed by them as
protecting them against evil and demoniac influences. They are leathern
receptacles, which they bind on their left arms and on their foreheads
in literal obedience to the Mosaic instructions in the passages
transcribed, and contained in the cases, from Exodus c. 13, v. 1-10,
and c. 13, v. 11-16, Deuteronomy c. 6, v. 4-9, and c. 9, v. 13-21. To
a modern reader these passages appear to protest against superstitions
and heathenish beliefs and practices, but the rabbis and scribes
taught that these and the mesuza, the similar passages affixed to
the doorposts, would avert physical and spiritual dangers, and they
invented minute instructions for the preparation of the inscriptions.
A scribe, for example, who had commenced to write one of the passages,
was not to allow himself to be interrupted by any human distraction,
not even if the king asked him a question.

All the eastern nations trusted largely to amulets of various kinds for
the prevention and treatment of disease. Galen quotes from Nechepsus,
an Egyptian king, who lived about 630 B.C., who wrote that a
green jasper cut in the form of a dragon surrounded by rays, applied
externally would cure indigestion and strengthen the stomach. Among
the books attributed to Hermes was one entitled “The Thirty-six Herbs
Sacred to Horoscopes.” Of this book Galen says it is only a waste of
time to read it. The title, however, as Leclerc has pointed out, rather
curiously confirms the statement attributed to Celsus which is found in
Origen’s treatise, “Contra Celsum,” to which allusion has already been
made.

Amulets are still in general use in the East. Bertherand in “Medicine
of the Arabs” says the uneducated Arab of to-day when he has anything
the matter with him goes to his priest and pays him a fee for which
the priest gives him a little paper about two inches square on which
certain phrases are written. This is put up in a leathern case,
and worn as near the affected part as is possible. The richer Arab
women wear silver cases with texts from the Koran in them. But it is
essential that the paper must have been written on a Friday, a little
before sunset, and with ink in which myrrh and saffron have been
dissolved.

In the Third Report of the Wellcome Research Laboratories at the
Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (London: Baillière, Tindall, &
Cox, 1908), Dr. R. G. Anderson writes an interesting chapter on the
medical superstitions of the people of Kordofan, and gives a number
of illustrations of amulets and written charms actually in use by the
Arabs of that country. “To the native,” says Dr. Anderson, “no process
is too absurd for belief, and often, within his limits, no price too
high to accomplish a cure.” Most of them wear talismans of some kind.
Some of them spend a great part of their scanty earnings on charms to
cure some chronic disease, stone in the bladder, for example. The son
of the late Mahdi presented to Dr. Anderson a charm which his father
wore round the arm above the elbow, designed against evil spirits and
the evil eye. It consisted of a square case containing a written charm,
and a bag filled with a preparation of roots. The charms worn by the
natives generally consist of quotations from the Koran, often repeated
many times and with signs of the great prophets interspersed. The
principal of these signs are the following:--

[Illustration: _Solomon._]

[Illustration: _Enoch._]

[Illustration: _David._]

[Illustration: _Lot._]

[Illustration: _Seth._]

[Illustration: “LOHN” (OR WRITING BOARD).]

The annexed illustration has been kindly lent by Mr. Wellcome (on
behalf of the Gordon Memorial College) from the Report mentioned above.
It represents a “Lohn,” or writing board on which Koranic phrases or
mystic inscriptions have been written by Fikis (holy men). When the
writing is dry it is washed off and the fluid is taken internally or
applied externally.

THE ABRACADABRA MYSTERY.

Abracadabra was the most famous of the ancient charms or talismans
employed in medicine. Its mystic meaning has been the subject of much
ingenious investigation, but even its derivation has not been agreed
upon. The first mention of the term is found in the poem “De Medicina
Praecepta Saluberrima,” by Quintus Serenus Samonicus. Samonicus was
a noted physician in Rome in the second and third centuries. He was
a favourite with the Emperor Severus, and accompanied him in his
expedition to Britain A.D. 208. Severus died at York in A.D. 211,
and in the following year his son Caracalla had his brother Geta,
and 20,000 other people supposed to be favourable to Geta’s claims,
assassinated. Among the victims was Serenus Samonicus. The poem, which
is the only existing work of Serenus, consists of 1,115 hexameter lines
which illustrate the medical practice and superstitions of the period
when it was written. The lines in which the word “Abracadabra,” and the
way to employ it are introduced are these:--

Inscribis chartae, quod dicitur Abracadabra,
Saepius: et subter repetas, sed detrahe summae,
Et magis atque magis desint elementa figuris
Singula, quae semper rapies et coetera figes,
Donec in angustam redigatur litera conum.
His lino nexis collum redimire memento.

In a paper on Serenus Samonicus by Dr. Barnes of Carlisle, contributed
to the _St. Louis Medical Review_, the following translation of the
above passage is given. A semitertian fever of a particular character
is the disease under discussion.

“Write several times on a piece of paper the word ‘Abracadabra,’ and
repeat the word in the lines below, but take away letters from the
complete word and let the letters fall away one at a time in each
succeeding line. Take these away ever, but keep the rest until the
writing is reduced to a narrow cone. Remember to tie these papers with
flax and bind them round the neck.”

The charm was written in several ways all in conformity with the
instructions. Dr. Barnes gives these specimens:

A B R A C A D A B R A a b r a c a d a b r a
A B R A C A D A B R a b r a c a d a b r
A B R A C A D A B a b r a c a d a b
A B R A C A D A a b r a c a d a
A B R A C A D a b r a c a d
A B R A C A a b r a c a ABRACADABRA
A B R A C a b r a c BRACADABR
A B R A a b r a RACADAB
A B R a b r ACADA
A B a b CAD
A a A

After wearing the charm for nine days it had to be thrown over the
shoulder into a stream running eastwards. In cases which resisted this
talisman Serenus recommended the application of lion’s fat, or yellow
coral with green emeralds tied to the skin of a cat and worn round the
neck.

Serenus Samonicus is believed to have been a disciple of a notorious
Christian heretic named Basilides, who lived in the early part of the
second century, and was himself the founder of a sect branching out
of the gnostics. Basilides had added to their beliefs some fanciful
notions based on the teachings of Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyre,
especially in regard to names and numbers. To him is attributed the
invention of the mystic word “abraxas,” which in Greek numeration
represents the total 365, thus:--a--1, b--2, r--100, a--1,
x--60, a--1, s--200. This word is supposed to have been a numeric
representation of the Persian sungod, or if it was invented by
Basilides, more likely indicated the 365 emanations of the infinite
Deity. It has been generally supposed that abracadabra was derived from
abraxas.

There are, however, other interpretations. Littré associates it
with the Hebrew words, Ab, Ruach, Dabar; Father, Holy Ghost, Word.
Dr. King, an authority on the curious gnostic gems well-known to
antiquarians, regards this explanation as purely fanciful and suggests
that Abracadabra is a modification of the term Ablathanabla, a word
frequently met with on the gems alluded to, and meaning Our Father,
Thou art Our Father. Others hold that Ablathanabla is a corruption of
Abracadabra. An ingenious correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ thinks
that a more likely Hebrew origin of the term than the one favoured by
Littré would be Abrai seda brai, which would signify Out, bad spirit,
out. It is agreed that the word should be pronounced Abrasadabra.
Another likely origin, suggested by Colonel C. R. Conder in “The Rise
of Man” (1908), p. 314, is Abrak-ha-dabra, a Hebrew phrase meaning
“I bless the deed.” The triangular form of the charm was no doubt
significant of the Trinity in Unity.

GREEK AND ROMAN MAGIC.

Pythagoras taught that holding dill in the left hand would prevent
epilepsy. Serapion of Alexandria (B.C. 278) prescribed for
epilepsy the warty excrescences on the forelegs of animals, camel’s
brain and gall, rennet of seal, dung of crocodile, blood of turtle,
and other animal products. Pliny alludes to a tradition, that a root
of autumnal nettle would cure a tertian fever, provided that when
it is dug the patient’s name and his parent’s names are pronounced
aloud; that the longest tooth of a black dog worn as an amulet would
cure quartan fever; that the snout and tips of the ears of a mouse,
the animal itself to run free, wrapped in a rose coloured patch, also
worn as an amulet, would similarly cure the same disease; the right
eye of a living lizard wrapped in a piece of goat’s skin; and a herb
picked from the head of a statue and tied up with red thread, are other
specimens of the amulets popular in his time. But Pliny appears to
doubt if all these treatments can be trusted. He mentions one, that is
that the heart of a hen placed on a woman’s left breast while she is
asleep will make her tell all her secrets, and this he characterizes as
a portentous lie. Mr. Cockayne quoting this, remarks dryly, “Perhaps
he had tried it.” Alexander of Tralles recommends a number of amulets,
some of which he mentions he has proved. Thus for colic he names the
dung of a wolf with some bits of bone in it in a closed tube worn on
the right arm or thigh; an octagonal iron ring on which are engraved
the words “Flee, flee, ho, ho, Bile, the lark was searching” good
for bilious disorders; for gout, gather henbane when the moon is in
Aquarius or Pisces before sunset with the thumb and third finger of the
left hand, saying at the time an invocation inviting the holy herb to
come to the house of blank and cure M. or N.; with a lot more.

The Greeks named the Furies Eumenides, good people, evidently with the
idea of propitiating them. For a similar reason fairies were known as
good folk by our ancestors.

ENGLISH FOLK-LORE SUPERSTITIONS.

It would be as tedious as it would be useless to relate at any length
the multitude of silly superstitions which make up the medicinal
folk-lore of this and other countries. Methods of curing warts,
toothache, ague, worms, and other common complaints are familiar to
everyone. The idea that toothache is caused by tiny worms which can be
expelled by henbane, is very ancient and still exists. A process from
one of the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms converted into modern English by the
Rev. Oswald Cockayne may be quoted as a sample:--

“For tooth worms take acorn meal and henbane seed and wax, of all
equally much, mingle them together, work into a wax candle and burn it,
let it reek into the mouth, put a black cloth under, and the worms will
fall on it.”

Marcellus, a late Latin medical author whose work was translated
into Saxon, gave a simpler remedy. It was to say “Argidam, Margidum,
Sturdigum,” thrice, then spit into a frog’s mouth and set him free,
requesting him at the same time to carry off the toothache.

Another popular cure for toothache in early England was to wear a
piece of parchment on which the following charm was written:--“As St.
Peter sat at the gate of Jerusalem our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ, passed by and said, What aileth thee? He said Lord, my teeth
ache. He said, Arise and follow me and thy teeth shall never ache any
more.”

Sir Kenelm Digby’s method was less tempting. He directed that the
patient should scratch his gum with an iron nail until he made it
bleed, and should then drive the nail with the blood upon it into a
wooden beam. He will never have toothache again, says this sage.

For warts the cures are innumerable. They are all more or less like
this: Steal a piece of meat from a butcher’s stall or basket, bury it
secretly at a gateway where four lanes meet. As the meat decays the
warts will die away. An apple cut into slices and rubbed on the warts
and buried is equally efficacious. So is a snail which after being
rubbed on the warts is impaled on a thorn and left to die.

A room hung with red cloth was esteemed in many countries to be
effective against certain diseases, small-pox especially. John of
Gaddesden relates how he cured Edward II’s son by this device. The
prejudice in favour of red flannel which still exists, for tying a
piece of it round sore throats is probably a remnant of the fancy that
red was specially obnoxious to evil spirits. The Romans hung red coral
round the necks of their infants to protect them from the evil eye.
This practice, too, has come down to our day.

[Illustration]

Among other charms and incantations quoted by Mr. Cockayne in his
account of Saxon Leechdoms we find that for a baby’s recovery “some
would creep through a hole in the ground and stop it up behind them
with thorns,” “if cattle have a disease of the lungs, burn (something
undeciphered) on midsummer’s day; add holy water, and pour it into
their mouths on midsummer’s morrow; and sing over them: Ps. 51, Ps. 17,
and the Athanasian Creed.” “If anything has been stolen from you write
a copy of the annexed diagram and put it into thy left shoe under the
heel. Then thou shalt soon hear of it.”

TRANSFERRING DISEASES.

It was widely believed that disease could be transferred by means
of certain silly formalities. This was a very ancient notion. Pliny
explains how pains in the stomach could be transferred to a duck or a
puppy. A prescription of about two hundred years ago for the cure of
convulsions was to take parings of the sick man’s nails, some hair from
his eyebrows, and a halfpenny, and wrap them all in a clout which had
been round his head. This package must be laid in a gateway where four
lanes meet, and the first person who opened it would take the sickness
and relieve the patient of it. A certain John Dougall was prosecuted
in Edinburgh in 1695 for prescribing this treatment. A more gruesome
but less unjust proceeding was to transfer the disease to the dead.
An example is the treatment of boils quoted from Mr. W. G. Black’s
“Folk Medicine.” The boil was to be poulticed three days and nights,
after which the poultices and cloths employed were to be placed in the
coffin with a dead person and buried with the corpse. In Lancashire
warts could be transferred by rubbing each with a cinder which must be
wrapped in paper and laid where four roads meet. As before, the person
who opens this parcel will take the warts from the present owner. In
Devonshire a child could be cured of whooping cough by putting one
of its hairs between slices of bread and butter and giving these to
a dog. If the dog coughed, as was probable, the whooping cough was
transferred.

WITCHES’ POWERS.

The powers of witches were extensive but at the same time curiously
restricted. When Agnes Simpson was tried in Scotland in 1590 she
confessed that to compass the death of James VI she had hung up a black
toad for nine days and caught the juice which dropped from it. If she
could have obtained a piece of linen which the king had worn she could
have killed him by applying to it some of this venom, which would have
caused him such pain as if he had lain on sharp thorns or needles.

Another means they had of inflicting torture was to make an effigy in
wax or clay of their victim and then to stick pins into it or beat it.
This would cause the person represented the pain which it was desired
to inflict.

THE UNIVERSAL TENDENCY.

It would merely try the patience of the reader to enumerate even a
tithe of the absurd things which have been and are being used by
people, civilised and savage, as charms, talismans, and amulets. The
teraphim which Rachel stole from her father Laban, the magic knots of
the Chaldeans, the gold and stone ornaments of the Egyptians, which
they not only wore themselves but often attached to their mummies--a
multitude of these going back as far as the flint amulets of the
predynastic period, are to be seen in the British Museum--the precious
stones whose virtues were discovered by Orpheus, the infinite variety
of gold and silver ornaments adopted by the Romans with superstitious
notions, the fish, ichthys, being the initials of the Greek words for
Jesus Christ, the Lord, our Saviour, engraved on stones and worn by
the early Christians, the Gnostic gems, the coral necklaces, the bezoar
stones, the toad ashes, the strands of the ropes used for hanging
criminals, the magnets of the middle ages and of modern times, and
a thousand other things, credited with magical curative properties,
might be cited. Besides these there are myriads of forms of words
written or spoken, some pious, some gibberish, which have been used and
recommended both with and without drugs.

Schelenz in “Geschichte der Pharmacie” (1904) quotes from Jakob Mærlant
of Bruges, “the Father of Flemish science” (born about 1235) the
recommendation of an “Amulettring” on the stone of which the figure of
Mercury was engraved, and which would make the wearer healthy, “die
mæct sinen traghere ghesont.” (See Cramp Rings, p. 305.)

How widespread has been the belief in the power of amulets and charms
may be gathered from a few instances of such superstitions among
famous persons. Lord Bacon was convinced that warts could be cured by
rubbing lard on them and transferring the lard to a post. The warts
would die when the lard dried. Robert Boyle attributed the cure of a
hæmorrhage to wearing some moss from a dead man’s skull. The father of
Sir Christopher Wren relates that Lord Burghley, the Lord Treasurer of
England in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, kept off the gout by always wearing
a blue ribbon studded with a particular kind of snail shells round his
leg. Whenever he left it off the pain returned violently. Burton in
the “Anatomy of Melancholy” (1621) says St. John’s Wort gathered on a
Friday in the horn of Jupiter, when it comes to his effectual operation
(that is about full moon in July), hung about the neck will mightily
help melancholy and drive away fantastical spirits.

Pepys writing on May 28, 1667, says, “My wife went down with Jane and
W. Hewer to Woolwich in order to get a little ayre, and to lie there
to-night and so to gather May Dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner
hath taught her is the only thing to wash her face with; and I am
content with it.” But Mrs. Turner ought to have explained to Mrs. Pepys
that to preserve beauty it was necessary to collect the May Dew on the
first of the month.

Catherine de Medici wore a piece of an infant’s skin as a charm, and
Lord Bryon presented an amulet of this nature to Prince Metternich.
Pascal died with some undecipherable inscription sewn into his clothes.
Charles V always wore a sachet of dried silkworms to protect him from
vertigo. The Emperor Augustus wore a piece of the skin of a sea calf
to keep the lightning from injuring him, and the Emperor Tiberius wore
laurel round his neck for the same reason when a thunderstorm seemed
to be approaching. Thyreus reports that in 1568 the Prince of Orange
condemned a Spaniard to be shot, but that the soldiers could not hit
him. They undressed him and found he was wearing an amulet bearing
certain mysterious figures. They took this from him, and then killed
him without further difficulty. The famous German physician, Frederick
Hoffman, tells seriously of a gouty subject he knew who could tell when
an attack was approaching by a stone in a ring which he wore changing
colour.

DOGMAS AND DELUSIONS.

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heap’d o’er her head;
Philosophy that lean’d on Heav’n before
Shrinks to her Second Cause and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense.
See Mystery to Mathematics fly;
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
POPE--“The Dunciad” (641-648).

ELEMENTS AND PHLOGISTON.

The ancient idea that earth, air, fire, and water were the elements of
Nature was held by chemists in the 18th century. Empedocles appears to
have been the author of this theory, which was adopted by Aristotle.
Some speculative philosophers, however, taught that all of these were
derived from one original first principle; some held that this was
water, some earth, some fire, and others air. Paracelsus, who does not
seem to have objected to this idea, contributed another fantastic one
to accompany it. According to him everything was composed of sulphur,
salt, and mercury; but he did not mean by these the material sulphur,
salt, and mercury as we know them, but some sort of refined essence of
these. These three essentials came to be tabulated thus:--

SALT. SULPHUR. MERCURY.
Unpleasant and bitter. Sweet. Acid.
Body. Soul. Spirit.
Matter. Form. Idea.
Patient. Agent. Informant or movent.
Art. Nature. Intelligence.
Sense. Judgment. Intellect.
Material. Spiritual. Glorious.

This is taken from Beguin, who explains that the mercury, sulphur,
and salt of this classification are not those “mixt and concrete
bodies such as are vulgarly sold by merchants. Mercury, which combines
the elements of air and water, Sulphur represents Fire, and Salt,
Earth.” “But the said principles, to speak properly, are neither
bodies; because they are plainly spiritual, by reason of the influx
of celestial seeds, with which they are impregnated: nor spirits,
because corporeal, but they participate of either nature; and have been
insignized by Phylosophers with various names, or at the least unto
them they have alluded these.”

Instances of the combination of these principles are given. If you burn
green woods, you first have a wateriness, mercury; then there goes
forth an oleaginous substance easily inflammable, sulphur; lastly, a
dry and terrestrial substance remains, salt. Milk contains a sulphurous
buttery substance; mercurial, whey; saline, cheese. Eggs: white,
mercury, yolk, sulphur, shell, salt. Antimony regulus, mercury, red
sulphur conceiving flame; a salt which is vomitive.

[Illustration: GEORGE ERNEST STAHL.

Born at Anspach, 1660; died at Berlin, 1734. Stahl was
the originator of the “phlogiston theory” which generally
prevailed in chemistry until Lavoisier disproved it in the
last quarter of the 18th century.
]

Nowhere do you get these principles pure. Mercury (the metal) contains
both sulphur and salt; so with the others.

Becker, the predecessor of Stahl, was not quite satisfied with the
orthodox opinion, and improved upon it by limiting the elements
to water and earth; but he recognised three earths, vitrifiable,
inflammable, and mercurial. The last yielded the metals. Stahl was
inclined to go back to the four elements again, but he had his doubts
about their really elementary character. He, however, concentrated his
attention on fire, out of which he evolved his well-known phlogiston
theory. This substance, if it was a substance, was conceived as
floating about all through the atmosphere, but only revealing itself
by its effects when it came into contact with material bodies. There
was some doubt whether it possessed the attribute of weight at all;
but its properties were supposed to be quiescent when it became united
with a substance which thereby became phlogisticated. It needed to
be excited in some special way before it could be brought again into
activity. When combined it was in a passive condition.

The amusing features of the phlogiston theory only developed when
it came to be realised that when the phlogiston was driven out of a
body, as in the case of the calcination of a metal, the calx remaining
was heavier than the metal with the phlogiston had been. The first
explanation of this phenomenon was that phlogiston not only possessed
no heaviness, but was actually endowed with a faculty of lightness.
This hypothesis was, however, a little too far-fetched for even the
seventeenth century. Boerhaave thereupon discovered that as the
phlogiston escaped it attacked the vessel in which the metal was
calcined, and combined some of that with the metal. This notion would
not stand experiment, but Baume’s explanation of what happened was
singularly ingenious. He insisted that phlogiston was appreciably
ponderable. But, he said, when it is absorbed into a metal or other
substance it does not combine with that substance, but is constantly in
motion in the interstices of the molecules. So that as a bird in a cage
does not add to the weight of the cage so long as it is flying about,
no more does phlogiston add to the weight of the metal in which it is
similarly flying about. But when the calcination takes place the dead
phlogiston, as it may be called, does actually combine with the metal,
and thus the increase of weight is accounted for.

HUMOURS AND DEGREES.

The doctrine of the “humours,” or humoral pathology, as it is generally
termed, is usually traced to Hippocrates. It is set forth in his book
on the Nature of Man, which Galen regarded as a genuine treatise of the
Physician of Cos, but which other critics have supposed to have been
written by one or more of his disciples or successors. At any rate, it
is believed to represent his views. Plato elaborated the theory, and
Galen gave it dogmatic form.

The human body was composed not exactly of the four elements, earth,
air, fire, and water, but of the essences of these elements. The fluid
parts, the blood, the phlegm, the bile, and the black bile, were the
four humours. There were also three kinds of spirits, natural, vital,
and animal, which put the humours in motion.

The blood was the humour which nourished the various parts of the
body, and was the source of animal heat. The bile kept the passages of
the body open, and served to promote the digestion of the food. The
phlegm kept the nerves, the muscles, the cartilages, the tongue, and
other organs supple, thus facilitating their movements. The black bile
(the melancholy, Hippocrates termed it) was a link between the other
humours and sustained them. The proportion of these humours occasioned
the temperaments, and it is hardly necessary to remark that this
fancy still prevails in our language; the sanguine, the bilious, the
phlegmatic, and the atrabilious or melancholy natures being familiar
descriptions to this day.

The humours had different characters. The blood was naturally hot and
humid, the phlegm cold and humid, the bile hot and dry, and the black
bile cold and dry. Alterations of the humours would cause diseased
conditions; distempers was the appropriate term. There might be a too
abundant provision of one or more of the humours. A plethora of blood
would cause drowsiness, difficulty of breathing, fatty degeneration.
A plethora of either of the other humours would have the effect of
causing corruption of the blood; plethora of bile, for example,
would result in a jaundiced condition, bad breath, a bitter taste in
the mouth, and other familiar symptoms. Hæmorrhoids, leprosy, and
cancer might result from a plethora of the melancholic humour; colds,
catarrhs, rheumatisms were occasioned by a superabundance of the phlegm.

It must not be supposed that Galen or any other authority pretended
that the humours were the sole causes of disease. Ancient pathology
was a most complicated structure which cannot be even outlined here.
The theory of the humours is only indicated in order to show how these
explained the action of drugs. To these were attributed hot, humid,
cold, and dry qualities to a larger or less extent. Galen classifies
them in four degrees--that is to say, a drug might be hot, humid, cold,
or dry in the first, second, third, or fourth degree. Consequently the
physician had to estimate first which humour was predominant, and in
what degree, and then he had to select the drug which would counteract
the disproportionate heat, cold, humidity, or dryness. Of course he
had his manuals to guide him. Thus Culpepper tells us that horehound,
for example, is “hot in the second degree, and dry in the third”; herb
Trinity, or pansies, on the other hand, “are cold and moist, both herbs
and flowers”; and so forth. Medicines which applied to the skin would
raise a blister, mustard, for example, are hot in the fourth degree;
those which provoke sweat abundantly, and thus “cut tough and compacted
humours” (Culpepper) are hot in the third degree. Opium was cold in the
fourth degree, and therefore should only be given alone to mitigate
violent pain. In ordinary cases it is wise to moderate the coldness of
the opium by combining something of the first degree of cold or heat
with it.

An amusing illustration of the reverence which this doctrine of the
temperatures inspired is furnished by Sprengel in the second volume
of his History of Medicine. Dealing with the Arab period, he tells us
that Jacob-Ebn-Izhak-Alkhendi, one of the most celebrated authors of
his nation, who lived in the ninth century, and cultivated mathematics,
philosophy, and astrology as well as medicine, wrote a book on the
subject before us, extending Galen’s theory to compound medicines,
explaining their action in accordance with the principles of harmony
in music. The degrees he explains progress in geometric ratio, so
that the fourth degree counts as 16 compared with unity. He sets out
his proposition thus: _x_ = _b_^{_n_-1}_a_; _a_ being the first, _b_
the last, _x_ the exponent, and _n_ the number of the terms. Sprengel
has pity on those of us who are not familiar with mathematical
manipulations, and gives an example to make the formula clear.

Medicament. Weight. Hot. Cold. Humid. Dry.
Cardamoms ʒi 1 ½ ½ 1
Sugar ʒii 2 1 1 2
Indigo ʒi ½ 1 ½ 1
Myrobalans ʒii 1 2 1 2
--- ----- ----- --- ---
ʒvi 4½ 4½ 3 6

This preparation therefore forms a mixture exactly balanced in hot
and cold properties, but twice as dry as it is humid; the mixture is
therefore dry in the first degree. If the total had shown twelve of
the dry to three of the humid qualities, it would have been dry in
the second degree. When it is remembered that in addition to these
calculations the physician had to realise that drugs adapted for one
part of the body might be of no use for another, it will be perceived
that the art of prescribing was a serious business under the sway of
the old dogmas.

THE ROSICRUCIANS.

It has never been pretended, so far as I am aware, that the Rosicrucian
mystics of the middle ages did anything for the advancement of
pharmacy. They are only mentioned here because they claimed the power
of curing disease, and also because it happens that the fiction
which created the legends concerning them was almost contemporaneous
with the not unsimilar one (if the latter be a fiction) which made a
historical figure of Basil Valentine. Between 1614 and 1616 three works
were published professing to reveal the history of the brethren of
the Rosy Cross. The first was known as Fama Fraternitatis, the second
was the Confessio Fraternitatis, and the third and most important was
the “Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz.” The treatises are
written in a mystic jargon, and have been interpreted as alchemical
or religious parables, though vast numbers of learned men adopted
the records as statements of facts. It was asserted that Christian
Rosencreutz, a German, born in 1378, had travelled in the East, and
from the wise men of Arabia and other countries had learnt the secrets
of their knowledge, religious, necromantic, and alchemical. On his
return to Germany he and seven other persons formed this fraternity,
which was to be kept secret for a hundred years. The brethren, it
is suggested, communicated to each other their discoveries and the
knowledge which had been transmitted to them to communicate with
each other. They were to treat the sick poor free, were to wear no
distinctive dress, but they used the letters C.R. They knew how to
make gold, but this was not of much value to them, for they did not
seek wealth. They were to meet once a year, and each one appointed his
own successor, but there were to be no tombstones or other memorials.
Christian Rosencreutz himself is reported to have died at the age of
106, and long afterwards his skeleton was found in a house, a wall
having been built over him. Their chief business being to heal the
sick poor, they must have known much about medicine, but the books do
not reveal anything of any use. They acquired their knowledge, not by
study, but by the direct illumination of God. The theories--such as
they were--were Paracelsian, and the fraternity, though mystic, was
Protestant.

The most curious feature of the story is that the almost obviously
fictitious character of the documents which announced it should have
been so widely believed. Very soon after their publication German
students were fiercely disputing concerning the authenticity of the
revelations, and the controversy continued for two hundred years. Much
learned investigation into the origin of the first treatises has been
made, and the most usual conclusion has been that they were written by
a German theologian, Johann Valentin Andreas, of Württemberg, b. 1586,
d. 1654. He is said to have declared before his death that he wrote the
alleged history expressly as a work of fiction.

THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

was at least intelligible. It associated itself, too, with the pious
utterances so frequent among the mediæval teachers and practitioners
of medicine. The theory was that the Creator in providing herbs for
the service of man had stamped on them, at least in many instances, an
indication of their special remedial value. The adoption of ginseng
root by the Chinese as a remedy for impotence, and of mandrake by the
Hebrews and Greeks in the treatment of sterility, those roots often
resembling the male form, have been often cited as evidence of the
antiquity of the general dogma.... But isolated instances of that
kind are very far from proving the existence of systematic belief.
Hippocrates states that diseases are sometimes cured by the use of
“like” remedies; but he was not the founder of homœopathy.

It is likely that the belief in a special indication of the virtues
of remedies grew up slowly in the monasteries, and was originated,
perhaps, by noticing some curious coincidences. It found wide
acceptation in the sixteenth century, largely owing to the confident
belief in the doctrine expressed in the writings of Paracelsus.
Oswald Crollius and Giovanni Batista Porta, both mystical medical
authors, taught the idea with enthusiasm. But it can hardly be said
that it maintained its influence to any appreciable extent beyond the
seventeenth century. Dr. Paris describes the doctrine of signatures as
“the most absurd and preposterous hypothesis that has disgraced the
annals of medicine”; but except that it may have led to experiments
with a few valueless herbs, it is difficult to see sufficient reason
for this extravagant condemnation of a poetic fancy.

The signatures of some drugs were no doubt observed after their virtues
had been discovered. Poppy, for instance, under the doctrine was
appropriated to brain disorders, on account of its shape like a head.
But its reputation as a brain soother was much more ancient than the
inference.

It is only necessary to give a few specimens of the inductive reasoning
involved in the doctrine of signatures as revealed by the authors of
the old herbals. The saxifrages were supposed to break up rocks; their
medicinal value in stone in the bladder was therefore manifest. Roses
were recommended in blood disorders, rhubarb and saffron in bilious
complaints, turmeric in jaundice, all on account of their colour.
Trefoil “defendeth the heart against the noisome vapour of the spleen,”
says William Coles in his “Art of Simpling,” “not only because the
leaf is triangular like the heart of a man, but because each leaf
contains the perfect icon of a heart and in the proper flesh colour.”
Aristolochia Clematitis was called birthwort, and from the shape of its
corolla was believed to be useful in parturition. Physalis alkekengi,
bladder wort, owed its reputation as a cleanser of the bladder and
urinary passages to its inflated calyx. Tormentilla officinalis,
blood root, has a red root, and would therefore cure bloody fluxes.
Scrophularia nodosa, kernel wort, has kernels or tubers attached to its
roots, and was consequently predestined for the treatment of scrofulous
glands of the neck. Canterbury bells, from their long throats, were
allocated to the cure of sore throats. Thistles, because of their
prickles, would cure a stitch in the side. Scorpion grass, the old name
of the forget-me-not, has a spike which was likened to the tail of a
scorpion, and was therefore a remedy for the sting of a scorpion. [The
name forget-me-not was applied in England, until about a century ago,
to the Ground Pine (Ajuga Chamœpitys), for the unpoetical reason that
it left a nauseous taste in the mouth.]

Oswald Crollius, who describes himself as Medicus et Philosophus
Hermeticus, in his “Tractatus de Signatures,” writes a long and very
pious preface explaining the importance of the knowledge of signatures.
It is the most useful part of botany, he observes, and yet not a
tenth part of living physicians have fitted themselves to practise
from this study to the satisfaction of their patients. His inferences
from the plants and animals he mentions are often very far-fetched,
but he gives his conclusions as if they had been mathematically
demonstrated. Never once does he intimate that a signature is capable
of two interpretations. A few illustrations not mentioned above may be
selected from his treatise.

Walnuts have the complete signature of the head. From the shell,
therefore, a salt can be made of special use for wounds of the
pericranium. The inner part of the shell will make a decoction for
injuries to the skull; the pellicle surrounding the kernel makes a
medicine for inflammation of the membrane of the brain; and the kernel
itself nourishes and strengthens the brain. The down on the quince
shows that a decoction of that fruit will prevent the hair falling out.
So will the moss that grows on trees. The asarum has the signature of
the ears. A conserve of its flowers will therefore help the hearing and
the memory. Herb Paris, euphrasia, chamomile, hieracium, and many other
herbs yield preparations for the eyes. Potentilla flowers bear the
pupil of the eye, and may similarly be employed. The seed receptacle
of the henbane resembles the formation of the jaw. That is why these
seeds are good for toothache. The lemon indicates the heart, ginger the
belly, cassia fistula the bowels, aristolochia the womb, plantago the
nerves and veins, palma Christi and fig leaves the hands.

The signatures sometimes simulate the diseases themselves. Lily of the
valley has a flower hanging like a drop; it is good for apoplexy. The
date, according to Paracelsus, cures cancer; dock seeds, red colcothar,
and acorus palustris will cure erysipelas; red santal, geraniums,
coral, blood stones, and tormentilla, are indicated in hæmorrhage;
rhubarb in yellow bile; wolves’ livers in liver complaints, foxes’
lungs in pulmonary affections, and dried worms powdered in goats’ milk
to expel worms. The fame of vipers as a remedy was largely due to the
theory of the renewal of their youth. Tartarus, or salt of man’s urine,
is good against tartar and calculi.

Colour was a very usual signature. Red hangings were strongly advocated
in medical books for the beds of patients with small-pox. John of
Gaddesden, physician to Edward II, says, “When I saw the son of the
renowned King of England lying sick of the small-pox I took care that
everything round the bed should be of a red colour, which succeeded so
completely that the Prince was restored to perfect health without the
vestige of a pustule.”

METALS AND PRECIOUS STONES.

It will be noticed that parts of animals are credited in the examples
just quoted with remedial properties. This was a natural extension
of the doctrine. Metals, too, were credited with medicinal virtues
corresponding with their names or with the deities and planets with
which they had been so long associated. The sun ruled the heart, gold
was the sun’s metal, therefore gold was especially a cordial. The
moon, silver, and the head were similarly associated. Iron was a tonic
because Mars was strong.

“Have a care,” says Culpepper, “you use not such medicines to one part
of your body which are appropriated to another; for if your brain be
overheated and you use such medicines as cool the heart or liver you
may make mad work.”

But it was not quite so simple a thing as it may seem to be to select
the proper remedy, because there were conditions which made it
necessary to follow an antipathetical treatment. For instance, Saturn
ruling the bones caused toothache; but if Jupiter happened to be in
the ascendant, the proper drug to employ was one in the service of
the opposing planet. Modern astronomy has removed the heavenly bodies
so far from us that we have ceased to regard them in the friendly way
which once characterised our relations with them. To quote Culpepper
again: “It will seem strange to none but madmen and fools that the
stars should have influence upon the body of man, considering he being
an epitomy of the Creation must needs have a celestial world within
himself; for ... if there be an unity in the Godhead there must needs
be an unity in all His works, and a dependency between them, and not
that God made the Creation to hang together like a rope of sand.”

SYMPATHETIC REMEDIES.

Among the strange theories which have found acceptance in medical
history, mainly it would seem by reason of their utter baselessness and
absurdity, none is more unaccountable than the belief in the so-called
sympathetic remedies. There is abundant material for a long chapter on
this particular manifestation of faith in the impossible, but a few
prominent instances of the remarkable method of treatment comprised in
the designation will suffice to prove that it was seriously adopted by
men capable of thinking intelligently.

The germ of the idea goes back to very early ages. Dr. J. G. Frazer,
the famous authority on primitive beliefs, traces the commandment in
the Pentateuch, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,” to
an ancient prejudice against the boiling of milk in any circumstances,
on the ground that this would cause suffering to the animal which
yielded the milk. If the suffering could be thus conveyed, it was
logical to believe that healing was similarly capable of transference.

Pliny (quoted by Cornelius Agrippa) says: “If any person shall be sorry
for a blow he has given another, afar off or near at hand, if he shall
presently spit into the middle of the hand with which he gave the blow,
the party that was smitten shall presently be free from pain.”

Paracelsus developed the notion with the confidence which he was wont
to bestow on theories which involved far-fetched explanations. This was
his formula for “Unguentum Sympatheticum”:--

Take 4 oz. each of boar’s and bear’s fat, boil slowly for half an hour,
then pour on cold water. Skim off the floating bit, rejecting that
which sinks. (The older the animals yielding the fat, the better.)

Take of powdered burnt worms, of dried boar’s brain, of red sandal
wood, of mummy, of bloodstone, 1 oz. of each. Then collect 1 drachm
of the moss from the skull of a man who died a violent death, one who
had been hanged, preferably, and had not been buried. This should be
collected at the rising of the moon, and under Venus if possible, but
certainly not under Mars or Saturn. With all these ingredients make an
ointment, which keep in a closed glass vessel. If it becomes dry on
keeping it can be softened with a little fresh lard or virgin honey.
The ointment must be prepared in the autumn.

Paracelsus describes the methods of applying this ointment, the
precautions to be taken, and the manner in which it exerts its
influence. It was the weapon which inflicted the wound which was to be
anointed, and it would be effective no matter how far away the wounded
person might be. It would not answer if an artery had been severed,
or if the heart, the brain, or the liver had suffered the lesion. The
wound was to be kept properly bandaged, and the bandages were to be
first wetted with the patient’s urine. The anointment of the weapon
was to be repeated every day in the case of a serious wound, or every
second or third day when the wound was not so severe, and the weapon
was to be wrapped after anointment in a clean linen cloth, and kept
free from dust and draughts, or the patient would experience much pain.
The anointment of the weapon acted on the wound by a magnetic current
through the air direct to the healing balsam which exists in every
living body, just as the heat of the sun passes through the air.

Paracelsus also prescribed the leaves of the Polygonum persicaria to
be applied to sores and ulcers, and then buried. One of his disciples
explains that the object of burying the leaves was that they attracted
the evil spirits like a magnet, and thus drew these spirits from the
patient to the earth.

The sympathetic egg was another device to cheat diseases, attributed to
the same inventive genius. An empty chicken’s egg was to be filled with
warm blood from a healthy person, carefully sealed and placed under
a brooding hen for a week or two, so that its vitality should not be
impaired. It was then heated in an oven for some hours at a temperature
sufficient to bake bread. To cure a case this egg was placed in contact
with the affected part and then buried. It was assumed that it would
inevitably take the disease with it, as healthy and concentrated blood
must have a stronger affinity for disease than a weaker sort.

Robert Fludd, M.D., the Rosicrucian, who fell under the displeasure
of the College of Physicians on account of his unsound views from a
Galenical standpoint, was a warm advocate of the Paracelsian Weapon
Salve. In reply to a contemporary doctor who had ridiculed the theory
he waxes earnest, and at times sarcastic. He explains that “an ointment
composed of the moss of human bones, mummy (which is the human body
combined with balm), human fat, and added to these the blood, which is
the beginning and food of them all, must have a spiritual power, for
with the blood the bright soul doth abide and operateth after a hidden
manner. Then as there is a spiritual line protracted or extended in the
Ayre between the wounded person and the Box of Ointment like the beam
of the Sun from the Sun, so this animal beam is the faithful conductor
of the Healing nature from the box of the balsam to the wounded body.
And if it were not for that line which conveys the wholesome and
salutiferous spirit, the value of the ointment would evaporate or sluce
out this way or that way and so would bring no benefit to the wounded
persons.”

Van Helmont, Descartes, Batista Porta, and other leaders of science,
in the seventeenth century, espoused the theory cordially enough. Van
Helmont’s contribution to the evidence on which it was founded is
hard to beat. In his “De Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione,” written about
1644, he relates that a citizen of Brussels having lost his nose in a
combat in Italy, repaired to a surgeon of Bologna named Tagliacozzi,
who provided him with another, taking the required strip of flesh from
the arm of a servant. This answered admirably, and the Brussels man
returned home. But thirteen months later he found his nose was getting
cold; and then it began to putrefy. The explanation, of course, was
that the servant from whom the flesh had been borrowed had died. Van
Helmont adds, “Superstites sunt horum testes oculati Bruxellae”; there
are still eye-witnesses of this case at Brussels.

Moss from a dead man’s skull is a principal ingredient in all the
sympathetic ointments, and the condition that the dead man should have
died a violent death is generally insisted on. But Van Helmont, quoting
from one Goclenius, adds another condition still more absurd. It is
that the dead man’s name should only have three letters. Thus, for
example, Dod would do, but not Dodd.

Sir Gilbert Talbot (in the time of Charles II) communicated to the
Royal Society particulars of a cure he had made with Sympathetic
Powder. An English mariner was stabbed in four places at Venice, and
bled for three days without intermission. Sir Gilbert, who happened
to be at Venice at the same time, was told of this disaster. He sent
for some of the man’s blood and mixed Sympathetic Powder with it.
At the same time he sent a man to bind up the patient’s wounds with
clean linen. Soon after he visited the mariner and found all the
wounds closed, and the man much comforted. Three days later the poor
fellow was able to call on Sir Gilbert to thank him, but even then “he
appeared like a ghost with noe blood left in his body.”

[Illustration: MARQUISE DE SÉVIGNÉ.

Born 1626, died 1696, whose famous “letters” are of great
historical importance, frequently introduces references to the
medicine of the period, and was herself a faithful disciple of
many of its quackeries.
]

Madame de Sévigné, an experienced amateur in medical matters, provides
interesting evidence of the popularity of the powder of sympathy.
Writing to her daughter on January 28th, 1685, she tells her that “a
little wound which was believed to have been healed had shown signs of
revolt; but it is only for the honour of being cured by your powder
of sympathy. The Baume Tranquille is of no account now; your powder
of sympathy is a perfectly divine remedy. My sore has changed its
appearance and is now half dried and cured.” On February 7th, 1685, she
writes again:--“I am afraid the powder of sympathy is only suitable
for old standing wounds. It has only cured the least troublesome of
mine. I am now using the black ointment, which is admirable.” Even the
black ointment proved unfaithful, for in June of the same year the
marchioness writes that she has gone to the Capucins of the Louvre.
They did not believe in the powder of sympathy; they had something much
better. They gave her certain herbs which were to be applied to the
affected part and removed twice a day. Those removed are to be buried;
“and laugh if you like, as they decay so will the wound heal, and thus
by a gentle and imperceptible transpiration I shall cure the most
ill-treated leg in the world.”

[Illustration: SIR KENELM DIGBY.

(From a painting by Vandyke in the Bodleian Gallery, Oxford.)]

The name of Sir Kenelm Digby is more closely associated with the
“powder of sympathy” than that of any other person, and indeed he is
often credited with the invention of the idea; but this was not the
case. He was an extraordinary man who played a rather prominent part
in the stirring days of the Stuarts. His father, Sir Everard Digby,
was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, and was duly executed. Kenelm
must have been gifted with unusual attractions or plausibility to have
overcome this unfortunate stain on his pedigree, but he managed it, and
history introduces him to us at the court of that suspicious monarch,

James I., while he was quite a young man. He had inherited an income of
£3,000 a year, and seems to have been popular with the King and with
his fellow courtiers. But he was not contented to lead an idle life,
so he pressed James to give him a commission to go forth and steal
some Spanish galleons, which was the gentlemanly thing to do in those
days. James consented, but at the last moment it was discovered that
the commission would not be in order unless it was countersigned by
the Lord High Admiral, who was away from England at the time. James
therefore simply granted the buccaneer a licence to undertake a voyage
“for the increase of his knowledge.” Digby scoured the Mediterranean
for a year or two, captured some French, Spanish, and Flemish ships,
and won a rather severe engagement with French and Venetian vessels
at Scanderoon in the Levant. This exploit was celebrated by Digby’s
friend, Ben Jonson, in verse, which can only be termed deathless on
account of its particularly imbecile ending:--

Witness his action done at Scanderoon
Upon his birthday, the eleventh of June.

The writer of Digby’s epitaph plagiarised the essence of this brilliant
strophe in the following lines:--

Born on the day he died, the eleventh of June,
And that day bravely fought at Scanderoon.
It’s rare that one and the same day should be
His day of birth and death and victory.

On his return home after thus distinguishing himself, Digby was
knighted, changed his religion occasionally, was imprisoned and
banished at intervals, and dabbled in science between times, or shone
in society in London, Paris, or Rome, visiting the two last-named
cities frequently on real or pretended diplomatic missions.

During his residence in France, in 1658, he lectured to the University
of Montpellier on his sympathetic powder, and the fame of this
miraculous compound soon reached England. When he came back he
professed to be shy of using it lest he should be accused of wizardry.
But an occasion soon occurred when he was compelled to take the risk
for the sake of a friend. Thomas Howel, the Duke of Buckingham’s
secretary, was seriously wounded in trying to prevent a duel between
two friends of his, and the doctors prognosticated gangrene and
probably death. The friends of the wounded man appealed to Sir Kenelm,
who generously consented to do his best. He told the attendants to
bring him a rag on which was some of the sufferer’s blood. They
brought the garter which had been used as a bandage and which was
still thick with blood. He soaked this in a basin of water in which he
had dissolved a handful of his sympathetic powder. An hour later the
patient said he felt an agreeable coolness. The fever and pain rapidly
abated, and in a few days the cure was complete. It was reported that
the Duke of Buckingham testified to the genuineness of the cure and
that the king had taken a keen interest in the treatment.

Digby asserted that the secret of the powder was imparted to him by
a Carmelite monk whom he met at Florence. His laboratory assistant,
George Hartman, published a “Book of Chymicall Secrets,” in 1682, after
Sir Kenelm’s death, and therein explained that the Powder of Sympathy,
which was then made by himself (Hartman), and “sold by a bookseller
in Cornhill named Brookes” was prepared “by dissolving good English
vitriol in as little warm water as will suffice, filter, evaporate, and
set aside until fair, large, green crystals are formed. Spread these
in the sun until they whiten. Then crush them coarsely and again dry
in the sun.” Other recipes say it should be dried in the sun gently (a
French formula says “amoureusement”) for 365 days.

Sir Kenelm’s scientific explanation of the action of his sympathetic
powder is on the same lines as the others I have quoted. Briefly it
was that the rays of the sun extracted from the blood and the vitriol
associated with it the spirit of each in minute atoms. At the same time
the inflamed wound was exhaling hot atoms and making way for a current
of air. The air charged with the atoms of blood and vitriol were
attracted to it, and acted curatively.

In a letter written by Straus to Sir Kenelm, it is related that Lord
Gilborne had followed the system, but his method was described as
“the dry way.” A carpenter had cut himself severely with an axe. The
offending axe still bespattered with blood was smeared with the proper
ointment and hung up in a cupboard. The wound was going on well, but
one day it suddenly became violently painful again. On investigation it
was found that the axe had fallen from the nail on which it was hung.

Inscribed on the plate attached to the portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby
in the National Portrait Gallery, it is stated that “His character
has been summed up as a prodigy of learning, credulity, valour, and
romance.” Although this appreciation is quoted the author is not named.
Other testimonials to his character and reliability are to be found
in contemporary literature. Evelyn alludes to him as “a teller of a
strange things.” Clarendon describes him as “a person very eminent
and notorious throughout the whole course of his life from his cradle
to his grave. A man of very extraordinary person and presence; a
wonderful graceful behaviour, a flowing courtesy, and such a volubility
of language as surprised and delighted.” Lady Fanshawe met him at
Calais with the Earl of Strafford and others and says, “much excellent
discourse passed; but, as was reason, most share was Sir Kenelm Digby’s
who had enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be
averred.” At last he told the company about the barnacle goose he had
seen in Jersey; a barnacle which changes to a bird, and at this they
all laughed incredulously. But Lady Fanshawe says this “was the only
thing true he had declaimed with them. This was his infirmity, though
otherwise of most excellent parts, and a very fine-bred gentleman.” In
John Aubrey’s “Brief Lives” (“set down between 1669 and 1696”) Digby is
described as “such a goodly person, gigantique and great voice, and had
so graceful elocution and noble address, etc., that had he been drop’t
out of the clowdes in any part of the world he would have made himself
respected.”

It may be of interest to add that a daughter of Sir Kenelm Digby’s
second son married a Sir John Conway, of Flintshire. Her granddaughter,
Honora, married a Sir John Glynne whose great-grandson, Sir Stephen
Glynne, was the father of the late Mrs. W. E. Gladstone.

In 1690, Lemery had the courage to express some doubts about this
powder of sympathy, and in 1773 Baumé declared its pretensions to be
absolutely illusory.

To conclude the account of this curious delusion, a few quotations from
English literature may be added.

There are several allusions to sympathetic cures in Hudibras. For
instance,

For by his side a pouch he wore
Replete with strange hermetick powder
That wounds nine miles point blank would solder,
By skilful chemist at great cost
Extracted from a rotten post.

And again,

’Tis true a scorpion’s oil is said
To cure the wounds the vermin made;
And weapons dress’d with salves restore
And heal the wounds they made before.

In Dryden’s _Tempest_, the sympathetic treatment is referred to.
Hippolito has been wounded by Fernando, and Miranda instructed by
Ariel, visits him. Ariel says, “Anoint the sword which pierced him with
this weapon salve, and wrap it close from air.” The following is the
next scene between Hippolito and Miranda.

_Hip._ Oh! my wound pains me.

_Mir._ I am come to ease you. [_Unwrapping the sword._

_Hip._ Alas! I feel the cold air come to me.
My wound shoots worse than ever.

[_Miranda wipes and anoints the sword._

_Mir._ Does it still grieve you?

_Hip._ Now, methinks, there’s something laid just upon it.

_Mir._ Do you find no ease?

_Hip._ Yes, yes; upon the sudden all the pain
Is leaving me; Sweet heaven, how I am eased.

Lastly, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Scott alludes to this same
superstition in the lines

But she has ta’en the broken lance
And washed it from the clotted gore
And salved the splinter o’er and o’er.

It would appear from the explanations already given that by washing the
gore away she destroyed the communication between the wound and the
remedy.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

The first allusion to the application of the magnet as a cure for
disease is found in the works of Aetius, who wrote in the early part
of the sixth century. He mentions that holding a magnet in the hand is
said to give relief in gout. He does not profess to have tested this
treatment himself. Writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
recommend it strongly for toothache, headache, convulsions, and
nerve disorders. About the end of the seventeenth century magnetic
tooth-picks and earpicks were sold. To these were attributed the
virtues of preventing and healing pains in those organs.

Paracelsus originated the theory of animal magnetism. The mysterious
properties possessed by the loadstone and transferable from that body
to iron, were according to Paracelsus an influence drawn directly from
the stars and possessed by all animate beings. It was a fluid which
he called Magnale. By it he explained the movements of certain plants
which follow the course of the sun, and it was on the basis of this
hypothesis that he composed his sympathetic ointment and explained the
action of talismans. Paracelsus applied the magnet in epilepsy, and
also prepared a magisterium magnetis.

Glauber professed to have a secret magnet which would draw only the
essence or tincture from iron, leaving the gross body behind. With
this he made a tincture of Mars and Venus, thus “robbing the dragon of
the golden fleece which it guards.” This is understood to mean that he
dissolved iron and copper in aqua fortis. And as Jason restored his
aged father to youth again, so would this tincture prove a wonderful
restorative. He commenced to test it on one occasion and very soon
black curly hair began to grow on his bald head. But he had not enough
of the tincture to permit him to carry on the experiment, and though he
had a great longing to make some more, he apparently put off doing so
until it was too late.

Van Helmont, Fludd, and other physicians of mystic instincts, were
among the protagonists of animal magnetism, and physicians administered
pulverised magnet in salves, plasters, pills and potions. But in 1660
Dr. Gilbert, of Colchester, noted that, when powdered, the loadstone
no longer possessed magnetic properties. Ultimately, therefore, it was
understood that the powder of magnet was not capable of producing any
other effects than any other ferruginous substance. But the belief in
magnets applied to the body was by no means dissipated. The theory was
exploited by various practitioners, but notably towards the latter part
of the eighteenth century, when the Viennese doctor, F. A. Mesmer,
excited such a vogue in Paris that the Court, the Government, the
Academy of Sciences, and aristocratic society generally were ranged in
pro-and anti-Mesmer sections. Franklin stated that at one time Mesmer
was taking more money in fees than all the regular physicians of Paris
put together. And yet Mesmer’s explanations of the phenomena attending
his performances were only an amplification of the doctrines which
Paracelsus had first imagined.

The excitement did not spread to England to any great extent, but
about the same time an American named Perkins created a great deal of
stir with his metallic tractors, which sent the nation tractor-mad for
the time. Dr. Haygarth, of Bath, contributed to the failure of this
delusion by a series of experiments on patients with pieces of wood
painted to resemble the tractors from which equally wonderful relief
was felt, proving that the cures such as they were, could only have
been the consequence of faith.

THE TREATMENT OF ITCH.

The history of the treatment of itch is such a curious instance of the
blind acceptance of authority through many centuries, in the course
of which the true explanation lay close at hand, that it is worth
narrating briefly.

It is stated in some histories that the disease was known to the
Chinese some thousands of years ago, and the name they gave it,
Tchong-kiai, which means pustules formed by a worm, indicates that at
least when that term was adopted they had some acquaintance with the
character of the disease.

Some writers have supposed that certain of the uncleannesses alluded
to in the Book of Leviticus have reference to this complaint; and it
is quite possible that in old times it acquired a much more severe
character than it ever has now, owing to neglect or improper treatment.
Psora, in Greek, and the equivalent term Scabies, in Latin, are
supposed to have at least included the itch, though in all probability
those words comprehended a number of skin diseases which are now more
exactly distinguished. Hippocrates mentions psora, and apparently
treated it solely by the internal administration of diluents and
purgatives. Aristotle mentions not only the disease but the insects
found, he said, in the blisters. Celsus advocated the application of
ointments composed of a miscellaneous lot of drugs, such as verdigris,
myrrh, nitre, white lead, and sulphur. Galen hints at the danger of
external applications which might drive the disease inwards. In Cicero,
Horace, Juvenal, and other of the classical writers, the word scabies
is used to indicate something unnatural; showing that it had come to be
adopted metaphorically.

The Arab writers are much more explicit. Rhazes, Haly Abbas, and
Avicenna are very definite in their descriptions of the nature of the
complaint, and how it is transmitted from one person to another; but
Avicenna’s mode of treatment was directed to the expulsion of the
supposed vicious humours from the body by bleeding and purgatives,
especially by a purgative called Hamech. At the same time he advised
that the constitution should be reinforced by suitable diet and
astringent medicines.

Avenzoar of Seville, a remarkable observer, who lived in the twelfth
century, alludes to a malady of the skin, common among the people, and
known as Soab. This, he says, is caused by a tiny insect, so small that
it can scarcely be seen, which, hidden beneath the epidermis, escapes
when a puncture has been made.

One would have supposed that the doctors were at that time on the
eve of understanding the itch correctly, and in fact the writers of
the next few centuries were at least quite clear about the acarus.
Ambrose Paré, for example, who lived through the greater part of the
sixteenth century, uses this language:--“Les cirons sont petits animaux
cachés dans le cuir, sous lequel ils se trainent, rampent, et rongent
petit par petit, excitant une facheuse demangeaison et gratelle;” and
elsewhere “Ces cirons doivent se tirer avec espingles ou aiguilles.”

All this time, however, the complaint was regarded as a disturbance of
the humours which had to be treated by suitable internal medicines.
In a standard work, _De Morbis Cutaneis_, by Mercuriali, published at
Venice in 1601, the author attributes the disease to perverted humours,
and says it is contagious because the liquid containing the contagious
principle is deposited on or in the skin.

This view, or something like it, continued to be the orthodox opinion
at least up to the seventeenth century. Van Helmont’s personal
experience of the itch is referred to in dealing with that eccentric
genius who was converted from Galenism to Paracelsianism as a
consequence of his cure; but he never got beyond the idea that the
cause of the complaint was a specific ferment.

The earliest really scientific contribution to the study of this
disorder may be credited to Thomas Mouffet, of London, who, in a
treatise published in 1634, entitled _Insectorum sive Minimorum
Animalium Theatrum_, showed not only that the animalculæ were
constantly associated with the complaint, but made it clear that they
were not to be found in the vesicles, but in the tunnels connected with
these. For this was the stumbling block of most of the investigators.
It had been so often stated that the parasites were to be found in the
vesicles, that when they were not there the theory failed. Mouffet’s
exposition ought to have led to a correct understanding of the cause of
the complaint, but it was practically ignored.

About this time the microscope was invented, and in 1657 a German
naturalist named Hauptmann published a rough drawing of the insect
magnified. A better, but still imperfect, representation of it was
given a few years later by Etmuller.

In 1687 a pharmacist of Leghorn, named Cestoni, induced a Dr. Bonomo of
that city to join him in making a series of experiments to prove that
the acarus was the cause of itch. They had both observed the women of
the city extracting the insects from the hands of their children by
the aid of needles, and the result of their research was a treatise in
which the parasitic nature of the complaint was maintained, and the
uselessness of internal remedies was insisted on. These intelligent
Italians recommended sulphur or mercury ointment as the essential
application.

Even with this evidence before them the doctors went on faithful to
their theory of humours. Linnæus supported the view of Bonomo and
Cestoni, but made the mistake of identifying the itch parasite with
the cheese mite. The great medical authorities of the eighteenth
century, such as Hoffmann and Boerhaave, still recommended general
treatment, and a long list of drugs might be compiled which were
supposed to be suitable in the treatment of itch. Among these, luckily,
some parasiticides were included, and, consequently, the disease did
get cured by these, but the wrong things got the credit. About the
end of the eighteenth century Hahnemann promulgated the theory that
the “psoric miasm” of which the itch eruption was the symptomatic
manifestation, was the cause of a large proportion of chronic diseases.

Some observers thought there were two kinds of itch, one caused by the
acarus, the other independent of it. Bolder theorists held that the
insect was the product of the disease. The dispute continued until
1834, in which year Francois Renucci, a native of Corsica, and at the
time assistant to the eminent surgeon d’Alibert at the Hôpital St.
Louis, Paris, undertook to extract the acarus in any genuine case of
itch. As a boy he had seen the poor women extract it in Corsica, as
Bonomo and Cestoni had seen others do it at Leghorn, though his learned
master at the hospital remained sceptical for some years. It was near
the middle of the nineteenth century before the parasitic character of
itch was universally acknowledged.

MASTERS IN PHARMACY

We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence towards those great
nations to which the human race owes art, science, taste,
civil and intellectual freedom, when we say that the stock
bequeathed by them to us has been so carefully improved that
the accumulated interest now exceeds the principal.
MACAULAY: “Essay on Lord Bacon” (1837).

DIOSCORIDES.

It has been a subject of lively dispute whether Dioscorides lived
before or after Pliny. It seems certain that one of these authors
copied from the other on particular matters, and in neither case is
credit given. Pliny was born A.D. 23 and died A.D. 79, and would
therefore have lived under the Emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius,
Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. Suidas, the historian, who
probably wrote in the tenth century, dates Dioscorides as contemporary
with Antony and Cleopatra, about B.C. 40, and some Arab authorities say
he wrote at the time of Ptolemy VII, which would be still a hundred
years earlier. But Dioscorides dedicates his great work on materia
medica to Areus Asclepiades, who is otherwise unknown, but mentions as
a friend of his patron the consul Licinius Bassus. There was a consul
Lecanius Bassus in the reign of Nero, and it is therefore generally
supposed that Dioscorides was in his prime at that period, and would
consequently be a contemporary of Pliny’s. It is possible that both
authors drew from another common source.

Dioscorides was a native of Anazarbus in Cilicia, a province where
the Greek spoken and written was proverbially provincial. Our word
solecism is believed to have been derived from the town of Soloe in
the same district. The Greek of Dioscorides is alleged to have been
far from classical. He himself apologises for it in his preface, and
Galen remarks upon it. Nevertheless Dioscorides maintained for at
least sixteen centuries the premier position among authorities on
materia medica. Galen complains that he was sometimes too indefinite
in his description of plants, that he does not indicate exactly enough
the diseases in which they are useful, and that he does not explain
the degrees of heat, cold, dryness, and humidity which characterise
them. He will often content himself with saying that a herb is hot
or cold, as the case may be. As an illustration of one of his other
criticisms Galen mentions the Polygonum, of which he notes that
Dioscorides says “it is useful for those who urinate with difficulty.”
But Galen adds that he does not particularise precisely the cases of
which this is a symptom and which the Polygonum is good for. But these
defects notwithstanding, Galen recognises that Dioscorides is the best
authority on the subject of the materials of medicine.

It is generally stated that Dioscorides was a physician; but of this
there is no certain evidence. According to his own account he was
devoted to the study and observation of plants and medical substances
generally, and in order to see them in their native lands he
accompanied the Roman armies through Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor.
This was the easiest method of visiting foreign countries in those
days. It is not unlikely that he went as assistant to a physician,
perhaps to the one to whom he dedicated his book. That is to say,
he may have been an army compounder. Suidas says of him that he was
nicknamed Phocas, because his face was covered with stains of the shape
of lentils.

In his treatise on materia medica, “Peri Ules Iatrikes,” or, according
to Photius, originally “Peri Ules,” On Matter, only, he describes
some six hundred plants, limiting himself to those which had or
were supposed to have medicinal virtues. He mentions, besides, the
therapeutic properties of many animal substances. Among these are
roasted grasshoppers, for bladder disorders; the liver of an ass for
epilepsy; seven bugs enclosed in the skin of a bean to be taken in
intermittent fever; and a spider applied to the temples for headache.

Dioscorides also gives a formula for the Sal Viperum, which was a noted
remedy in his time and for long afterwards. His process was to roast
a viper alive in a new earthen pot with some figs, common salt, and
honey, reducing the whole to ashes. A little spikenard was added to the
ashes. Pliny only adds fennel and frankincense to the viper, but Galen
and later authors make the salt a much more complicated mixture.

His botany is very defective. He classifies plants in the crudest way;
often only by a similarity of names. Of many his only description is
that it is “well-known,” a habit which has got him into much trouble
with modern investigators who have looked into his work for historical
evidence verifying the records of herbs named in other works. Hyssop
is an example. As stated in the section entitled “The Pharmacy of
the Bible,” it has not been found possible to identify the several
references to hyssop in the Bible. Dioscorides contents himself by
saying that it is a well-known plant, and then gives its medicinal
qualities. But that his hyssop was not the plant known to us by that
name is evident from the fact that in the same chapter he describes
the “Chrysocome,” and says of it that it flowers in racemes like the
hyssop. He also speaks of an origanum which has leaves arranged like an
umbel, similar to that of the hyssop. It is evident, therefore, that
his hyssop and ours are not the same plant.

The mineral medicines in use in his time are also included in the
treatise of Dioscorides. He mentions argentum vivum, cinnabar,
verdigris, the calces of lead and antimony, flowers of brass, rust of
iron, litharge, pompholix, several earths, sal ammoniac, nitre, and
other substances.

Other treatises, one on poisons and the bites of venomous animals,
and another on medicines easy to prepare, have been attributed to
Dioscorides, but it is not generally accepted that he was the author.
The best known translation of Dioscorides into Latin was made by
Matthiolus of Sienna in the sixteenth century. The MS. from which
Matthiolus worked is still preserved at Vienna and is believed to have
been written in the sixth century.

The very competent authority Kurt Sprengel, while recognising the
defects in the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, credits him with the
record of many valuable observations. His descriptions of myrrh,
bdellium, laudanum, asafoetida, gum ammoniacum, opium, and squill are
selected as particularly useful; the accounts he gives of treatments
since abandoned (some of which are mentioned above, but to these
Sprengel adds the application of wool fat to wounds which has been
revived since he wrote), are of special interest; and the German
historian further justly points out that many remedies re-discovered in
modern times were referred to by Dioscorides. Among these are castor
oil, though Dioscorides only alludes to the external application of
this substance; male fern against tape worms; elm bark for eruptions;
horehound in phthisis; and aloes for ulcers. He describes many chemical
processes very intelligently, and was the first to indicate means of
discovering the adulterations of drugs.

GALEN.

No writer of either ancient or modern times can compare with Claudius
Galenus probably in the abundance of his output, but certainly in
the influence he exercised over the generations that followed him.
For fifteen hundred years the doctrines he formulated, the compound
medicines he either introduced or endorsed, and the treatments he
recommended commanded almost universal submission among medical
practitioners. In Dr. Monk’s Roll of the College of Physicians, mention
is made of a Dr. Geynes who was admitted to the Fellowship of the
College in 1560, “but not until he had signed a recantation of his
error in having impugned the infallibility of Galen.”[2] This was at
the time when to deny Galen meant to follow Paracelsus, and the contest
was fiercer just then than at any time before or since.

[Illustration:

There is of course no authentic likeness of Galen in
existence. The Royal College of Physicians possesses
an unquestionably antique bust, copied in Pettigrew’s
Medical Portraits (and illustrated in the margin), which
is traditionally credited with being a representation of
the Physician of Pergamos. It was presented to the College
by Lord Ashburton, to whom it was presented by Alexander
Adair, who had acquired it from his relative Robert Adair,
principal surgeon to the British forces at the siege of
Quebec. This Robert Adair was a man of considerable eminence
in his profession, and is described as a man of character
and a scholar. Beyond this very slight evidence there is no
authority for the presumption that the bust was intended for
Galen. The other portrait is copied from the diploma of the
Pharmaceutical Society, but this is not said to have any
history. With these may be compared the portrait given on the
title page of the first London Pharmacopœia. The conclusion
will probably be reached that we have no idea what manner of
man the eminent physician was.
]

Galen was born at Pergamos, in Asia Minor, A.D. 131, and died
in the same city between A.D. 200 and 210. His father was an
architect of considerable fortune, and the son was at first destined to
be a philosopher, but while he was going through his courses of logic,
Nicon (the father) was advised in a dream to direct the youth’s studies
in the direction of medicine. It will be seen directly that Galen’s
career was a good deal influenced by dreams.

Nothing was spared to obtain for the youth the best education
available, though his father died when he was 21. After exhausting the
Pergamos teachers, Galen studied at Smyrna, Corinth, and Alexandria.
Then he travelled for some years through Cilicia, Phœnicia, Palestine,
Scyros, and the Isles of Crete and Cyprus. He commenced practice at
Pergamos when he was 29 and was appointed Physician to the School of
Gladiators in that city. At 33 he removed to Rome and soon acquired the
confidence and friendship of many distinguished persons, among them
Septimus Severus, the Consul and afterwards Emperor, Sergius Paulus,
the Prætor, the uncle of the reigning Emperor, Lucius Verus, many of
whom he cured of various illnesses.

His success caused bitter jealousy among the other Greek physicians
then practising in Rome. They called him Paradoxologos, and Logiatros,
which meant that he was a boaster and a master of phrases. It appears
that he was able to hold his own in this wordy warfare. Some of
his opponents he described as Asses of Thessaly, and he also made
allegations against their competence and probity. However, he quitted
Rome in the year 167, and as at a later time he left Aquilea, both
movings being coincident with the occurrence of serious plagues, his
reputation for courage has suffered. It was at this period of his
life that he visited Palestine to see the shrub which yielded Balm of
Gilead, and then proceeded to Armenia to satisfy himself in regard to
the preparation of the Terra Sigillata. He was able to report that the
general belief that blood was used in the process was incorrect.

It was to Aquilea that Galen was sent for by the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, who was there preparing a campaign against the Marcomans,
a Germanic nation dwelling in what is now called Bohemia. Marcus
Aurelius was in the habit of taking Theriaca, and would have none but
that which had been prepared by Galen. He urged Galen to accompany
him on his expedition, but the physician declined the honour and the
danger, alleging that Æsculapius had appeared to him in a dream, and
had forbidden him to take the journey. The Emperor therefore sent him
to Rome and charged him with the medical care of his son Commodus, then
11 years of age. Galen is said to have done the world the ill-service
of saving the life of this monster. Galen retained the favour of Marcus
Aurelius till the death of the Emperor, and continued to make Theriaca
for his successors, Commodus, Pertinax, and Septimus Severus. He died
during the reign of the last named Emperor.

Galen is sometimes said to have kept a pharmacy in the Via d’Acra at
Rome, but his “apotheca” there appears to have been a house where his
writings were kept and where other physicians came to consult them.
This house was afterwards burned, and it is supposed that a number of
the physician’s manuscripts were destroyed in that fire.

His medical fame began to develop soon after his death. In about a
hundred years Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea, reproaches the world with
treating Galen almost as a divinity. Nearly all the later Roman medical
writers drew freely from his works, and some seemed to depend entirely
on them. Arabic medicine was largely based on Galen’s teaching, and it
was the Arabic manuscripts translated into Latin which furnished the
base of the medical teaching of Europe from the eleventh and twelfth
centuries to the eighteenth.

Galen aimed to create a perfect system of physiology, pathology, and
treatment. He is alleged to have written 500 treatises on medicine, and
250 on other subjects, philosophy, laws, grammar. Nothing like this
number remains, and the so-called “books” are often what we should call
articles. His known and accepted medical works number eighty-five. All
his writings were originally in Greek.

ORIBASIUS.

Oribasius, like Galen, was a native of Pergamos, and was physician
to and friend of the Emperor Julian. He is noted for having compiled
seventy-two books in which he collected all the medical science of
preceding writers. This was undertaken at the instance of Julian. Only
seventeen of these books have been preserved to modern times. Oribasius
adds to his compilation many original observations of his own, and in
these often shows remarkable good sense. He was the originator of the
necklace method of treatment, for he recommends a necklace of beads
made of peony wood to be worn in epilepsy, but does not rely on this
means alone.

AETIUS.

Aetius, who lived either in the fifth or sixth century, was also a
compiler, but he was besides a great authority on plasters, which he
discusses and describes at enormous length. He was a Christian, and
gives formulas of words to be said when making medicinal compounds,
such as “O God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, give to this remedy
the virtues necessary for it.” In the works of Aetius, mention is made
of several nostrums famous in his time for which fabulous prices were
charged. The Collyrium of Danaus was sold in Constantinople for 120
numismata. If this means the nummus aureus of Roman money it would be
equal to nearly £100 of our money. At this price, Aetius says, the
Collyrium could only be had with difficulty. He also mentions a Colical
Antidote of Nicostratus called very presumptuously Isotheos (equal to
God), which sold for two talents.

The remedy devised by Aetius for gout was called Antidotos ex duobus
Centaureae generibus, and was the same as the compound which became
popular in this country under the title of Duke of Portland’s Powder.
(See page 309). Aetius prescribed a regimen along with his medicine
extending over a year. In September the patient was to take milk;
in October, garlic; in November to abstain from baths; December, no
cabbage; in January to take a glass of pure wine every morning; in
February to eat no beet; in March to be allowed sweets in both food
and drink; in April, no horse radish; in May, no Polypus (a favourite
dish); in June, to drink cold water in the morning; in July, no venery;
in August, no mallows.

ALEXANDER OF TRALLES.

This writer, who acquired considerable celebrity as a medical
authority, lived a little later than Aetius, towards the end of the
sixth century. He was a native of Tralles, in Lydia, and is much
esteemed by the principal medical historians, Sprengel, Leclerc,
Freind, and others who have studied his writings. Especially notable
is his independence of opinion; he does not hesitate occasionally to
criticise even Galen. He impresses strongly on his readers the danger
of becoming bound to a particular system of treatment. The causes of
each disease are to be found, and the practitioner is not to be guided
exclusively by symptoms. Among his favourite drugs were castorum, which
he gave in fevers and many other maladies; he had known several persons
snatched from the jaws of death by its use in lethargy (apoplexy); bole
Armeniac, in epilepsy and melancholia; grapes and other ripe fruits
instead of astringents in dysentery; rhubarb appeared as a medicine for
the first time in his writings, but only as an astringent; and he was
the first to use cantharides for blisters in gout instead of soothing
applications. His treatment of gout by internal remedies and regimen
recalls that of Aetius and is worth quoting. He prescribed an electuary
composed of myrrh, coral, cloves, rue, peony, and aristolochia. This
was to be taken regularly every day for a hundred days. Then it was to
be discontinued for fifteen days. After that it was to be recommenced
and continued during 460 days, but only taking a dose every other day;
then after another interval thirty-five more doses were to be taken on
alternate days, making 365 doses altogether in the course of nearly two
years. Meanwhile the diet was strictly regulated, and it may well be
that Alexander only provided the medicine to amuse his patient while
he cured the gout by a calculated reduction of his luxuries. Alexander
of Tralles was the author who recommended hermodactyls, supposed to be
a kind of colchicum in gout; a remedy which was forgotten until its
use was revived in a French proprietary medicine. His prescription
compounded hermodactyls, ginger, pepper, cummin seeds, anise seeds,
and scammony. He says it will enable sufferers who take it to walk
immediately. He is supposed to have been the first to advocate the
administration of iron for the removal of obstructions.

MESUË AND SERAPION.

These names are often met with in old medical and pharmaceutical books,
and there is an “elder” and a “younger” of each of them, so that it may
be desirable to explain who they all were. The elder and the younger
of each are sometimes confused. Serapion the Elder, or Serapion of
Alexandria, as he is more frequently named in medical history, lived
in the Egyptian city about 200 B.C., and was the recognised
leader of the sect of the Empirics in medicine. He is credited with
the formula that medicine rested on the three bases, Observation,
History, and Analogy. No work of his has survived, but he is alleged to
have violently attacked the theories of Hippocrates, and to have made
great use of such animal products as castorum, the brain of the camel,
the excrements of the crocodile, the blood of the tortoise, and the
testicles of the boar.

Serapion the Younger was an Arabian physician who lived towards the
end of the tenth century and wrote a work on materia medica which was
much used for some five or six hundred years.

Mesuë the Elder was first physician at the court of Haroun-al-Raschid
in the ninth century. He was born at Khouz, near Nineveh, in 776, and
died at Bagdad in 855. Under his superintendence the School of Medicine
of Bagdad was founded by Haroun. Although a Nestorian Christian, Mesuë
retained his position as first physician to five Caliphs after Haroun.
To his teaching the introduction of the milder purgatives, such as
senna, tamarinds, and certain fruits is supposed to be due. His Arabic
name was Jahiah-Ebn-Masawaih.

Mesuë the Younger is the authority generally meant when formulas under
his name, sometimes quaintly called Dr. Mesuë in old English books, are
quoted. He lived at Cairo about the year 1000. He was a Christian, like
his earlier namesake, and is believed to have been a pupil or perhaps
a companion of Avicenna; at all events, when the latter got into
disgrace it is alleged that both he and Mesuë took refuge in Damascus.
At Damascus Mesuë wrote his great work known in Latin as Receptarium
Antidotarii. From the time of the invention of printing down to the
middle of the seventeenth century, when pharmacopœias became general,
more than seventy editions of this work, mostly in Latin, but a few in
Italian, have been counted. In some of the Latin translations he is
described as “John, the son of Mesuë, the son of Hamech, the son of
Abdel, king of Damascus.” This dignity has been traced to a confusion
of the Arabic names, one of which was very similar to the word meaning
king. Nearly half of the formulæ in the first London Pharmacopœia were
quoted from him.

NICOLAS MYREPSUS.

For several centuries before the era of modern pharmacopœias the
Antidotary of Nicolas Myrepsus was the standard formulary, and from
this the early dispensatories were largely compiled. This Nicolas,
who was not the Nicolas Praepositus of Salerno, is sometimes named
Nicolas Alexandrinus. He appears to have been a practising physician at
Constantinople, and as he bore the title of Actuarius, it is supposed
that he was physician to the Emperor. He is believed to have lived in
the thirteenth century. Myrepsus, which means ointment maker, was a
name which he assumed or which was applied to him, probably in allusion
to his Antidotary.

This was the largest and most catholic of all the collections of
medical formulas which had then appeared. Galen and the Greek
physicians, the Arabs, Jews, and Christians who had written on
medicine, were all drawn upon. A Latin translation by Leonard Fuchs,
published at Nuremberg in 1658, contains 2,656 prescriptions, every
possible illness being thus provided against. The title page declares
the work to be “Useful as well for the medical profession and for the
seplasarii.” The original is said to have been written in barbarous
Greek.

Sprengel, who has hardly patience to devote a single page to this
famous Antidotary, tells us that the compiler was grossly ignorant
and superstitious. He gives an instance of his reproduction of some
Arab formulæ. One is the use of arsenic as a spice to counteract the
deadly effects of poisons. This advice was copied, he says, down to
the seventeenth century. It was Nicolas’s rendering of the Arabic word
Darsini, which meant cannella, and which they so named because it was
brought from China.

The compounds collected in this Antidotary are of the familiar
complicated character of which so many specimens are given in this
volume. Many of the titles are curious and probably reminiscent of
the pious credulity of the period when Myrepsus lived. There is, for
example, the Salt of the Holy Apostles, which taken morning and evening
with meals, would preserve the sight, prevent the hair from falling
out, relieve difficulty of breathing, and keep the breath sweet. It was
obtained by grinding together a mixture of herbs and seeds (hyssop,
wild carrot, cummin, pennyroyal, and pepper) with common salt. The Salt
of St. Luke was similar but contained a few more ingredients.

A Sal Purgatorius prescribed for the Pope Nicholas consisted of sal
ammoniac, 3 oz., scammony, 3 drachms, poppy seeds, 2 drachms, orris
root, 3 drachms, pepper, 13 grains, one date, pine nut 25 grains, and
squill 2 drachms. This might be made into an electuary with honey.

Antidotus Acharistos, which means unthanked antidote, is stated
to be so named because it cured so quickly that patients were not
sufficiently grateful. They did not realise how bad they might have
been without it.

An electuary said to have been prescribed for King David for his
melancholy was composed of aloes, opium, saffron, lign-aloes, myrrh,
and some other spices, made up with honey. A Sal Sacerdotale (salt
combined with a few spices) stated to have been used by the prophets in
the time of Elijah had come down to this Antidotary through St. Paul.

RAYMOND LULLY.

The life of Raymond Lully is so romantic that it is worth telling,
though it only touches pharmaceutical history occasionally. Born at
Palma, in the island of Majorca, in 1235, in a good position of life,
he married at the age of twenty-two, and had two sons and a daughter.
But home life was not what he desired, and he continued to live the
life of a gallant, serenading young girls, writing verses to them, and
giving balls and banquets, to the serious derangement of his fortune.
Ultimately he conceived a violent passion for a beautiful and virtuous
married woman named Ambrosia de Castello who was living at Majorca with
her husband. She, to check this libertine’s ardour, showed him her
breast, ravaged by cancer. This so afflicted him that he set himself
to study medicine with the object of discovering a cure for the cruel
disease. With the study of medicine and of alchemy he now associated
an insatiable longing for the deliverance of the world from Mohammedan
error. He renounced the world, including it would seem his wife and
children (though it is recorded that he first shared his possessions
with his wife), and went to live on a mountain in a hut which he
built with his own hands. This career, however, did not promise an
early enough extirpation of infidels, so before long Lully is found
travelling, and residing at Paris, Rome, Vienna, Genoa, Tunis, and in
other cities, preaching new crusades, importuning the Pope to establish
new orders of missionary Christians, and at intervals writing books on
medicine. He had invented a sort of mathematical scheme which in his
opinion absolutely proved the truth of Christianity, and by the use of
diagrams he hoped to convert the Saracens. His ideas are set forth,
if not explained, in his _Ars Magna_. In the course of his strange
life he visited Palestine and Cyprus, and at Naples in 1293 he made
the acquaintance of Arnold de Villanova. This learned man taught Lully
much, and found a fervent discipline in him. He was more than seventy
when, according to tradition, he travelled to London with the object
of urging on Edward III a new war against the Saracens. Edward alleged
his want of means, but Lully was prepared to meet the difficulty,
and some of the historians of the science of the period assert that
he coined a lot of gold for the purpose of the new crusade. Edward
promptly used this money for the war with France, in which he was more
interested. Disappointed and disgusted, Lully left England, and some
time after, at the age of seventy-eight, set out to visit Jerusalem.
Having accomplished that journey he visited several of the cities of
North Africa on his way back, and at Bougia, after preaching with his
usual vehemence against the Mohammedan heresy, he was stoned by the
Moors and left for dead. Some friendly merchants took his body on their
ship bound for his native Majorca. He revived, but died on the voyage
in his eightieth year, A.D. 1415. His tomb is still shown in
the church of San Francisco in the City of Palma.

[Illustration: RAYMOND LULLY.

(From a portrait in the Royal Court and State Library, Munich.)]

Raymond Lully is particularly famous in pharmaceutical history for
the general use of the aqua vitae or aqua ardens which he introduced.
He had learned the process of distilling it from wine from Arnold of
Villanova, who had himself probably acquired it from the Arab chemists
of Spain, but Lully discovered the art of concentrating the spirit
by means of carbonate of potash. Of the aqua vitae which he made he
declared that “the taste of it exceedeth all other tastes, and the
smell of it all other smells.”

FRASCATOR.

Hieronymo Frascatoro, generally known as Jerome Frascator, was a
physician and poet of high repute in the early part of the sixteenth
century. Frascator was born at Verona in 1483 and died near that city
in 1553. As a physician he aided the Pope, Paul III, to get the Council
of Trent removed from Germany to Italy by alarming the delegates into
believing that they were in imminent danger of an epidemic. They
therefore adjourned to Bologna. Frascator especially studied infectious
diseases, and his celebrated Diascordium, which is described in the
section entitled “The Four Officinal Capitals,” was invented as a
remedy for the Plague. His great literary fame depended principally on
a Latin poem he wrote with the now repellent title of “Syphillides,
sive Morbi Gallici,” in three books. This was published in 1530. The
author did not accept the view that this disease had been imported from
America. He held that it had been known in ancient times, and that it
was caused by a peculiar corruption of the air. His hero, Syphilis,
had given offence to Apollo, who, in revenge, had poisoned the air he
breathed. Syphilis is cured by plunging three times in a subterraneous
stream of quicksilver. The best classical scholars of the age regarded
the poem as the finest Latin work written since the days when that
language was in its full life, and they compared it appreciatively with
the poems of Virgil. The following lines will serve as a specimen:--

... nam saepius ipsi
Carne sua exutos artus, squallentia ossa
Vidimes, et foedo rosa era dehiscere hiatu
Ora, atque exiles renentia guttura voces.

The name of the disease was acquired from this poem, and though it
has a Greek form and appearance, no ancient derivative for it can be
suggested. Frascator also wrote a poem on hydrophobia.

BASIL VALENTINE.

The name and works of Basil Valentine are inseparably associated with
the medical use of antimony. His “Currus Triumphalis Antimonii” (the
Triumphal Chariot of Antimony) is stated in all text-books to have
been the earliest description of the virtues of this important remedy,
and of the forms in which it might be prescribed. And very wonderful
indeed is the chemical knowledge displayed in this and other of
Valentine’s writings.

[Illustration: BASIL VALENTINE.

(From the Collection of Etchings in the Royal Gallery, Munich.)]

Basil Valentine explains the process of fusing iron with this stibium
and obtaining thereby “by a particular manipulation a curious star
which the wise men before me called the signet star of philosophy.”
He commences the treatise already mentioned by explaining that he is
a monk of the Order of St. Benedict, which (I quote from an English
translation by Theodore Kirkringius, M.D., published at London in 1678)
“requires another manner of Spirit of Holiness than the common state
of mortals exercised in the profane business of this World.”

After thus introducing himself he proceeds to mingle chemistry, piety,
and abuse of the physicians and apothecaries of his day with much
repetition though with considerable shrewdness for about fifty pages.
At last, after many false starts, he expounds the origin and nature of
antimony, thus:--

“Antimony is a mineral made of the vapour of the Earth changed into
water, which spiritual syderal Transmutation is the true Astrum of
Antimony; which water, by the stars first, afterwards by the Element
of Fire which resides in the Element of Air, is extracted from the
Elementary Earth, and by coagulation formally changed into a tangible
essence, in which tangible essence is found very much of Sulphur
predominating, of Mercury not so much, and of Salt the least of the
three. Yet it assumes so much Salt as it thence acquires an hard and
unmalleable Mass. The principal quality of it is dry and hot, or rather
burning; of cold and humidity it hath very little in it, as there is in
common Mercury; in corporal Gold also is more heat than cold. These may
suffice to be spoken of the matter, and three fundamental principles of
Antimony, how by the Archeus in the Element of Earth it is brought to
perfection.”

It needs some practice in reading alchemical writings to make out
the drift of this rhapsody, and no profit would be gained by a clear
interpretation of the mysticism. It may, however, be noted that the
Archeus was a sort of friendly demon who worked at the formation of
metals in the bowels of the earth; that all metals were supposed to
be compounds of sulphur, mercury, and salt in varying proportions,
the sulphur and the salt, however, being refined spiritual essences
of the substances we know by these names; and that it was a necessary
compliment to pay to any product which it was intended to honour to
trace its ancestry to the four elements.

As the author goes on to deal with the various compounds or derivatives
from antimony, it is abundantly clear that he writes from practical
experience. He describes the Regulus of Antimony (the metal), the glass
(an oxy-sulphide), a tincture made from the glass, an oil, an elixir,
the flowers, the liver, the white calx, a balsam, and others.

Basil Valentine’s scathing contempt for contemporary medical
practitioners calls for quotation. “The doctor,” he says, “knows not
what medicines he prescribes to the sick; whether the colour of them be
white, black, grey, or blew, he cannot tell; nor doth this wretched man
know whether the medicament he gives be dry or hot, cold or humid....
Their furnaces stand in the Apothecaries’ shops to which they seldom
or never come. A paper scroll in which their usual Recipe is written
serves their purpose to the full, which Bill being by some Apothecary’s
boy or servant received, he with great noise thumps out of his mortar
every medicine, and all the health of the sick.”

Valentine concludes his “Triumphal Chariot” by thus apostrophising
contemporary practitioners:--“Ah, you poor miserable people, physicians
without experience, pretended teachers who write long prescriptions on
large sheets of paper; you apothecaries with your vast marmites, as
large as may be seen in the kitchens of great lords where they feed
hundreds of people; all you so very blind, rub your eyes and refresh
your sight that you may be cured of your blindness.”

In the same treatise Basil Valentine describes spirit of salt which he
had obtained by the action of oil of vitriol on marine salt; brandy,
distilled from wine; and how to get copper from pyrites by first
obtaining a sulphate, then precipitating the metal by plunging into the
solution a blade of iron. This operation was a favourite evidence with
later alchemists of the transmutation of iron into copper.

According to some of his biographers Basil Valentine was born in
1393; others are judiciously vague and variously suggest the twelfth,
thirteenth, or fourteenth century. That he was a Benedictine monk, he
tells us himself, and several monasteries of the order have been named
where he is supposed to have lived and laboured.

Many medical historians have doubted whether such a person as Basil
Valentine ever existed. His writings are said to have been circulated
in manuscript, but no one has ever pretended to have seen one of those
manuscripts, and the earliest known edition of any of Basil Valentine’s
works was published about 1601, by Johann Thölde, a chemist, and part
owner of salt works at Frankenhausen in Thuringia. It is rather a large
claim on our credulity, or incredulity, to assume that Thölde was
himself the author of the works attributed to the old monk, and that
he devised the entire fiction of the alleged discoveries, chemistry
and all. It was not an uncommon thing among the alchemists and other
writers of the middle ages to represent their books as the works of
someone of acknowledged fame, just as the more ancient theologians were
wont to credit one of the apostles or venerated fathers with their
inventions. But it was not common for a discoverer to hide himself
behind a fictitious sage whose existence he had himself invented. This
theory is, however, held by some chemical critics.

It is certain that the real Basil Valentine could not have been so
ancient as he was generally believed to be. Syphilis is referred to in
the “Triumphal Chariot” as the new malady of soldiers (Neue Krankheit
der Kriegsleute), as morbus Gallicus, and lues Gallica. It was not
known by these names until the invasion of Naples by the French in
1495. Another allusion in the same treatise is to the use of antimony
in the manufacture of type metal, which was certainly not adopted at
any time at which Basil Valentine could have lived. Another reason
for questioning his actual existence is that the most diligent search
has failed to discover his name either on the provincial list or on
the general roll of the Benedictine monks preserved in the archives
of the order at Rome. Boerhaave asserted that the Benedictines had
no monastery at Erfurt, which was generally assigned as the home of
Valentine.

A curious item of evidence bearing on the allegation that Thölde was
the fabricator of Basil Valentine’s works, or at least of part of
them, has been indicated by Dr. Ferguson, of Glasgow, in his notes on
Dr. Young’s collection of alchemical works. Thölde, it appears, had
written a book in his own name entitled “Haliographia.” This is divided
into four sections, namely: 1. Various kinds of Salts. 2. Extraction
of Salts. 3. Salt Springs. 4. Salts obtained from metals, minerals,
animals, and vegetables. This Part 4 of the work was subsequently
published by Thölde among Basil Valentine’s writings. One of two things
therefore is obvious. Either Thölde adopted a work by Valentine and
issued it as his own, or one at least of the pieces alleged to have
been by Valentine was really by Thölde.

Basil Valentine, meaning the valiant king, has assuredly an alchemical
ring about it. It is exactly such a name as might be invented by one
of the scientific fictionists of the middle ages. It is impossible,
too, to read the “Triumphal Chariot,” at least when suspicion has been
awakened, without feeling that the character of the pious monk is a
little overdone. A really devout monk would hardly be proclaiming his
piety on every page with so much vehemence. Then there is the legend
which accounts for the long lost manuscripts. It is explained that they
were revealed to someone, unnamed, when a pillar in a church at Erfurt
was struck and split open by lightning, the manuscripts having been
buried in that pillar. When this happened is not recorded.

In Kopp’s “Beitrage zur Geschichte der Chemie” the learned author
argued that Thölde could only be regarded as an editor of Basil
Valentine’s works, because when they were published they gave so many
new chemical facts and observations that it was impossible to think
that Thölde would have denied himself the credit of the discoveries if
they had been his in fact. That book was published in 1875. In “Die
Alchemie,” which Kopp published in 1886, he refers to Basil Valentine,
and says that there is reason to think that the works attributed to him
were an intentional literary deception perpetrated by Thölde.

PARACELSUS: HIS CAREER.

No one man in history exercised such a revolutionary influence
on medicine and pharmacy as the erratic genius Philipus Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. The name Paracelsus is believed to
have been coined by himself, probably with the intention of somewhat
Latinising his patronymic, von Hohenheim, and also perhaps as claiming
to rank with the famous Roman physician and medical writer, Celsus. The
family of Bombast was an old and honourable one from Württemberg, but
the father of the founder of the iatro-chemists was a physician who had
settled at Maria-Einsiedeln, a small town in Switzerland, not far from
Zurich. He (the father) died at Villach, in Carinthia, in 1534, aged 71.

Theophrastus was an only child. He was born in 1490 or 1491, and owed
to his father the first inclination of his mind towards medicine and
alchemy. Later he was taught classics at a convent school, and at 16
went to the University of Basel. Apparently he did not stay there
long. Classical studies, and the reverence of authorities, which the
Universities taught, never attracted him. He is found next at Wurzburg,
in the laboratory of Trithemius, an abbot of that city, and a famous
adept in alchemy, astrology, and magic generally. He must have acquired
much chemical skill in that laboratory, and, doubtless, many of his
mystic views began to shape themselves under the instruction of the
learned abbot. But Paracelsus was not content with the artificial ideas
of the alchemists. By some means he became acquainted with the wealthy
Sigismund Fugger, a mine owner in the Tyrol, and either as assistant or
friend he joined him. The Fuggers were the Rothschilds of Germany at
that time, and one of them entertained Charles V at Augsburg, when the
famous diet at which the Emperor was to crush the Reformation was held
in that city. On that occasion the wealthy merchant made a cinnamon
fire for the Emperor, and lighted it with a bond representing a large
sum which Charles owed him.

In the Tyrolese mines Paracelsus learned much about minerals, about
diseases, and about men. Then he travelled through various parts of
Europe, paying his way by his medical and surgical skill, or, as his
enemies said, by conjuring and necromancy. He states that he was in
the wars in Venice, Denmark, and the Netherlands; it is supposed as an
army surgeon, for he afterwards declared that he then learned to cure
forty diseases of the body. He boasted that he learned from gypsies,
physicians, barbers, executioners, and from all kinds of people. He
claims also to have been in Tartary, and to have accompanied the
Khan’s son to Constantinople. Van Helmont tells us that it was in this
city that he met an adept who gave him the philosopher’s stone. Other
chroniclers relate that this adept was a certain Solomon Trismensinus,
who also possessed the elixir of life, and had been met with some two
hundred years later.

Although Paracelsus in his writings appears to hold the current belief
in the transmutation of metals, and in the possibility of producing
medicines capable of indefinitely prolonging life, he wasted no
energy in dreaming about these, as the alchemists generally did. The
production of gold does not seem to have interested him, and his aims
in medicine were always eminently practical. It is true that he named
his compounds catholicons, elixirs, and panaceas, but they were all
real remedies for specific complaints; and in the treatment of these he
must have been marvellously successful.

Whether he ever went to Tartary or not, and whether he served in
any wars or not, may be doubtful. His critics find no evidence of
acquaintance with foreign languages or customs in his works, and they
do find indications of very elementary notions of geography. But it
is certain that for ten years he was peregrinating somewhere; if his
travels were confined to Germany the effect was the same. Germany
was big enough to teach him. Passionately eager to wrest from Nature
all her secrets, gifted with extraordinary powers of observation and
imagination, with unbounded confidence in himself, and bold even to
recklessness as an experimenter, this was a man who could not be
suppressed. Armed with his new and powerful drugs, and not afraid to
administer them, cures were inevitable; other consequences also, in all
probability.

When, therefore, Paracelsus arrived at Basel, in the year 1525, in the
thirty-second year of his age, his fame had preceded him. Probably
he was backed by high influence. According to his own account he had
cured eighteen princes during his travels, and some of these may have
recommended him to the University authorities. It is to the credit
of Paracelsus that he was warmly supported by the saintly priest
Œcolampadius (Hausschein), who subsequently threw in his lot with
the reformers. Besides being appointed to the chair of medicine and
surgery, Paracelsus was made city physician.

His lectures were such as had never been heard before at a university.
He began his course by burning the works of Galen and Avicenna in a
chafing dish, and denouncing the slavish reliance on authority which
at that time characterised medical teaching and practice. He taught
from his own experience, and he gave his lectures in German. Many
quotations of his boastful utterance have been handed down to us, and
they match well with what we know of him from his recognised writings.
All the universities had less experience than he, and the very down on
his neck was more learned than all the authors. He likened himself to
Hippocrates, the one ancient whom he esteemed. He contrasted himself
with the doctors in white gloves who feared to soil their fingers in
the laboratory. “Follow me,” he cried; “not I you, Avicenna, Galen,
Rhazes, Montagnana, Mesuë, and ye others. Ye of Paris, of Montpellier,
of Swabia, of Cologne, of Vienna; from the banks of the Danube, of the
Rhine, from the islands of the seas, from Italy, Dalmatia, Sarmatia,
and Athens, Greeks, Arabs, Israelites. I shall be the monarch, and mine
shall be the monarchy.”

In his capacity as city physician he naturally created many enemies
among his fellow practitioners. His friends said he cured the cases
which they found hopeless; they said he only gave temporary relief at
the best, and that his remedies often killed the patients. He fell
foul, too, of the apothecaries. He denounced their drugs and their
ignorance. The three years he spent in Basel must have been lively both
for him and his opponents.

“In the beginning,” he says, “I threw myself with fervent zeal on the
teachers. But when I saw that nothing resulted from their practice
but killing, laming, and distorting; that they deemed most complaints
incurable; and that they administered scarcely anything but syrups,
laxatives, purgatives, and oatmeal gruel, with everlasting clysters, I
determined to abandon such a miserable art and seek truth elsewhere.”
Again he says: “The apothecaries are my enemies because I will not
empty their boxes. My recipes are simple and do not call for forty
or fifty ingredients. I seek to cure the sick, not to enrich the
apothecaries.”

His career at Basel was brought to a close by a dispute with a
prebendary of the cathedral named Lichtenfels, whom he had treated.
The canon, in pain, had promised him 200 florins if he would cure him.
The cure was not disputed, but as Paracelsus had only given him a few
little pills, the clergyman relied on the legal tariff. Paracelsus
sued him, and the court awarded the legal fee, which was six florins.
The doctor published his comments on the case, and it can readily be
supposed that they were of such a character as to amount to contempt of
court. He found it advisable to leave Basel hurriedly.

Between 1528 and 1535 he lived and practised at Colmar, Esslingen,
Nuremberg, Noerdlingen, Munich, Regensburg, Amberg, Meran, St. Gall,
and Zurich. From Switzerland he again set forth, and records of him are
to be traced in Carinthia and Hungary. Lastly, the Prince Palatine,
Duke Ernst of Bavaria, took him under his protection, and settled him
at Salzburg. There a few months afterwards he died. From dissipation
and exhaustion, say his enemies; by assassination, say his friends. A
German surgeon who examined his skull when the body was exhumed thirty
years after death, found in it a fracture of the temporal bone, which,
he declared, could only have been produced during life, because the
bones of a solid but desiccated skull could not have separated as
was the case here. It was suggested that some hirelings of the local
doctors whose prospects were endangered by this formidable invader had
“accidentally” pushed him down some rocks, and that it was then that
the fracture was caused. A monument to this great medical revolutionist
is still to be seen by the chapel of St. Philip Neri, at Salzburg. It
is a broken pyramid of white marble, with a cavity in which is his
portrait, and a Latin inscription which commemorates his cures of
diseases, and his generosity to the poor in the following terms:--

“Conditur hic Philippus Theophrastus, insignis Medicinæ
Doctor, qui dira illa vulnera, lepram, podagram, hydroposim,
aliaque insanabilia contagia mirificu arte sustulit; ac bona
sua in pauperes distribuenda collocandaque honoravit. Anno
1541, die 24 Septembr. vitam cum morte mutavit.”

(“Here lies Philippus Theophrastus, the famous Doctor of
Medicine, who by his wonderful art cured the worst wounds,
leprosy, gout, dropsy, and other diseases deemed incurable and
to his honour, shared his possessions with the poor.”)

Among the contemporaries of Paracelsus were Luther, Columbus,
and Copernicus. Their names alone are sufficient to show how the
long-suppressed energy of the human intellect was at that period
bursting forth. These four men were perhaps the greatest emancipators
of the human race from the chains of slavish obedience to authority
in the past thousand years. Paracelsus was not, so far as is known, a
Lutheran Protestant. But he could not help sympathising with his heroic
countryman. “The enemies of Luther,” he wrote, “are to a great extent
fanatics, knaves, bigots, and rogues. You call me a medical Luther,
but you do not intend to honour me by giving me that name. The enemies
of Luther are those whose kitchen prospects are interfered with by his
reforms. I leave Luther to defend what he says, as I will defend what
I say. That which you wish for Luther you wish for me; you wish us
both to the fire.” There was, indeed, much in common between these two
independent souls.

Columbus landed in the Western world the year before Paracelsus was
born. Luther burnt the Pope’s Bull at Wittenberg in 1520, and it was
this action of his which at the time at least thrilled the German
nation more than any other event in the history of the Reformation.
It is evident that Paracelsus, in imitating the conduct of his famous
contemporary, was only demonstrating his conviction that scientific, no
less than religious, thought needed to free itself from the shackles of
tyrannic tradition.

HIS CHARACTER.

Such details of the personality of Paracelsus as have come down to
us were written by his enemies. Erastus, a theologian as well as a
physician, who may have met Paracelsus, and who fiercely attacked his
system, depreciates him on hearsay. But Operinus, a disciple who had
such reverence for him that when Paracelsus left Basel, he accompanied
him and was with him night and day for two years, wrote a letter about
him after his death to which it is impossible not to attach great
importance.

In this letter Operinus expresses the most unbounded admiration of
Paracelsus’s medical skill; of the certainty and promptitude of his
cures; and especially of the “miracles” he performed in the treatment
of malignant ulcers. But, adds Operinus, “I never discovered in him any
piety or erudition.” He had never seen him pray. He was as contemptuous
of Luther as he was of the Pope. Said no one had discovered the true
meaning or got at the kernel of the Scriptures.

During the two years he lived with him, Operinus declares Paracelsus
was almost constantly drunk. He was scarcely sober two hours at a time.
He would go to taverns and challenge the peasantry to drink against
him. When he had taken a quantity of wine, he would put his finger in
his throat and vomit. Then he could start again. And yet Operinus also
reports how perpetually he worked in his laboratory. The fire there
was always burning, and something was being prepared, “some sublimate
or arsenic, some safran of iron, or his marvellous opodeldoch.”
Moreover, however drunk he might be he could always dictate, and
Operinus says “his ideas were as clear and consecutive as those of the
most sober could be.”

According to this same letter Paracelsus had been an abstainer until
he was 25. He cared nothing for women. Operinus had never known him
undress. He would lie down with his sword by his side, and in the night
would sometimes spring up and slash at the walls and ceiling. When his
clothes got too dirty he would take them off and give them to the first
passer, and buy new ones. How he got his money Operinus did not know.
At night he often had not an obolus; in the morning he would have a new
purse filled with gold.

It is not easy to form a fair judgment of Paracelsus from this sketch.
Many writers conclude that Operinus was spiteful because Paracelsus
would not tell him his secrets. More likely Operinus left his master
because his religious sentiments were shocked by him. Paracelsus was
evidently a born mocker, and it may be that he took a malicious delight
in making his disciple’s flesh creep. Operinus gives an instance of
the levity with which his master treated serious subjects. He was sent
for one day to see a poor person who was very ill. His first question
was whether the patient had taken anything. “He has taken the holy
sacrament,” was the reply. “Oh, very well,” said Paracelsus, “if he
has another physician he has no need of me.” I think Operinus wrote in
good faith, but the stories of the doctor’s drunkenness must have been
exaggerated. It is inconceivable that he could have been so constantly
drunk, and yet always at work. Operinus, it may be added, returned to
Basel and set up as a printer, but failed and died in poverty.

Robert Browning’s dramatic poem of “Paracelsus” has been much praised
by the admirers of the poet. It was written when Browning was 23,
and represents in dramatic form the ambitious aspirations of a youth
of genius who believes he has if mission in life; has intellectual
confidence in his own powers; and the assurance that it is the Deity
who calls him to the work.

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;
He guides me.

His bitter disappointment with his professorship at Basel, and his
contempt for those who brought about his fall there, are depicted, and
the effect which the realisation that his aims had proved impossible
had on his habits and character is suggested; and at last, on his
death-bed in a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian at Salzburg, he
tells his faithful friend, Festus, who has all his life sought to
restrain the ambitions which have possessed him--

You know the obstacles which taught me tricks
So foreign to my nature, envy, hate,
Blind opposition, brutal prejudice,
Bald ignorance--what wonder if I sank
To humour men the way they most approved.

“A study of intellectual egotism,” this poem has been called.
Paracelsus was an egotist, without doubt. Indeed, egotism seems
a ludicrously insignificant term to apply to his gorgeous
self-appreciation. But it is, perhaps, a little difficult to recognise
the wild untameable energy of this astonishing medical reformer in the
prolix preacher represented in the poem.

Butler’s verse (in “Hudibras”) may be taken to represent the popular
view held about Paracelsus after the first enthusiasm of his followers
had cooled down

Bombastus kept a Devil’s bird,
Shut in the pommel of his sword,
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks.

German studies of Paracelsus have been very numerous during the past
fifty years, and the general tendency has been greatly to enhance his
fame.

After the death of Paracelsus, the Archbishop of Cologne desired to
collect his works, many of which were in manuscript and scattered
all over Germany. By this time there were many treatises attributed
to him which he never wrote. It was a paying business to discover a
new document by the famous doctor. It is believed that the fraudulent
publications were far more numerous than the genuine ones, and it
is quite possible that injustice has been done to his memory by the
association with his name of some other peoples’ absurdities.

HIS MYSTICISM.

The mystic views of Paracelsus, or those attributed to him, are curious
rather than useful. He seemed to have had as much capacity for belief
as he had disbelief in other philosophers’ speculations. He believed
in gnomes in the interior of the earth, undines in the seas, sylphs in
the air, and salamanders in fire. These were the Elementals, beings
composed of soul-substance, but not necessarily influencing our lives.
The Elementals know only the mysteries of the particular element in
which they live. There is life in all matter. Every mineral, vegetable,
and animal has its astral body.

That of the minerals is called Stannar or Trughat; of the vegetable
kingdom, Leffas; while the astral bodies of animals are their Evestra.
The Evestrum may travel about apart from its body; it may live long
after the death of the body. Ghosts are, in fact, the Evestra of the
departed. If you commit suicide the Evestrum does not recognise the
act; it goes on as if the body were going on also until its appointed
time.

Man is a microcosm; the universe is the macrocosm. Not that they are
comparable to each other; they are one in reality, divided only by
form. If you are not spiritually enlightened you may not be able to
perceive this. Each plant on earth has its star. There is a stella
absinthii, a stella rorismarini. If we could compile a complete
“herbarium spirituale sidereum” we should be fully equipped to treat
disease. Star influences also form our soul-essences. This accounts for
our varying temperaments and talents.

The material part of man, the living body, is the Mumia. This is
managed by the Archæus, which rules over everybody; it is the vital
principle. It provides the internal balsam which heals wounds or
diseases, and controls the action of the various organs.

His theories of mercury, sulphur, and salt, as the constituents of all
things, seem at first likely to lead to something conceivable if not
credible. But before we grasp the idea we are switched off into the
spiritual world again. It is the sidereal mercury, sulphur, and salt,
spirit, soul, and body, to which he is alluding.

HIS CHEMICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL INNOVATIONS.

These fantastic notions permeate all the medical treatises of
Paracelsus. But every now and then there are indications of keen
insight which go some way towards explaining his success as a
physician; for it cannot be doubted that he did effect many remarkable
cures. His European fame was not won by mere boasting. His treatise,
_De Morbis ex Tartare oriundus_, is admittedly full of sound sense.

Some of his chemical observations are startling for their anticipations
of later discoveries. If there were no air, he says, all living beings
would die. There must be air for wood to burn. Tin, calcined, increases
in weight; some air is fixed on the metal. When water and sulphuric
acid attack a metal there is effervescence; that is due to the escape
of some air from the water. He calls metals that have rusted, dead.

Saffron of Mars (the peroxide) is dead iron. Verdigris is dead copper.
Red oxide of mercury is dead mercury. But, he adds, these dead metals
can be revivified, “reduced to the metallic state,” are his exact words
(and it is to be noted that he was the first chemist to employ the
term “reduce” in this sense), by means of coal. Elsewhere he describes
digestion as a solution of food; putrefaction as a transmutation. He
knew how to separate gold from silver by nitric acid. It is quite
certain that the writer of Paracelsus’s works was a singularly
observant and intelligent chemist. He had “a wolfish hunger after
knowledge,” says Browning.

“Have you heard,” wrote Gui Patin to a friend a hundred years after the
death of the famous revolutionary, “that ‘Paracelsus’ is being printed
at Geneva in four volumes in folio? What a shame that so wicked a book
should find presses and printers which cannot be found for better
things. I would rather see the Koran printed. It would not deceive so
many people. Chemistry is the false money of our profession.”

HIS PHARMACY.

The composition of Paracelsus’s laudanum, the name of which he no
doubt invented, has never been satisfactorily ascertained. Paracelsus
himself made a great secret of it, and probably used the term for
several medicines. It was generally, at least, a preparation of opium,
sometimes opium itself. He is believed to have carried opium in the
pommel of his sword, and this he called the “stone of immortality.”

Next to opium he believed in mercury, and was largely influential in
popularising this metal and its preparations for the treatment of
syphilis. It was principally employed externally before his time.
He mocked at “the wooden doctors with their guaiacum decoctions,”
and at the “waggon grease with which they smeared their patients.”
He used turpith mineral (the yellow sulphate), and alembroth salt
(ammonio-chloride), though he did not invent these names, and it is
possible that he did not mean by them the same substances as the
alchemists did. Operinus states that he always gave precipitated
mercury (red precipitate, apparently) as a purgative. He gave it in
pills with a little theriaca or cherry juice. This he also appears to
have designated laudanum. It is certain that he gave other purgatives
besides.

It must be admitted that if Basil Valentine is a mythical character,
the reputation of Paracelsus is greatly enhanced. Nowhere does the
latter claim to have been the first to introduce antimony into
medical practice, but it is certain that it could not have been used
to any great extent before his time. If we suppose that the works
attributed to Basil Valentine were fictitious, so far, that is, as
their authorship is concerned, they were compiled about fifty years
after the death of Paracelsus, and at the time when his fame was at
its zenith. Many of the allusions to antimony contained in those
treatises might have been collected from the traditions of the master’s
conversations and writings, much from his immediate disciples, and the
whole skilfully blended by a literary artist.

Paracelsus praises highly his magistery of antimony, the essence, the
arcanum, the virtue of antimony. Of this, he says, you will find no
account in your books of medicine. This is how to prepare it. Take
care at the outset that nothing corrupts the antimony; but keep it
entire without any change of form. For under this form the arcanum lies
concealed. No deadhead must remain, but it must be reduced by a third
cohobation into a third nature. Then the arcanum is yielded. Dose, 4
grains taken with quintessence of melissa.

His “Lilium,” or tinctura metallorum, given as an alterative and
for many complaints, was formulated in a very elaborate way by his
disciples, but simplified it consisted of antimony, 4, tin 1, copper
1, melted together in a crucible, the alloy powdered, and combined (in
the crucible) with nitre 6, and cream of tartar 6, added gradually. The
mixture while still hot was transferred to a matrass containing strong
alcohol 32, digested, and filtered.

Besides mercury and antimony, of which he made great use, iron, lead,
copper, and arsenic were among the mineral medicines prescribed by
him. He made an arseniate of potash by heating arsenic with saltpetre.
He had great faith in vitriol, and the spirit which he extracted from
it by distillation. This “spirit” he again distilled with alcohol and
thereby produced an ethereal solution. His “specificum purgans” was
afterwards said to be sulphate of potash. He recommended sublimed
sulphur in inflammatory maladies, saffron of Mars in dysentery, and
salts of tin against worms.

Whether his formulas were purposely obscure in so many cases, or
whether mystery is due to the carelessness or ignorance of the copyists
cannot be known. Much of his chemical and pharmaceutical advice is
clear enough.

Honey he extols as a liquor rather divine than human, inasmuch as it
falls from heaven upon the herbs. To get its quintessence you are to
distil from it in a capacious retort a liquid, red like blood. This is
distilled over and over again in a bain mariæ until you get a liquid of
the colour of gold and of such pleasant odour that the like cannot be
found in the world. This quintessence is itself good for many things,
but from it the precious potable gold may be made. The juice of a
lemon with this quintessence will dissolve leaf gold in warm ashes
in forty-eight hours. With this Paracelsus says he has effected many
wonderful cures which people thought he accomplished by enchantment.
Elsewhere he speaks of an arcanum drawn from vitriol which is so
excellent that he prefers it to that drawn from gold.

He refers with great respect to alchemy and the true alchemists,
but with considerable shrewdness in regard to their professions of
transmuting other metals into gold. He considered it remarkable that
a man should be able to convert one substance into another in a few
short days or weeks, while Nature requires years to bring about a
similar result; but he will not deny the possibility. What he insists
on, however, is that from metals and fire most valuable remedies can be
obtained; and the apothecary who does not understand the right way of
producing these is but a servant in the kitchen, and not a master cook.

Hellebore was an important medicine with Paracelsus. The white, he
said, was suitable for persons under 50, the black for persons over
50. Physicians ought to understand that Nature provides different
medicines for old and for young persons, for men and for women. The
ancient physicians, although they did not know how to get the essence
of the hellebore, had discovered its value for old persons. They found
that people who took it after 50 became younger and more vigorous.
Their method was to gather the hellebore when the moon was in one of
the signs of conservation, to dry it in an east wind, to powder it and
mix with it its own weight of sugar. The dose of this powder was as
much as could be taken up with three fingers night and morning. The
vaunted essence was simply a spirituous tincture. It was more effective
if mistletoe, pellitory and peony seeds were combined with it. It was
a great remedy for epilepsy, gout, palsy and dropsy. In the first it
not merely purges out the humours, but drives away the epileptic body
itself. The root must be gathered in the waning of the moon, when it is
in the sign Libra, and on a Friday.

[Illustration: PARACELSUS (A).]

Paracelsus made balsam from herbs by digesting them in their own
moisture until they putrefied, and then distilling the putrefied
material. He obtained a number of essential oils and used them freely
as quintessences. He defines quintessences thus:--Every substance is a
compound of various elements, among which there is one which dominates
the others, and impresses its own character on the compound. This
dominating element, disengaged, is the quintessence. This term he
obtained from Aristotle.

His oil of eggs was obtained by boiling the eggs very hard, then
powdering them, and distilling until an oil rose to the surface. This
he recommended against scalds and burns. Oil of aniseed he prescribed
in colds to be put in the nostrils and applied to the temples on going
to bed. Oil of tartar rectified in a sand-bath until it acquires a
golden colour will cure ulcers and stone. Coral would quicken fancy,
but drive away vain visions, spectres, and melancholy. Oil of a man’s
excrements, twice distilled, is good to apply in fistulas, and also
in baldness. Oil of a man’s skull which had never been buried got by
distillation was given in 3 grain doses for epilepsy.

[Illustration: PARACELSUS (B).]

He had abundant faith in animal remedies. His “Confectio
Anti-Epileptica,” formulated by his interpreter, Oswald Crollius, is as
follows:--First get three human skulls from men who have died a violent
death and have not been buried. Dry in the air and coarsely crush. Then
place in a retort and apply a gradually increasing heat. The liquor
that passed over was to be distilled three times over the same fæces.
Eight ounces of this liquor were to be slowly distilled with 3 drachms
each of species of diamusk, castorum, and anacardine honey. To the
distilled liquor 4 scruples of liquor of pearls and one scruple of oil
of vitriol were to be added. Of the resulting medicine one teaspoonful
was to be taken in the morning, fasting, by epileptic subjects, for
nine days consecutively.

[Illustration: PARACELSUS (C).]

An Arcanum Corallinum of Paracelsus which was included in some of the
earlier London Pharmacopœias, was simply red precipitate prepared in a
special manner. The Committee of the College of Physicians which sat
in 1745 to revise that work rejected this product with the remark that
an arcanum was not a secret known only to some adept, but was simply
a medicine which produces its effect by some hidden property. (This
might be said of many medicines now as well as then.) They recognised,
however, that “Paracelsus, whose supercilious ignorance merits our
scorn and indignation,” did use the term in the sense of a secret
remedy.

The Pharmacy of Paracelsus is so frequently referred to in other
sections of this book that it is not necessary to deal with it here
at greater length. It is evident, however, that some of the formulas
he devised, some of the names he coined, and some of the theories he
advanced have entered into our daily practice; and even the dogmas
now obsolete which are sometimes quoted to show how superior is our
knowledge to his, served to quicken thought and speculation.

PORTRAITS OF PARACELSUS.

The portraits of Paracelsus to be found in old books, as
well as some celebrated paintings, are curiously various
as likenesses. The oldest and by far the most frequent
representation of him on title pages of his works is more
or less similar to the portrait marked A, p. 247.
This particular drawing was copied from one in the print room
of the British Museum. Portrait B is copied from
a painting attributed to Rubens which was for a long time
in the Duke of Marlborough’s collection at Blenheim. It was
sold publicly in 1886 in London for £125 and is now in the
“Collection Kums” at Antwerp. There is a similar painting,
believed to be a copy of this one, in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford.

In the year 1875, at an exhibition of historical paintings
held at Nancy (France), a painting “attributed to Albert
Dürer,” and bearing his name in a cartouche, was exhibited and
described as “Portrait presumé de Paracelse.” It was not a
copy but was unmistakably the same person as the one shown in
the painting of Rubens. It came from a private collection and
was sold to a local dealer for 2,000 francs, and afterwards
disposed of to an unknown stranger for 3,000 francs. It has
not been traced since. Dürer died in 1528 (thirteen years
before the date of the death of Paracelsus). There is no
mention of this likeness in any of his letters. It may have
been the work of one of his pupils.

The third portrait (C) which is unlike either of the
others professes to have been painted from life (“Tintoretto
ad vivum pinxit”) by Jacope Robusti, more commonly known as
Tintoretto. The original has not been found, and the earliest
print from it was a copper-plate engraving in a collection
issued by Bitiskius of Geneva in 1658. The picture here given
is a reduced copy of that engraving from a phototype made by
Messrs. Angerer and Göschl, of Vienna, and published in a
valuable work by the late Dr. Carl Aberle in 1890 entitled
“Grabdenkmal, Schadel, und Abbildungen des Theophrastus
Paracelsus.” The publisher of that book, Mr. Heinrich Dieter,
has kindly permitted me to use this picture.

Tintoretto scarcely left Venice all his life, and it has been
supposed that he may have become acquainted with Paracelsus
when the latter was, as he said he was, an army surgeon in the
Venetian army in the years 1521-1525. Dr. Aberle points out
that if Tintoretto was born in 1518, as is generally supposed,
the painting from life was impossible; even if he was born in
1512, as has also been asserted, it was unlikely. Moreover,
the gentle-looking person represented, whose amiable “bedside
manner” is obviously depicted in the portrait, could not
possibly have been the untamable Paracelsus if any reliance
can be placed on the art of physiognomy.

NICHOLAS CULPEPPER.

This well-known writer, whose “Herbal” has been familiar to many
past generations as a family medicine book, deserves a place among
our Masters in Pharmacy for the freedom, and occasional acuteness
with which he criticised the first and second editions of the London
Pharmacopœia. One specimen of his sarcastic style must suffice. The
official formula for Mel Helleboratum was to infuse 3 lbs. of white
hellebore in 14 lbs. of water for three days; then boil it to half its
bulk; strain; add 3 lbs. of honey and boil to the consistence of honey.
This is Culpepper’s comment (in his “Physicians’ Library”):--

“What a _monstrum horrendum_, horrible, terrible recipe
have we got here:--A pound of white hellebore boiled in 14
lbs. of water to seven. I would ask the College whether the
hellebore will not lose its virtue in the twentieth part of
this infusion and decoction (for it must be infused, forsooth,
three days to a minute) if a man may make so bold as to tell
them the truth. A Taylor’s Goose being boiled that time would
make a decoction near as strong as the hellebore, but this
they will not believe. Well, then, be it so. Imagine the
hellebore still remaining in its vigour after being so long
tired out with a tedious boiling (for less boiling would boil
an ox), what should the medicine do? Purge melancholy, say
they. But from whom? From men or beasts? The devil would not
take it unless it were poured down his throat with a horn.
I will not say they intended to kill men, _cum privilegio_;
that’s too gross. I charitably judge them. Either the virtue
of the hellebore will fly away in such a martyrdom, or else it
will remain in the decoction. If it evaporate away, then is
the medicine good for nothing; if it remain in it is enough to
spoil the strongest man living. (1.) Because it is too strong.
(2.) Because it is not corrected in the least. And because
they have not corrected that, I take leave to correct them.”

[Illustration: CULPEPPER.

(From an old book of his.)
]

This passage is not selected as a favourable specimen of Culpepper’s
pharmaceutical skill, but as a sample of the manner in which he often
rates “the College.” His own opinions are open to quite as severe
criticism. A large part of his lore is astrological; and he is very
confident about the doctrine of signatures. But he knew herbs well, and
his general advice is sound.

Perhaps many of those who have studied his works have formed the idea
that he was a bent old man with a long grey beard, who busied himself
with the collection of simples. He was, in fact, a soldier, and died
at the early age of 38. His portraits and the descriptions of him
by his astrological friends represent him as a smart, brisk young
Londoner, fluent in speech and animated in gesture, gay in company, but
with frequent fits of melancholy, an extraordinarily good conceit of
himself, and plenty of reason for it.

[Illustration: CULPEPPER’S HOUSE.

(From an old book of his.)]

Culpepper lived in the stirring times of the Civil War, and fought
on one side or the other, it is not certain which. Most likely,
judging from the frequent pious expressions in his works, he was a
Parliamentarian. He was severely wounded in the chest in one of the
battles, but it is not known in which. It is probable that it was this
wound which caused the lung disease from which he died.

Such information as we have of Culpepper’s career is gathered from
his own works, and from some brutal attacks on him in certain public
prints. He describes himself on the title-pages of some of his big
books as “M.D.,” but there is no evidence that he ever graduated.
He lived, at least during his married life, at Red Lion Street,
Spitalfields, and there he carried on his medical practice. Probably
it was a large one, for he evidently understood the art of advertising
himself. He claims to have been the only doctor in London at the time
who gave advice gratis to the poor, and his frequent comments on the
cost of the pharmacopœia preparations suggest that the majority of his
patients were not of the fashionable class.

Nicholas Culpepper was apprenticed to an apothecary in Great St.
Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and at the same time a certain Marchmont
Nedham was a solicitor’s clerk in Jewry Street. Nedham became the
most notorious journalist in England, and founded and edited in turn
the _Mercurius Britannicus_, an anti-royalist paper, the _Mercurius
Pragmaticus_, violently anti-Commonwealth, and the _Mercurius
Politicus_, subsidised by Cromwell’s government, and supervised by
Mr. John Milton. This publication, amalgamated with the _Public
Intelligencer_, its principal rival, has descended to us as the _London
Gazette_. Probably Nedham and Culpepper were friends in their early
days, and they may have been comrades in arms when the war broke
out. But evidently they became fierce enemies later. In _Mercurius
Pragmaticus_ Nedham, pretending to review Culpepper’s translation of
the official Dispensatory, takes the opportunity of pouring on him a
tirade of scurrilous abuse. The translation, he says, “is filthily
done,” which was certainly not true. This is the only piece of
criticism in the article. The rest deals with the author personally.
Nedham informs his readers that Culpepper was the son of a Surrey
parson, “one of those who deceive men in matters belonging to their
most precious souls.” That meant that he was a Nonconformist. Nicholas
himself, according to Nedham, had been an Independent, a Brownist,
an Anabaptist, a Seeker, and a Manifestationist, but had ultimately
become an Atheist. During his apprenticeship “he ran away from his
master upon his lewd debauchery”; afterwards he became a compositor,
then a “figure-flinger,” and lived about Moorfields on cozenage. After
making vile insinuations about his wife, Nedham states that by two
years’ drunken labour Culpepper had “gallimawfred the Apothecaries’
Book into nonsense”; that he wore an old black coat lined with plush
which his stationer (publisher) had got for him in Long Lane to hide
his knavery, having been till then a most despicable ragged fellow;
“looks as if he had been stued in a tanpit; a frowzy headed coxcomb.”
He was aiming to “monopolise to himself all the knavery and cozenage
that ever an apothecary’s shop was capable of.”

Culpepper’s works answer this spiteful caricature, for at any rate
he must have been a man of considerable attainments, and of immense
industry. That his writings acquired no little popularity is best
proved by the fact that after his death it was good business to forge
others somewhat resembling them and pass them off as his.

TURQUET DE MAYERNE.

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, Baron Aulbone of France, was born at
Geneva in 1573, of a Calvinistic family and studied for the medical
profession first at Heidelberg and afterwards at Montpellier. Moving
to Paris he acquired popularity as a lecturer on anatomy to surgeons,
and on pharmacy to apothecaries. His inclination towards chemical
remedies brought him to the notice of Rivierus, the first physician to
Henri IV, and he was appointed one of the king’s physicians. But his
medical heterodoxy offended the faculty, and his Protestantism raised
enemies for him at court. The king, who valued Turquet, did his best
to persuade him to conform to the Church of Rome as he himself had
done, and to moderate the rancour of his professional foes. But he was
unsuccessful in both efforts. Still Henri tried to keep him, ignoring
his heresies, and perhaps rather sympathising with them. But the queen,
Marie de Medici, insisted on Turquet’s dismissal, and the Faculty
of Paris was no whit behind the queen in intolerance. Coupling him
with a quack named Pierre Pena, a foreigner then practising medicine
illicitly at Paris, they issued a decree forbidding all physicians who
acknowledged their control to consult with De Turquer, and exhorting
practitioners of all nations to avoid him and all similar pests, and to
persevere in the doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen.

Turquet de Mayerne came to England evidently with a high reputation,
for he was soon appointed first physician to the king (James I) and
queen, and held the same position under Charles I and Charles II. He
seems to have kept in retirement during the Commonwealth, though in
1628 it appears from his manuscript records (“Ephemerides Anglicæ,”
he called them) that he was consulted by a “Mons. Cromwell” whom he
describes as “Valde melancholicus.” He died at Chelsea in 1655 at the
age of 82. It was in England that he used the name of Mayerne.

De Mayerne exercised a considerable influence on English pharmacy. The
Society of Apothecaries owed to him their separate incorporation, and
the first London Pharmacopœia was compiled and authorised probably to
some extent at his instigation. He certainly wrote the preface to it.
Paris quotes him as prescribing among absurd and disgusting remedies
“the secundines of a woman in her first labour of a male child, the
bowels of a mole cut open alive, and the mummy made of the lungs of a
man who had died a violent death.” But such remedies were common to
all practitioners in England and France at the time. The principal
ingredient in a gout powder which he composed was the raspings of an
unburied human skull. He devised an ointment for hypochondria which was
called the Balsam of Bats. It contained adders, bats, sucking whelps,
earthworms, hog’s grease, marrow of a stag, and the thigh bone of an
ox. On the other hand, Mayerne is credited with the introduction of
calomel and black wash into medical practice.

VAN HELMONT.

Jean Baptiste Van Helmont, born at Brussels in 1577, and died at
Vilvorde near that city in 1644, was an erratic genius whose writings
and experiments sometimes astonish us by their lucidity and insight,
and again baffle us by their mysticism and puerility.

Van Helmont was of aristocratic Flemish descent, and possessed some
wealth. He was a voracious student and a brilliant lecturer. At the
University of Louvain, however, where he spent several years, he
refused to take any degree because he believed that such academic
distinctions only ministered to pride. He resolved at the same time
to devote his life to the service of the poor, and with this in view
he made over his property to his sister, and set himself to study
medicine. His gift of exposition was so great that the authorities of
the University insisted on his acceptance of the chair of Surgery,
though that was the branch of medical practice he knew least about, and
though it was contrary to the statutes of the faculty to appoint a
person as Professor not formally qualified.

[Illustration: J. B. VAN HELMONT. 1577-1644.

(From an engraving in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.)
]

For a time things went well, but Van Helmont got tired of medical
teaching before the University became tired of him. The particular
occasion which disgusted him with medical science was that he
contracted the itch, and though he consulted many eminent physicians
could not get cured of it. He came to the conclusion that the pretended
art of healing was a fraud, and he consequently resolved to shake the
dust of it from his feet, after he had recovered from the weakening
effects of the purgatives which had been prescribed for his complaint.

Then he set forth on his travels, and in the course of them he met with
a quack who cured him of his itch by means of sulphur and mercury.
After this he became a violent anti-Galenist. He studied the works of
Paracelsus, and after some years came back to his native country full
of ideas and phantasies.

By marrying a wealthy woman Van Helmont became independent, and his
scientific career now commenced. He erected and fitted a laboratory at
Vilvorde, and devoted his time and skill to the study of chemistry,
medicine, and philosophy. He described himself as “Medicus per Ignem,”
and was one of the most earnest believers in the possibility of
discovering the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of life. Indeed he
claimed that he had actually transmuted mercury into gold, and by his
medical compounds it is alleged that he performed such miraculous cures
that the Jesuits actually brought him before the Inquisition.

The advance in chemistry for which he is most famous was the discovery
of carbonic acid gas, and the first steps in the recognition of the
various kinds of gases. Previous to his discovery chemists had no clear
perception of a distinction between the various gases; they reckoned
them all as air. Geber and other predecessors of Van Helmont had
observed that certain vapours were incorporated in material bodies,
and they regarded these as the spirits, or souls, of those bodies. Van
Helmont was the first actually to separate and examine one of these
vapours. He tracked this gas through many of the compounds in which
it is combined or formed: he got it from limestone, from potashes,
from burning coal, from certain natural mineral waters, and from the
fermentation of bread, wine, and beer. He found that it could be
compressed in wines and thus yield the sparkling beverages we know so
well. He also observed that it extinguished flame, and asphyxiated
animals. He alludes to other kinds of vapour, but does not precisely
define them. The carbon dioxide he named “gas sylvestre.”

This was the first use of the term gas. “Hunc spiritum, hactenus
ignotum, novo nomine gas voco.” (I call this spirit, heretofore
unknown, by the new name gas.) What suggested this name to him is not
certain. Some have supposed that it was a modification of the Flemish,
_geest_, spirit; by others it is traced to the verb _gaschen_, to boil,
or ferment; and by many its derivation from chaos is assumed.

His physiology was a modification of that of Paracelsus. An Archeus
within ruled the organism with the assistance of sub-archei for
different parts of the body. Ferments stirred these archei into
activity. In this way the processes of digestion were accounted for.
The vital spirit, a kind of gas, causes the pulsation of the arteries.
The Soul of Man he assigned to the stomach. The exact locality of
this important adjunct was a subject of keen discussion among the
philosophers of that age. Van Helmont’s conclusive argument for the
stomach as its habitation was the undoubted fact that trouble or bad
news had the effect of destroying the appetite.

GLAUBER

John Rudolph Glauber, who was born at Carlstadt, in Germany, in 1603,
contributed largely to pharmaceutical knowledge, and deserves to be
remembered by his many investigations, and perhaps even more for the
clear common sense which he brought to bear on his chemical work. For
though he retained a confident belief in the dreams of alchemy, he does
not appear to have let that belief interfere with his practical labour;
and some of his processes were so well devised that they have hardly
been altered from his day to ours.

Not much is known of his history except what he himself wrote or what
was related of him by his contemporaries. According to his own account
he took to chemistry when as a young man he got cured of a troublesome
stomach complaint by drinking some mineral waters. Eager to discover
what was the essential chemical in those waters to which he owed his
health he set to work on his experiments. The result was the discovery
of sulphate of soda, which he called “Sal mirabile,” but which all
subsequent generations have known as Glauber’s Salts. This, it happens,
was the one of his discoveries of which he was not particularly
vain, for he supposed that he had only obtained from another source
Paracelsus’s sal enixon, which was in fact sulphate of potash. His own
account of this discovery is necessarily of pharmaceutical interest. He
gives it in his work _De Natura Salium_, as follows:--

In the course of my youthful travels I was attacked at Vienna
with a violent fever known there as the Hungarian disease, to
which strangers are especially liable. My enfeebled stomach
rejected all food. On the advice of several friends I dragged
myself to a certain spring situated about a league from
Newstadt. I had brought with me a loaf of bread, but with no
hope of being able to eat it. Arrived at the spring I took the
loaf from my pocket and made a hole in it so that I could use
it as a cup. As I drank the water my appetite returned, and I
ended by eating the improvised cup in its turn. I made several
visits to the spring and was soon miraculously cured of my
illness. I asked what was the nature of the water and was told
it was “salpeter-wasser.”

Glauber was twenty-one at that time, and knew nothing of chemistry.
Later he analysed the water and got from it, after evaporation, long
crystals, which, he says, a superficial observer might confuse with
saltpetre; but he soon satisfied himself that it was something quite
different. Subsequently he obtained an identical salt from the residue
in his retort after distilling marine salt and vitriol to obtain spirit
of salt. As already stated, he believed he had produced the “sal
enixon” of Paracelsus. But in memory of the benefit he had himself
experienced from its use he gave it the title of “sal mirabile.”

[Illustration:

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the sign of
“Glauber’s Head” appears to have been used in this country by
some chemical manufacturers. The picture annexed is from one
of these signs which was used more than a hundred years ago
by Slinger and Son, of York, and is now in the possession of
Messrs. Raimes and Co., of that city, who have kindly given me
a photograph of it. It is a wooden bust which was once gilded,
and presumably presents the traditional likeness of the famous
German chemist.
]

This distillation of sulphuric acid with sea-salt, which yielded
spirit of salt, or as it is now called hydrochloric acid, was probably
Glauber’s principal contribution to the development of chemistry.
He observed the gas given off from the salt, and it is a wonder
that with his acuteness he did not isolate and describe the element
chlorine. He called it the spirit of rectified salt, and described it
as a spirit of the colour of fire, which passed into the receiver,
and which would dissolve metals and most minerals. He noted that if
digested with dephlegmated (concentrated) spirit of wine his spirit
of salt formed a layer of oily substance, which was the oil of wine,
“an excellent cordial and very agreeable.” He distilled ammonia from
bones, and showed how to make sal ammoniac by the addition of sea
salt. His sulphate of ammonia, now so largely used as a fertiliser and
in the production of other ammonia salts, was known for a long time
as “Sal ammoniacum secretum Glauberi.” He made sulphate of copper,
and his investigation of the acetum lignorum, now called pyroligneous
acid, though he did not claim to have discovered this substance, was
of the greatest value. He produced artificial gems, made chlorides of
arsenic and zinc, and added considerably to the chemistry of wine and
spirit-making.

Glauber worked at many subjects for manufacturers, and sold his secrets
in many cases. His enemies asserted that he sold the same secret
several times, and that he not unfrequently sold secrets which would
not work. It is impossible now to test the truth of these accusations.
Probably some of the allegations made against him were due to the fact
that those who bought his processes were not as skilful as he was.
One secret which he claimed to have discovered he would neither sell
nor publish. It was that of the Alkahest, or universal solvent. To
make this known might, he feared, “encourage the luxury, pride, and
godlessness of poor humanity.”

Oliver Cromwell wrote in an old volume of Glauber’s Alchemy: “This
Glauber is an errant knave. I doe bethinke me he speaketh of wonders
which cannot be accomplished; but it is lawful for man too the
endeavour.”

Glauber complained that he was not appreciated, which was probably
true. “I grieve over the ignorance of my contemporaries,” he wrote,
“and the ingratitude of men. Men are always envious, wicked,
ungrateful. For myself, faithful to the maxim, _Ora et Labora_, I
fulfil my career, do what I can, and await my reward.” Elsewhere he
writes, “If I have not done all the good in the world that I should
have desired, it has been the perversity of men that has hindered me.”
His employees, he says, were unfaithful. Having learned his processes,
they became inflated with pride, and left him. Apparently there was a
good business to be done in chemical secrets at that time. But Glauber
did not give away all he knew, and he found it best to do all his
important work himself. “I have learnt by expensive experience,” he
wrote, “the truth of the proverb, ‘Wer seine Sachen will gethan haben
recht, Muss selbsten seyn Herr und Knecht.’”

Although all Glauber’s books appeared with Latin titles they were
written in German.

GOULARD.

Thomas Goulard was a surgeon of Montpellier with rather more than a
local reputation. He was counsellor to the king, perpetual mayor
of the town of Alet, lecturer and demonstrator royal in surgery,
demonstrator royal of anatomy in the College of Physicians, fellow
of the Royal Academies of Sciences in Montpellier, Toulouse, Lyons,
and Nancy, pensioner of the king and of the province of Languedoc for
lithotomy, and surgeon to the Military Hospital of Montpellier. His
treatise on “The Extract of Saturn” was published about the middle of
the eighteenth century, and his name and the preparations he devised
were soon spread all over Europe. White lead and sugar of lead, and
litharge as the basis of plasters had been familiar in medical practice
for centuries; and Galen and other great authorities had highly
commended lead preparations for eye diseases and for general lotions.
The preparation of sugar of lead is indicated in the works attributed
to Basil Valentine. Goulard’s special merit consisted in the care
which he gave to the production of his “Extract of Saturn,” and in his
intelligent experiments with it, and its various preparations in the
treatment of external complaints.

Goulard made his extract of Saturn by boiling together golden litharge
and strong French wine vinegar at a moderate heat for about an hour,
stirring all the while, and after cooling drawing off for use the clear
supernatant liquor. Diluting this extract by adding 100 drops to a
quart of river water with four teaspoonfuls of brandy, made what he
called his Vegeto-Mineral Water, which he used for lotions. His cerate
of Saturn was made by melting 4 oz. of wax in 11 oz. of olive oil, and
incorporating with this 6 lbs. of vegeto-mineral water (containing
4 oz. of extract of Saturn). A cataplasm was made by gently boiling
the vegeto-mineral water with crumb of bread. A pomatum was prepared
by combining 4 oz. of the extract with a cerate composed of 8 oz. of
wax in 18 oz. of rose ointment. This was made stronger or milder as
the case might need. There was another pomatum made with the extract
of Saturn, sulphur, and alum, for the treatment of itch; and several
plasters for rheumatic complaints. Goulard gave full details of the
various uses of these applications in inflammations, bruises, wounds,
abscesses, erysipelas, ophthalmia, ulcers, cancers, whitlows, tetters,
piles, itch, and other complaints. His own experience was supported by
that of other practitioners.

In giving the results of his experience thus freely and completely,
Goulard was aware of the sacrifice he was making. “I flatter myself,”
he says, “that the world is in some measure indebted to me for
publishing this medicine, which, if concealed in my own breast, might
have turned out much more to my private emolument”; at the same time
he did not object to reap some profit from his investigations, if this
could be done. At the end of the English translation of his book,
a copy of a document is printed addressed to his fellow student of
fifty years before, Mr. G. Arnaud, practising as a surgeon in London,
engaging to supply to him, and to him only, a sufficient quantity of
extract of Saturn made by himself, to be distributed by the said Mr.
Arnaud, or by those commissioned by him, over all the dominions of his
British Majesty.

SCHEELE.

Karl Wilhelm Scheele is the most famous of pharmacists, and has few
equals in scientific history. He was the seventh child of a merchant at
Stralsund, then in the possession of Sweden, and was born on December
9th, 1742. He had a fair education and at school was diligent and apt
in acquiring knowledge. If he was born with a gift, if his genius was
anything more than an immense capacity for taking pains, this aptness
was the faculty which distinguished Scheele from other men. He made
thousands of experiments and never forgot what he had learned from any
one of them; he read such scientific books as he could get, and never
needed to refer to them again. His friend Retsius, a pharmacist like
himself as a young man, but subsequently Director of the Museum of
Lund, has recorded Scheele’s remarkable power in this respect. “When he
was at Malmö,” he writes (this was when Scheele was about twenty-four
years of age), “he bought as many books as his small pay enabled him to
procure. He would read these once or twice, and would then remember all
that interested him, and never consulted them again.”

[Illustration: KARL WILHELM SCHEELE.]

An elder brother of Karl had been apprenticed to an apothecary at
Gothenburg, but had died during his apprenticeship. Karl went to this
apothecary, a Mr. Bauch, as apprentice at the age of fourteen, and
remained there till Bauch sold his business in 1765. Then he went to
another apothecary named Kjellström at Malmö. Three years later he was
chief assistant to a Mr. Scharenberg at Stockholm. His next move was
to Upsala with a Mr. Lokk, who appreciated his assistant and gave him
plenty of time for his scientific work.

Lastly, he took the management of a pharmacy at Köping for a widow
who owned it, and after an anxious time in clearing the business from
debt, he bought the business in 1776 and for the rest of his short life
was in fairly comfortable circumstances. Ill-health then pursued him,
rheumatism and attacks of melancholy. In the spring of 1786, in the
forty-fourth year of his age, after suffering for two months from a
slow fever, he died. Two days before his death he married the widow of
his predecessor, whose business he had rescued from ruin, so that she
might repossess it. A few months later she married again.

That was Scheele’s life as a pharmacist; patient, plodding,
conscientious, only moderately successful, and shadowed by many
disappointments. The work he accomplished as a scientific chemist
would have been marvellous if he had had all his time to do it in;
under the actual circumstances in which it was performed it is simply
incomprehensible. A bare catalogue of his achievements is all that can
be noted here, but it must be remembered that he never announced any
discovery until he had checked his first conclusions by repeated and
varied tests.

[Illustration: SCHEELE’S PHARMACY AT KÖPING.]

An account of an investigation of cream of tartar resulting in the
isolation of tartaric acid was his first published paper. He next
made an examination of fluor-spar from which resulted the separation
of fluoric acid. From this on the suggestion of Bergmann he proceeded
to a series of experiments on black oxide of manganese which besides
showing the many important combinations of the metal led the chemist
direct to his wonderful discoveries of oxygen, chlorine, and barytes.
This work put him on the track of the observations set forth in his
famous work on “Air and Fire.” In this he explained the composition of
the atmosphere, which, he said, consisted of two gases, one of which he
named “empyreal” or “fire-air,” the same as he had obtained from black
oxide of manganese, and other substances. He realised and described
with much acuteness the part this gas played in nature, and the rest of
the book contained many remarkable observations which showed how nearly
Scheele approached the new ideas which Lavoisier was to formulate only
a few years later. “Air and Fire” was not issued till 1777, three
years after Priestley had demonstrated the separate existence and
characteristics of what he termed “dephlogisticated air.” But it is
well known that the long delay of Scheele’s printer in completing
his work was one of the disappointments of his life, and there is
evidence that his discovery of oxygen was actually made in 1773, a
year before Priestley had isolated the same element. Both of these
great experimenters missed the full significance of their observations
through the confusing influence of the phlogiston theory, which neither
of them questioned, and which was so soon to be destroyed as the direct
result of their labours.

Among the other investigations which Scheele carried out were his
proof that plumbago was a form of carbon, his invention of a new
process for the manufacture of calomel, his discovery of lactic, malic,
oxalic, citric, and gallic acids, of glycerin, and his exposition of
the chemical process which yielded Prussian blue, with his incidental
isolation of prussic acid, a substance which he described minutely
though he gives no hint whatever to show that he knew anything of its
poisonous nature.

The subjects mentioned by no means exhaust the mere titles of the work
which Scheele accomplished; they are only the more popular of his
results. The value of his scientific accomplishments was appreciated
in his lifetime, but not fully until the advance of chemistry set them
out in their true perspective. Then it was realised how completely and
accurately he had finished the many inquiries which he had taken in
hand.

A PHARMACEUTICAL PANTHEON.

The School of Pharmacy of Paris, built in 1880, honours a number of
pharmacists of historic fame by placing a series of medallions on the
façade of the building, as well as statues of two specially eminent
representatives of the profession in the Court of Honour. These two are
Vauquelin and Parmentier.

[Illustration: ÉCOLE DE PHARMACIE, PARIS.

(From photo sold at School.)
]

Louis Nicolas Vauquelin was director of the School from its foundation
in 1803 until his death in 1829. He also held professorships at the
School of Mines, at the Polytechnic School, and with the Faculty
of Medicine. He began his career as a boy in the laboratory of a
pharmacist at Rouen, and later got a situation with M. Cheradame,
a pharmacist in Paris. Cheradame was related to Fourcroy, to whom
he introduced his pupil. Fourcroy paid him £12 a year with board
and lodging, but he proved such an indefatigable worker that in no
long time he became the colleague, the friend, and the indispensable
substitute of his master in his analyses as well as in his lectures. He
is cited as the discoverer of chromium, of glucinium, and of several
animal products; but his most important work was a series of chemical
investigations on belladonna, cinchona, ipecacuanha, and other drugs,
which it is recognised opened the way for the definite separation of
some of the most valuable of the alkaloids accomplished afterwards by
Pelletier, Caventou, Robiquet, and others. Vauquelin published more
than 250 scientific articles.

[Illustration VAUQUELIN.

(Origin unknown.)]

Antoine Augustin Parmentier (born 1737, died 1813), after serving
an apprenticeship with a pharmacist at Montpellier, joined the
pharmaceutical service in the army, and distinguished himself in the
war in Germany, especially in the course of an epidemic by which the
French soldiers suffered seriously. He was taken prisoner five times,
and at one period had to support himself almost entirely on potatoes.
On the last occasion he obtained employment with a Frankfort chemist
named Meyer, who would have gladly kept him with him. But Parmentier
preferred to return to his own country, and obtained an appointment
in the pharmacy of the Hotel des Invalides, rising to the post of
chief apothecary there in a few years. A prize offered by the Academy
of Besançon for the best means of averting the calamities of famine
was won by him in 1771, his German experience being utilised in his
advocacy of the cultivation of potatoes. These tubers, though they
had been widely cultivated in France in the sixteenth century, had
gone entirely out of favour, and were at that time only given to
cattle. The people had come to believe that they occasioned leprosy
and various fevers. Parmentier worked with rare perseverance to combat
this prejudice. He cultivated potatoes on an apparently hopeless
piece of land which the Government placed at his disposal, and when
the flowers appeared he made a bouquet of them and presented it to
Louis XVI, who wore the blossoms in his button-hole. His triumph was
complete, for very soon the potato was again cultivated all through
France. The royalist favour that he had enjoyed put him in some danger
during the Revolution; but in the latter days of the Convention, which
had deprived him of his official position and salary, he was employed
to organise the pharmaceutical service of the army. He also invented
a syrup of grapes which he proposed to the Minister of War as a
substitute for sugar during the continental blockade.

The medallions, in the order in which they appear on the façade of
the École de Pharmacie, represent the following French and foreign
pharmacists:--

Antoine Jerome Balard, the discoverer of bromine (born 1802, died
1876), was a native of Montpellier, where he qualified as a pharmacist
and commenced business. As a student he had worked with the salts
deposited from a salt marsh in the neighbourhood, and had been struck
with a coloration which certain tests gave with a solution of sulphate
of soda obtained from the marsh. Pursuing his experiments, he arrived
at the discovery of bromine, the element which formed the link
between chlorine and iodine. This early success won for him a medal
from the Royal Society of London and a professorship of chemistry at
Montpellier, and subsequently raised him to high scientific positions
in Paris. Balard did much more scientific work, among which was the
elaboration of a process for the production of potash salts from salt
marshes. He had worked at this for some twenty years, and had taken
patents for his methods, when the announcement of the discovery of the
potash deposits at Stassfurt effectually destroyed all his hope of
commercial success.

Joseph Bienaimé Caventou (born at St. Omer 1795, died 1877) carried on
for many years an important pharmaceutical business in Paris. His fame
rests on his association with Pelletier in the discovery of quinine in
1820.

Joseph Pelletier (born 1788, died 1842) was the son of a Paris
pharmacist, and was one of the most brilliant workers in pharmacy known
to us. He is best known for his isolation of quinine. Either alone, or
in association with others, he investigated the nature of ipecacuanha,
nux vomica, colchicum, cevadilla, hellebore, pepper, opium, and
other drugs, and a long series of alkaloids is credited to him. He
also contributed valuable researches on cochineal, santal, turmeric,
and other colouring materials. To him and his associate, Caventou,
the Institute awarded the Prix Monthyon of 10,000 francs for their
discovery of quinine, and this was the only reward they obtained for
their cinchona researches, for they took out no patents.

[Illustration: JOSEPH PELLETIER. 1788-1842.

(Discoverer--with Caventou--of Quinine.)
]

Pierre Robiquet (born at Rennes in 1780, died at Paris, 1840) served
his apprenticeship to pharmacy at Lorient, and afterwards studied under
Fourcroy and Vauquelin at Paris. His studies were interrupted by the
conscription, which compelled him to serve under Napoleon in the Army
of Italy. Returning to pharmacy after Marengo, he ultimately became the
proprietor of a pharmacy, and to that business he added the manufacture
of certain fine chemicals. His first scientific work was the separation
of asparagin, accomplished in association with Vauquelin, in 1805. His
later studies were in connection with opium (from which he extracted
codeine), on liquorice, cantharides, barytes, and nickel.

André Constant Dumeril (born at Amiens, 1774, died 1860) was a
physician, but distinguished himself as a naturalist and anatomist.
He had been associated with Cuvier in early life. Latterly he was
consulting physician to Louis Philippe.

Antoine Louis Brongniart (born 1742, died 1804) was the son of a
pharmacist of Paris, and became himself pharmacien to Louis XVI. He
also served the Convention as a military pharmacist, and was placed on
the Council of Health of the Army. In association with Hassenfratz who
was one of the organisers of the insurrection of August 10th, 1792,
and himself a professor at the School of Mines, Brongniart edited a
“Journal des Sciences, Arts, et Metiers” during the Revolution.

The next medallion memorialises Scheele, the great Swedish pharmacist
and chemist, of whose career details have already been given.

Pierre Bayen (born at Chalons s/Marne, 1725, died 1798) was an army
pharmacist for about half of his life, and to him was largely due the
organisation of that service. He was with the French Army in Germany
all through the Seven Years’ War, 1757-1763. Among his scientific works
were examinations of many of the natural mineral waters of France, and
a careful investigation into the alleged danger of tin vessels used
for cooking. Two German chemists, Margraff and Henkel, had reported
the presence of arsenic in tin utensils generally, and the knowledge
of this fact had produced a panic among housekeepers. Bayen went into
the subject thoroughly and was able to publish a reassuring report.
To him, too, belongs the glory of having been one of the chemists
before Lavoisier to prove that metals gain and do not lose weight on
calcination in the air.

Pierre Joseph Macquer, Master of Pharmacy and Doctor of Medicine
(born 1718, died 1784), came of a noble Scotch family who had settled
in France on account of their adherence to the Catholic faith, made
some notable chemical discoveries, and became director of the royal
porcelain factory at Sèvres. He worked on kaolin, magnesia, arsenic,
gold, platinum, and the diamond. The bi-arseniate of arsenic was for
a long time known as Macquer’s arsenical salt. Macquer was not quite
satisfied with Stahl’s phlogiston theory, and tried to modify it;
but he would not accept the doctrines of Lavoisier. He proposed to
substitute light for phlogiston, and regarded light as precipitated
from the air in certain conditions. These notions attracted no support.

Guillaume François Rouelle (born near Caen, 1703, died 1770) was in
youth an enthusiastic student of chemistry, the rudiments of which he
taught himself in the village smithy. Going to Paris he obtained a
situation in the pharmacy which had been Lemery’s, and subsequently
established one of his own in the Rue Jacob. There he commenced
courses of private lectures which were characterised by such intimate
knowledge, and flavoured with such earnestness and, as appears from
the stories given by pupils, by a good deal of eccentricity, that they
became the popular resort of chemical students. Lavoisier is believed
to have attended them. Commencing his lectures in full professional
costume, he would soon become animated and absorbed in his subject,
and throwing off his gown, cap, wig and cravat, delighted his hearers
with his vigour. Rouelle was offered the position of apothecary to the
king, but declined the honour as it would have involved the abandonment
of his lectures. His chief published work was the classification of
salts into neutral, acid, and basic. He also closely investigated
medicinal plants, and got so near to the discovery of alkaloids as the
separation of what he called the immediate principles, making a number
of vegetable extracts.

Etienne François Geoffrey (born 1672, died 1731), the son of a Paris
apothecary, himself of high reputation, for it was at his house that
the first meetings were held which resulted in the formation of the
Academy of Sciences, studied pharmacy at Montpellier, and qualified
there. Returning to Paris he went through the medical course and
submitted for his doctorate three theses which show the bent of his
mind. The first examined whether all diseases have one origin and can
be cured by one remedy, the second aimed to prove that the philosophic
physician must also be an operative chemist, and the third dealt
with the inquiry whether man had developed from a worm. Geoffrey was
attached as physician to the English embassy for some time and was
elected to the Royal Society of London. Afterwards he became professor
of medicine and pharmacy at the College of France. His chief works were
pharmacological researches on iron, on vitriol, on fermentation, and on
some mineral waters. He wrote a notable treatise on Materia Medica.

Albert Seba was an apothecary of Amsterdam, who spent some part of his
early life in the Dutch Indies. He was born in 1668 and died in 1736.
He was particularly noted for a great collection illustrating all the
branches of natural history, finer than any other then known in Europe.
Peter the Great having seen this collection bought it for a large sum
and presented it to the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, where it
is still preserved.

Anxious to pay due honour to the distinguished pharmacists of other
nations, the authorities of the School of Pharmacy introduce the
medallions of Dante and Sir Isaac Newton. The Italian poet’s connection
with pharmacy was the entirely nominal inscription of his name in
the guild of apothecaries of the city of Florence; there are almost
slighter grounds to the right of claiming the English philosopher among
pharmacists, his immediate association with the business having been
that as a schoolboy he lodged at Grantham with an apothecary of the
name of Clark. In his later years he worked with Boyle on ether.

Moses Charas figures between these two. Living between the years 1618
and 1698, Charas attained European celebrity. He was the first French
pharmacist to prepare the famous Theriaca. This he did in the presence
of a number of magistrates and physicians. He also wrote a treatise on
the compound. For nine years he was demonstrator of chemistry at the
King’s Garden at Paris, but he was a Protestant, and the Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes in 1685 drove him from France. Charles II received
him cordially in London, and made him a doctor. Afterwards he went to
Holland, and from there the King of Spain sent for him to attend on
him in a serious illness. While at Toledo he got into trouble with
the ecclesiastics in a singular manner. An archbishop of Toledo being
canonised, his successor announced that snakes in that archbishopric
should henceforth lose their venom. This was a special temptation to
Moses Charas. He was strong on vipers. He had made medicine of many
of them, he had written a book about them, and he knew all there was
to know about them. He knew something about archbishops too, which
ought to have prevented him from publicly demonstrating the vanity of
the proclamation. But he must needs show to some influential friends
a local viper he had caught and make it bite two chickens, both of
which died promptly. This demonstration got talked about, and Charas
was prosecuted on a charge of attempting to overthrow an established
belief. He was imprisoned by the Inquisition, but after four months he
abjured Protestantism, and was set free. It must be remembered that he
was 72 years of age. On his return to France Louis XIV received him
kindly, and had him elected to the Academy of Sciences. Charas’s chief
work was a Pharmacopœia, which was in great vogue, and was translated
into all the principal modern languages, even into Chinese.

Nicolas Lemery (born at Rouen, 1645, died 1715), a self-taught chemist
and pharmacist, exercised an enormous influence in science and
medicine. He opened a pharmacy in the Rue Galande, Paris, and there
taught chemistry orally and practically. His course was an immense
success. Fashionable people thronged to his lectures, and students came
from all countries to get the advantage of his teaching. He, too, was a
Protestant, and was struck by the storm of religious animosity. Charles
II had the opportunity of showing him hospitality in London, and seems
to have manifested towards him much friendliness. The University of
Berlin likewise made him tempting proposals, but Lemery could only feel
at home in France. Things seemed quieter and he returned, only to find
in a short time that the condition was worse for Protestants than ever.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes prevented him from following
either of his professions, pharmacy or medicine; and for their sake
he adopted the Catholic faith. His “Universal Pharmacopœia” and his
“Dictionary of Simple Drugs” were published after these troubles, and
they are the works by which he won his lasting reputation.

Gilles François Boulduc (1675-1742) was for many years first apothecary
to Louis XIV, and an authority on pharmaceutical matters in his time.
By his essays he helped to popularise Epsom, Glauber’s, and Seignette’s
salts in France.

Antoine Baumé (born at Senlis, 1728, died 1804), the son of an
innkeeper, after an imperfect education in the provinces, got into the
famous establishment of Geoffrey at Paris and made such good use of
his opportunities that he became Professor of Chemistry at the College
of France when he was 25. A practical and extraordinarily industrious
chemist, he wrote much, invented the areometer which bears his name,
founded a factory of sal ammoniac, and bleaching works for silk by a
process which he devised. Baumé did good service, too, in dispelling
many of the traditional superstitions of pharmacy, such as the
complicated formulas and disgusting ingredients which were so common in
his time. He was never content to accept any views on trust.

The three medallions which follow are those of Lavoisier, Berthollet,
and Chaptal; great chemists whose right to be represented cannot
be challenged, but whose works were not specially associated with
pharmacy. These three all lived at the time of the Revolution.
Lavoisier was one of its most distinguished victims, Berthollet became
the companion and adviser of Napoleon in Egypt, and Chaptal was the
chemist commissioned by the Convention to provide gunpowder for
its ragged troops. He became one of Napoleon’s Ministers under the
Consulate.

André Laugier (1770-1832), who comes next, was a relative and pupil of
Fourcroy, and became an Army pharmacist, serving through Bonaparte’s
Egyptian campaign. His works were mostly on mineralogical subjects.

Georges Simon Serullas (1774-1832) was another military pharmacist
who served in the Napoleonic wars. He was, later, chief pharmacist at
the military hospital of Val de Grace, where he devoted much study to
many medicinal chemicals, such as cyanic acid, iodides, bromides, and
chlorides of cyanogen, hydrobromic ether, etc.

Thénard (1777-1857), the eminent chemist, follows. He was very poor
when he asked Vauquelin to receive him as a pupil without pay. He only
secured the benefit he asked for because the chemist’s sister happened
to want a boy at the time to help her in the kitchen. He became a peer
of France in 1832. To him we owe peroxide of hydrogen.

Nicolas J. B. Guibourt (1790-1867), Professor of Materia Medica at
the School of Pharmacy, was author of a well-known “History of Simple
Drugs,” and other works. He is often quoted in “Pharmacographia.”

Achille Valenciennes (1794-1865) was noted as a naturalist, and
especially as a zoologist. He was Cuvier’s most trusted assistant in
the preparation of certain of his works. For many years Valenciennes
was Professor of Zoology at the School of Pharmacy, Paris.

Baron Liebig (1803-1873), was placed in a pharmacy at Heppenheim as a
youth, but remained there only ten months. His chemical works are well
known.

[Illustration: BARON LIEBIG.]

Charles Frederick Gerhardt (1816-1856), born at Strasburg (then a
French city), one of Liebig’s most brilliant pupils, was for some years
Professor of Chemistry at Montpellier in succession to Balard. Later,
he founded a laboratory at Paris, and finally accepted the Chair of
Chemistry at Strasburg. He was one of the founders of modern organic
chemistry, and the originator of the type theory.

Theophile Jules Pelouze (1807-1867) held a position in the
pharmaceutical service of the Salpêtrière Hospital at Paris, when, one
day in the country, he was overtaken by a torrential storm. A carriage
passing, the pedestrian appealed to the driver to take him inside. No
notice was taken of his request, so the indignant young pharmacist
ran after the vehicle and seized the reins. Having stopped the horse,
he delivered a severe lecture to the driver on his lack of courtesy
and humanity. The passenger in the carriage invited him to enter and
share the shelter. This gentleman was M. Gay-Lussac, the most eminent
chemist in Paris at the time. The acquaintance thus curiously commenced
resulted in Pelouze becoming Gay-Lussac’s laboratory assistant. He
ultimately succeeded his employer at the Polytechnic School and, later
still, was promoted to the Chair which Thénard had occupied at the
College of France. Pelouze was a voluminous writer, and did useful
work on the production of native sugar. In conjunction with Liebig he
discovered œnanthic ether.

Sir Humphry Davy served an apprenticeship with a Mr. Borlase, an
apothecary of Penzance, but afterwards exchanged physic for science.
He died at Geneva in 1829 at the age of 51, after a life crowded with
scientific triumphs.

[Illustration: SIR HUMPHRY DAVY.]

Antoine Jussieu was the eldest of the three sons of Laurent Jussieu,
a master in pharmacy at Lyons. Antoine was born in 1686, and began
to collect plants from his childhood. His two brothers, Bernard and
Joseph, followed in his steps, and they, and Bernard’s son, Antoine
Laurent, constitute the famous Jussieu dynasty, from whom we have
received the natural system of botanical classification. The story is a
long and interesting one, but it is outside the scope of these notes.
It must be remarked, however, that to Antoine Jussieu is due the credit
of the introduction of the coffee plant into the western hemisphere.
The island of Martinique was where the first coffee shrub was planted.

Fourcroy, another chemist of the Revolutionary period, comes next and
is followed by

Nicolas Houel (1520-1584), who was the founder of the School of
Pharmacy of Paris. He was an apothecary, and out of the ample fortune
which he had made from his profession, endowed a “House of Christian
Charity.” He stipulated that it was to be a school for young orphans
born of legal marriages, there to be instructed to serve and honour
God, to acquire good literary instruction, and to learn the art of the
apothecary. He also provided that the establishment should furnish
medicines to the sick poor, who did not wish to go to the hospital,
gratuitously. The institution consisted of a chapel, a school, a
complete pharmacy, a garden of simples, and a hospital. The charity
was duly authorised by Henri III and Queen Loise of Lorraine, but this
did not prevent Henri IV taking possession of it in 1596, and using it
as a home for his wounded soldiers. That was the origin of the Hotel
des Invalides. Louis XIII transferred the Invalides to the Château of
Bicêtre, and gave the school to the Sisters of St. Lazare. In 1622,
however, the Parliament of Paris took the matter in hand and restored
the property to the corporation of Apothecaries on condition that they
would carry out the bequest of Houel. In 1777 Louis XVI made it the
College of Pharmacy, and after the Convention the Directory declared
it to be the Free School of Pharmacy. When pharmacy was reorganised in
France during Napoleon’s consulate, the institution became the Paris
School of Pharmacy.

Jan Swammerdam, a famous Dutch anatomist (1637-1680), comes next, and
after him, Claude Bernard, the physiologist (1813-1878), who began
his career in a poor little pharmacy at Lyons. Jean Baptiste Dumas,
born 1800, and living when the medallion was placed, also commenced
his career in a small pharmacy at Alais (Gard), his native town. Dumas
was one of the greatest chemists of the century. The doctrine of
substitution of radicles in chemical compounds was suggested by him. He
died April 11, 1884, at Cannes.

XII

ROYAL AND NOBLE PHARMACISTS.

We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,
But no man knoweth the mind of a King.
RUDYARD KIPLING--“Ballad of the King’s Jest.”

In the “Myths of Pharmacy” it has been shown that some of the most
honoured of the deities of the ancient world interested themselves in
pharmacy. To a greater or less extent many important personages in
the world’s history since have occupied some of their leisure in the
endeavour to extract or compound some new and effective remedies.

CLASSICAL LEGENDS.

Chin-Nong, Emperor of China, who died 2699 B.C., is reckoned
to have been the founder of pharmacy in the Far East. He studied plants
and composed a Herbal used to this day. It is related of him that he
discovered seventy poisonous plants and an equal number of antidotes to
them. He describes how to make extracts and decoctions, what they are
good for, and had some notions of analysis. Chin-Nong was the second
of the nine sovereigns who preceded the establishment of the Chinese
dynasties. To him is also attributed the invention of the plough.

The Emperor Adrian, whose curiosity and literary tastes led him to the
study of astrology, magic, and medicine, composed an antidote which was
known as Adrianum, and which consisted of more than forty ingredients,
of which opium, henbane, and euphorbium were the principal.

Attalus III, the last king of Pergamos in Asia Minor, who died about
134 B.C., bequeathing his kingdom to the Romans who already
controlled it, was a worthless and cruel prince, but of some reputation
in pharmacy. Having poisoned his uncle, the reigning king, Attalus
soon wearied of public affairs, and devoted his time to gardening,
and especially to the cultivation of poisonous and medicinal plants.
Plutarch expressly mentions henbane, hellebore, hemlock, and lotus as
among the herbs which he studied, and Justin reports that he amused
himself by sending to his friends presents of fruits, mixing poisonous
ones with the others. He is credited with the invention of our white
lead ointment and Celsus and Galen mention a plaster and an antidote as
among his achievements. Marcellus has preserved a prescription which he
says Attalus devised for diseases of the liver and spleen, for dropsy,
and for improving a lurid complexion. It consisted of saffron, Indian
nard, cassia, cinnamon, myrrh, schœnanthus, and costus, made into an
electuary with honey, and kept in a silver box.

_Gentius, King of Illyria_, discovered the medicinal value of the
gentian and introduced it into medical practice. The plant is supposed
to have acquired its name from this king. Gentius was induced by
Perseus, King of Macedon, to declare war against the Romans, Perseus
promising to support him with money and other aid. This he failed to
do and Gentius was defeated and taken prisoner by Anicius after a war
which lasted only thirty days.

MITHRIDATIUM.

Mithridates VI, commonly called “the Great,” King of Pontus in Asia
Minor, was born 134 B.C., and succeeded his father on the
throne at the age of twelve. Next to Hannibal he was the most
troublesome foe the Roman Republic had to deal with. His several wars
with that power occupied twenty-six years of his life. Sylla, Lucullus,
and Pompey, in succession, led Roman armies against him, and gained
battles again and again, but he was only at last completely conquered
by the last-named general after long and costly efforts.

Mithridates was a valiant soldier and a skilful general, but a monster
of cruelty. He was apparently a learned man, or at least one who
took interest in learning. The fable of his medicinal secrets took
possession of the imagination of the Romans. They were especially
attracted by the stories of his famous antidote. According to some he
invented this himself; others say the secret was communicated to him by
a Persian physician named Zopyrus. Celsus states that a physician of
this name gave a similar secret to one of the Egyptian Ptolemies. This
may have been the same Zopyrus, for Mithridates lived in the time of
the Ptolemies. The Egyptian antidote was handed down to us under the
name of Ambrosia.

When Pompey had finally defeated Mithridates he took possession of a
quantity of the tyrant’s papers at Nicopolis, and it was reported that
among these were his medicinal formulas. Mithridates meanwhile was
seeking help to prosecute the war. But his allies, his own son, and his
soldiers were all tired of him. In his despair he poisoned his wife and
daughters, and then took poison himself. But according to the legend,
propagated perhaps by some clever advertising quacks in Rome, he had so
successfully immunised his body to the effects of all poisons that they
would now take no effect. Consequently he had to call in the assistance
of a Gallic soldier, who despatched his chief with a spear. The story
of his defeat and death are historic; the poison story is legend which,
however it was originated, was no doubt good value in the drug stores
of Rome, where the confection of Mithridates was soon sold. As will
be stated immediately there is abundant reason to believe that the
alleged formula which Pompey was said to have discovered and to have
had translated was devised at home.

In 1745 when a new London Pharmacopœia was nearly ready for issue,
a scholarly exposure of the absurdity of the compound which still
occupied space in that and in all other official formularies, along
with its equally egregious companion, Theriaca, was published by Dr.
William Heberden, a leading physician of the day, and though it was too
late to cause the deletion of the formulas in the edition of 1746, that
was the last time they appeared in the Pharmacopœia, though they had
been given in all the issues of that work from 1618 onwards. No better
completion of the history of this preparation can be given than that
which Dr. Heberden wrote 165 years ago. The King of Pontus, he assumed,
like many other ancient royalties, was pleased to affect special skill
in the production of medicines, and it is not surprising that his
courtiers should have flattered him on this accomplishment. Thus the
opinion prevailed among his enemies as well as in his own kingdom that
his achievements in pharmacy approached the miraculous. His conqueror,
Pompey, apparently shared the popular belief, and took uncommon care in
the ransack of his effects, after Mithridates had been compelled to fly
from the field, to secure for himself his medical writings. According
to Quintus Serenus Samonicus, however, the Roman general was amused at
his own credulity when, instead of a vast and precious arcana he found
himself in possession of only a few trifling and worthless receipts.

[Illustration: DR. WILLIAM HEBERDEN. 1710-1801.

(From a mezzotint in the British Museum.)
]

The anticipation of some marvellous secrets was so universal, and the
Roman publishers so well disposed to cater for this, that it is not
to be wondered at that a confection of Mithridates and stories of
its miraculous power soon found their way into literature. A pompous
formula, which it was professed had been discovered among the papers
of Mithridates captured by Pompey came to be known under the title of
Antidotum Mithridatium. It is noteworthy that Plutarch, who in his life
of Pompey mentions that certain love letters and documents helping to
interpret dreams were among these papers, makes no allusion to the
medical recipe; while Samonicus states explicitly that, notwithstanding
the many formulæ which had got into circulation pretending to be
that of the genuine confection, the only one found in the cabinet of
Mithridates was a trivial one for a compound of 20 leaves of rue, 1
grain of salt, 2 nuts, and 2 dried figs. So that, Dr. Heberden remarks,
the King of Pontus may have been as much a stranger to the medicine to
which his name was attached as many eminent physicians of this day are
to medicines associated with their names.

The compound, made from the probably spurious formula, however,
acquired an immense fame. Some of the Roman emperors are declared to
have compounded it with their own hands. Galen says that whoever took a
proper dose in the morning was ensured against poison throughout that
day. Great physicians studied it with a view of making it, if possible,
more perfect. The most important modification of the formula was made
by Andromachus, Nero’s physician, who omitted the scink, added vipers,
and increased the proportion of opium. He changed the name to Galene,
but this was not retained, and in Trajan’s time the name of Theriaca
was the accepted designation, a title which has lasted throughout the
subsequent centuries.

Dr. Heberden’s criticism of the composition is as effective now as
when he wrote, but it should be remembered that in his day there was a
Theriacal party in medicine; to us the comments seem obvious. He points
out that in the formula as it then appeared in the Pharmacopœia no
regard was had to the known virtues of the simples, nor to the rules of
artful composition. There was no foundation for the wonderful stories
told concerning it, and the utmost that could then be said of it was
that it was a diaphoretic, “which is commonly the virtue of a medicine
which has none.”

But even if undesigning chance did happen to hit upon a mixture which
possessed such marvellous virtues, what foundation was there, he asked,
for believing that any other fortuitous concourse of ingredients would
be similarly successful? This preparation had scarcely continued the
same for a hundred years at a time. According to Celsus, who first
described it, it consisted of thirty-eight simples. Before the time
of Nero five of these had been struck out and twenty new ones added.
Andromachus omitted six and added twenty-eight; leaving seventy-five
net. Aetius in the fifth century, and Myrepsus in the twelfth gave
very different accounts of it, and since then the formulas had been
constantly fluctuating. Some of the original ingredients were, Dr.
Heberden said, utterly unknown in his time; others could only be
guessed at. About a century previously a dispute about Balm of Gilead,
which was one of the constituents, had been referred to the Pope, who,
however, prudently declined to exercise his infallibility on this
subject.

Authorities were not agreed whether it was better old or new. Galen
said the virtue of the opium was mitigated by keeping; Juncker said it
fermented, and by fermentation the power of the opium was exalted three
or fourfold.

A PHARMACEUTICAL POPE.

Peter of Spain, a native of Lisbon, was a physician who became Pope
under the title of John XXI. He died in 1277. He wrote a treatise on
medicine, or rather made a collection of formulas, including most of
the absurd ones then current and adding a few of his own. One was to
carry about a parchment on which were written the names of Gaspard,
Balthasar, and Melchior, the three wise men of the East, as a sure
preservative from epilepsy. Another was a method of curing a diarrhœa
by filling a human bone with the excrements of a patient, and throwing
it into a river. The diarrhœa would cease when the bone was emptied of
its contents.

HENRY VIII (OF ENGLAND)

was fond of dabbling with medicine. In Brewer’s history of his reign,
referring to the years 1516-18, we are told:--

“The amusements of court were diversified by hunting and out-door
sports in the morning; in the afternoon by Memo’s music, by the
consecration and distribution of cramp rings, or the invention of
plasters and compounding of medicines, an occupation in which the King
took unusual pleasure.”

In the British Museum among the Sloane MSS. there is one numbered 1047,
entitled Dr. Butt’s Diary, which records many of these pharmaceutical
achievements of the monarch. Dr. Butt was the King’s physician and
was no doubt his guide in these experiments. Dr. Butt, or Butts,
is referred to in Strype’s “Life of Cranmer” and in Shakespeare’s
“Henry VIII.” Many of the liniments and cataplasms formulated are for
excoriations or ulcers in the legs, a disease, as Dr. Brewer notes,
“common in those days, and from which the King himself suffered.”

Among the contents of the Diary are “The King’s Majesty’s own Plaster.”
It is described as a plaster devised by the king to heal ulcers
without pain. It was a compound of pearls and guaiacum wood. There are
in the manuscript formulas for other plasters “devised by the King
at Greenwich and made at Westminster” to heal excoriations, to heal
swellings in the ankles, one for my lady Anne of Cleves “to mollify
and resolve, comfort and cease pain of cold and windy causes”; and an
ointment to cool and “let” (prevent) inflammations, and take away itch.

Other formulas by Dr. Butt himself, and by other contemporary doctors,
are comprised in this Diary.

Sir H. Halford, in an article “On the Deaths of Some Eminent Persons,”
printed in 1835, says of Henry VIII, who died of dropsy at the age of
56, that he was “a great dabbler in physic, and offered medical advice
on all occasions which presented themselves, and also made up the
medicines.”

QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND

appears to have been an amateur prescriber. Etmuller states that
she sent a formula for a “cephalica-cardiac medicine” to the Holy
Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, himself a dabbler in various scientific
quackeries. It consisted of amber, musk, and civet, dissolved in spirit
of roses. It is further on record that the English queen selected
doctors and pharmacists for Ivan the Terrible of Russia. In Wadd’s
Memorabilia, one of her Majesty’s quarter’s bills from her apothecary,
Hugo Morgan, is quoted. It amounted to £83 7_s._ 8_d._, and included
the following items:--A confection made like manus Christi with bezoar
stone and unicorn’s horn, 11_s._; a royal sweetmeat with incised
rhubarb, 1_s._ 4_d._; rose water for the king of Navarre’s ambassador,
1_s._; a conserve of barberries with preserved damascene plums, and
other things for Mr. Ralegh, 6_s._; sweet scent to be used at the
christening of Sir Richard Knightley’s son, 2_s._

THE QUEEN OF HUNGARY’S WATER.

Rosemary has at times enjoyed a high reputation among medicinal herbs.
Arnold of Villa Nova affirms that he had often seen cancers, gangrenes,
and fistulas, which would yield to no other medicine, dry up and become
perfectly cured by frequently bathing them with a spirituous infusion
of rosemary. His disciple, Raymond Lully, extracted the essential oil
by distillation.

The name probably assisted the fame of the plant. In the middle ages it
was believed to be associated with the Virgin. It was in fact derived
from Ros and Maris, meaning Dew of the Sea; probably because it grew
near the shores of the Mediterranean.

“Here’s rosemary for you; that’s for remembrance.” So says Ophelia in
Hamlet; and many other poets and chroniclers relate how the plant was
used at funerals and weddings as a symbol of constancy. It is supposed
that this signification arose from the medicinal employment of rosemary
to improve the memory. It may easily have happened, however, that the
medicinal use followed the emblematical idea.

Old books and some modern ones tell the legend of the Queen of Hungary
and her rosemary remedy. It is alleged in pharmaceutical treatises
published in the nineteenth century that a document is preserved in the
Imperial Library at Vienna, dated 1235, and written by Queen Elisabeth
of Hungary, thus expressed:--

“I, Elisabeth, Queen of Hungary, being very infirm and much
troubled with gout, in the seventy-second year of my age,
used for a year this recipe given to me by an ancient hermit,
whom I never saw before nor since; and was not only cured
but recovered my strength, and appeared to all so remarkably
beautiful that the King of Poland asked me in marriage, he
being a widower and I a widow. I, however, refused him for
the love of my Lord Jesus Christ, from one of whose angels I
believe I received the remedy.”

The royal formula is as follows:--“Take aqua vitae, four
times distilled, 3 parts; the tops and flowers of rosemary, 2
parts; put these together in a closed vessel, let them stand
in a gentle heat fifty hours, and then distil them. Take one
teaspoonful of this in the morning once every week, and let
your face and diseased limb be washed with it every morning.”

Beckmann investigated this story and came to the conclusion that the
name “Eau de La Reine d’Hongrie” had been adopted by some vendors of
a spirit of rosemary “in order to give greater consequence and credit
to their commodity”; in other words, he suggests that the interesting
narrative was only a clever advertisement.

The only Queen Elisabeth of Hungary was the wife of King Charles
Robert, and daughter of Ladislaus, King of Poland. She died in 1380,
and for more than ten years before that date either her brother,
Casimir II, or her son Louis, was the reigning sovereign in Poland,
and neither of these can be supposed to have been her suitor. The
alleged date of the document quoted would better suit St. Elisabeth of
Hungary, and some old writers attribute the formula and the story to
her. But she was never queen of Hungary, and moreover she died in 1231
at the age of 25. Beckmann also denies the statement that the document
pretended to be in Queen Elisabeth’s writing is preserved in the
Imperial Library at Vienna. The whole narrative is traced to a German
named Hoyer, in 1716, and he apparently copied it from a French medical
writer named Prevot, who published it in 1659. Prevot attributes the
story to “St. Elisabeth, Queen of Hungary,” and says he copied both the
history and the formula from an old breviary in the possession of his
friend, Francis Podacather, a Cyprus nobleman, who had inherited it
from his ancestors. This is the one little possibility of truth in the
record, for it appears that Queen Elisabeth of Hungary did mention two
breviaries in her will, and it may have been that one of these was the
one which the Cyprus nobleman possessed.

THE ROYAL TOUCH.--THE KING’S EVIL.

There are several instances in ancient history illustrating the healing
virtue residing or alleged to reside in the person of a king. Pyrrhus,
King of Epirus, according to Plutarch, cured colics and affections of
the spleen by laying patients on their backs and passing his great toe
over their bodies. Suelin relates that when the Emperor Vespasian was
at Alexandria a poor blind man came to him saying that the god Serapis
had revealed to him that if he, the Emperor, would touch his eyes with
his spittle, his sight would be restored. Vespasian was angry and would
have driven the man away, but some of those around him urged him to
exercise his power, and at last he consented and cured the poor man of
his blindness and some others of lameness. Cœlius Spartianus declares
that the Emperor Adrian cured dropsy by touching patients with the
tips of his fingers. The Eddas tell how King Olaf healed the wounds of
Egill, the Icelandic hero, by laying on of hands and singing proverbs.
A legend of the counts of Hapsburg declares that at one time they could
cure a sick person by kissing him.

The superstition crystallised itself in the practice of the English
and French kings of touching for the cure of scrofula, or king’s evil
as the disease consequently came to be named. The term scrofula is
itself one of the curiosities of etymology. Scrofula is the diminutive
of scrota, a sow, and means a little pig. It is conjectured that the
name was adopted from the idea of pigs burrowing under the surface of
straw and likening to that the pig’s back sort of shape of the ulcers
characteristic of the disease.

The first English king who undertook this treatment, so far as is
known, was Edward the Confessor, who reigned from 1042 to 1066. But
there is evidence that the French kings had practised it earlier.
Robert the Pious (970-1031), son of Hughes Capet, is said to have
exercised the miraculous power, and Church legend goes back five
hundred years before this, attributing the origin of the gift to the
date of the conversion of Clovis, A.D. 496. On that occasion
the holy oil for the coronation of the Conqueror was brought direct
from heaven in a phial carried by a dove, and the healing faculty was
conferred at the same time. Most of the French kings down to Louis XV
continued to touch, and it was even suggested that the practice should
be resumed by Louis XVIII after the Restoration in 1815, but that
monarch’s advisers prudently resolved that it would not do to risk the
ridicule of modern France.

The records of Edward the Confessor’s miraculous feats of healing
are obtained from William of Malmesbury, who wrote his Chronicles in
the first half of the 12th century, about a hundred years after the
Confessor’s reign. The earliest printed edition of the Chronicles
appeared in 1577, and Shakespeare undoubtedly drew from it the
description of the ceremony which is given in Macbeth (Act iv, Sc. 3).
Malcolm and Macduff are represented as being in England “in a room of
the King’s palace” (Edward the Confessor’s). The doctor tells them

There are a crew of wretched souls
That stay his cure: their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but at his touch--
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand--
They presently amend.

Asked about the nature of the disease the doctor says “’Tis called the
evil,” and he adds

How he solicits Heaven
Himself best knows: but strangely visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction.

There is no evidence that any of the Norman kings performed the rite,
but it is on record that Henry II performed cures by touching, and
allusions to the practice by Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, and
Henry IV have been found in old manuscripts. It is probable, too, that
the other kings preceding the Tudors followed the fashion when the
interval between their wars gave them the necessary leisure. From Henry
VII to Queen Anne all our rulers except Cromwell “touched.” Oliver,
not being able to claim the virtue by reason of his descent, would
certainly not have been trusted, and Dutch William had no sympathy
with the superstition. It is recorded of him that once he yielded to
importunity and went through the form of touching. “God gave thee
better health and more sense” was the unsentimental benediction he
pronounced. Queen Anne, as is well known, “touched” Dr. Johnson in his
childhood, but it is recorded that in this case no cure was effected.
Boswell says that Johnson’s mother in taking the child (who was then
between two and three years old) to London for the ceremony was
acting on the advice of Sir John Floyer, who was at that time a noted
physician at Lichfield. The “touch-piece” presented by Queen Anne to
Dr. Johnson is preserved in the British Museum. The Pretender, Charles
Edward, touched someone at Holyrood House, Edinburgh, and his partisans
said a cure was effected in three weeks. Which proved his right to the
throne of England.

The story told by William of Malmesbury about Edward the Confessor is
that “a young woman that had a husband about the same age as herself,
but no child, was afflicted with overflowing of humours in her neck,
which broke out in great nobbs, was commanded in a dream to apply to
the King to wash it. To court she goes, and the King being at his
Devotions all alone dip’d his fingers in water and dabbel’d the woman’s
neck, and he had no sooner taken away his hand than she found herself
better.” William goes on to tell that within a week she was well, and
that within a year she was brought to bed of twins.

Modern doctors have forgotten and despised the strange story of this
royal touch, but two and three centuries ago they very seriously
discussed it. Reports of marvellous and numerous cures were
confidently related, and the writers who had no faith in the virtue
of the performance admitted the genuineness of many of the cases.
Sergeant-Surgeon Dickens, Queen Anne’s surgeon, narrated the most
curious instance. At the request of one young woman he brought her to
the Queen to be touched. After the performance he impressed upon her
the importance of never parting with the gold medal which was given to
all patients; for it appears that he had reason to expect that she was
likely to sell it. She promised always to retain it, and in due course
she was cured. In time, thinking all risk had passed, she disposed
of the touch-piece; the disease returned; she confessed her fault
penitently to Dr. Dickens, and by his aid was touched again, and once
more cured. Surgeon Wiseman, chief surgeon in Charles I’s army, and
afterwards Sergeant-Surgeon in Charles II’s household, described the
cures effected by that monarch. He had been an eye-witness of hundreds
of cures, he says. Many other testimonies of the same kind might be
quoted, but it is as well to remark that a habit grew up of describing
the touching itself as a cure.

Careful and intelligent inquiries into the alleged success of the
practice by investigators who were by no means believers in any actual
royal virtue, but who yet admitted unhesitatingly the reality of many
of the claimed cures, are on record. Among treatises of this character
may be mentioned “A Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and
Efficacy of Touching for the King’s Evil,” by William Beckett, F.R.S.,
a well known surgeon, 1722, and “Criterion, or Miracles Examined,” by
Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, 1754. Both of these writers admit
that cures did result from the King’s touch; the Bishop says that he
personally knew a man who had been healed. Mr. Beckett deals with
these cures with much judgment. He points out how likely it was that
the excitement of the visit to the court, both in anticipation and in
realisation, and the impressive ceremony there conducted, would in
many instances so affect the constitution, causing the blood to course
through the veins more quickly, as to effect a cure.

Mr. Beckett also gives extremely good reasons for doubting whether
Edward the Confessor ever did “touch” for scrofula. The gift is not
mentioned in the Bull of Pope Alexander III by which the Confessor was
canonised, nor by several earlier writers than William of Malmesbury,
monks only too eager to glorify their benefactor.

Henry VII was the first to surround the ceremony of touching with an
imposing religious service, and to give a touch-piece to the patient.
Henry VIII does not seem to have followed the practice of his father to
any great extent, and there was some disturbance about it in the next
few reigns. The Catholics denied that Queen Elizabeth could possess the
healing virtue, and when actual cures were cited to them one of their
bishops declared that these were due, not to the royal virtue, but to
the virtue of the sign of the cross. All the Stuart kings, Charles
II particularly, exercised their hereditary powers most diligently.
Macaulay states that Charles II touched nearly one hundred thousand
persons during his reign. In his record year, 1682, he performed the
rite eight thousand five hundred times.

Evelyn gives the following account of the performance, which, as will
be seen, was no light duty. He describes it thus:

“Sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons cause
the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where, they kneeling,
ye King strokes their faces and cheeks with both his hands at once, at
which instant a chaplaine in his formalities says:--‘He put his hands
upon them and healed them.’ This he said to every one in particular.
When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order;
and the other chaplaine kneeling, and having an angel of gold strung
on white ribbon on his arms delivers them one by one to His Majestie,
who puts them about the necks of the touched as they passe, while
the first chaplaine repeats ‘That is ye true light which came into
ye world.’ Then follows an epistle (as at first a gospel) with the
liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some alteration, and then the Lord
Chamberlain and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer,
and towel, for his Majesty to wash.”

In 1684 Thomas Rosewell, evidently an unrepentant Puritan, was tried
before Judge Jeffries on a charge of high treason, the indictment
alleging that he had said “the people made a flocking to the king
upon pretence of being healed of the king’s evil, which he could not
do.” Rosewell had further declared that he and others, being priests
and prophets, could do as much as the king. And Rosewell had told how
Jeroboam’s hand had dried up when he would have seized the man of God
who had prophesied against him, and how the king’s hand had been
restored on the prayer of the prophet. In his defence Rosewell had
sneered at the Latin of the indictment, which spoke of the “Morbus
Regni Anglici,” which, as he said, would mean the disease of the
English kingdom, not the king’s evil. Jeffries, having taunted the
prisoner and his witnesses with being “snivelling saints,” insisted on
a verdict of guilty, and would no doubt have had the mocker’s ears cut
off; but it is satisfactory to know that Charles II, who probably had
not more faith in his healing power than the accused, ordered him to be
pardoned.

The English prayer-book contained a form of service for this ceremony
up to the year 1719.

Queen Anne was the last ruler in England to touch. There is no record
of any of the Georges attempting the miracle, but the young Pretender,
Charles Edward, when claiming to be Prince of Wales, touched a female
child at Holyrood House in 1745, and is said to have effected a cure,
and after his death in 1780 his brother, Cardinal York, still touched
at Rome.

Louis XV was the last King of France who touched. Louis XIV fulfilled
the duty on a larger scale, and doubtless with the utmost confidence in
his royal virtue. The formula used by the kings of France when they had
touched a patient was “Le roi te touche, Dieu te guerisse” (“The king
touches thee; may God heal thee”). It is said that Henri of Navarre,
when in the thick of the fight at Ivry (1590), as he laid about him
with his sword right and left, gaily shouted this familiar expression.

CRAMP RINGS.

Faith in “cramp rings” corresponds in many respects with the
reverential confidence in the royal touch as a cure for scrofula.
The former, however, appears to have been of entirely English origin.
Legend attributes the first cramp ring to Edward the Confessor.

St. Edward on his death-bed is alleged to have given a ring from his
finger to the Abbot of Westminster with the explanation that it had
been brought to him not long before by a pilgrim from Jerusalem to whom
it had been given by a mysterious stranger, presumably a visitant from
the world of spirits, who had bidden him give the ring to the king
with the message that his end was near. The ring was preserved as a
relic at Westminster for some time, and was found to possess miraculous
efficacy for the cure of epilepsy and cramp. It was next heard of at
Havering in Essex, the very name of which place, according to Camden,
furnished evidence of the accuracy of the tradition. Havering was
obviously a contraction of “have the ring.” So at least thought the old
etymologists.

When the relic disappeared is not recorded; but the Tudor kings were
in the habit of contributing a certain amount of gold and silver as an
offering to the Cross every Good Friday, and the metal being made into
rings was consecrated by them, in accordance with a form of service
which was included in old English prayer books (see Burnett’s History
of the Reformation, Part 2, Book 2, No. 25). This was actually used
until the reign of Queen Anne. Andrew Boorde, in his “Breviary of
Health,” 1557, says: “The kynges of England doth halow every yere cramp
rynges ye which rynges worn on one’s finger doth helpe them whyche hath
ye cramp.” They seem to have been regarded especially as a protection
against epilepsy, and courtiers were much importuned to obtain some for
persons afflicted.

The process of hallowing the rings is described in Brand’s “Popular
Antiquities.” A crucifix was laid on a cushion in the royal chapel, and
a piece of carpet was spread in front of it. The king entered in state,
and when he came to the carpet crept on it to the crucifix. There the
rings were brought to him in a silver dish, and he blessed them.

In the Harleian Manuscripts (295 f119) a letter is preserved dated
the xxi. daie of June, 1518, from Lord Berners (the translator of
Froissart), then ambassador to the Emperor Charles V. He writes from
Saragoza “to my Lord Cardinall’s grace” (Wolsey), “If your grace
remember me with some crampe rynges ye shall doo a thing muche looked
for; and I trust to bestowe thaym well with Goddes grace, who evermor
preserve and encrease your most reverent astate.”

It does not appear certain that the royal consecration of these rings
was continued after the reign of Queen Mary; but cramp rings continued
in esteem almost until our own time in some parts of the country. In
Brand’s book, and in several numbers of _Notes and Queries_ references
to superstitions in connection with these, their production and the
wearing of them particularly against epilepsy, are recorded. Sometimes,
to be effective, the rings must have been made from coffin handles, or
coffin nails, the coffins from which they have been taken having been
buried; or rings of silver or gold, manufactured while the story of the
Passion of the Saviour was being read, would possess curative power.
So would a ring made from silver collected at a Communion service,
preferably on Easter Sunday. In Berkshire, a ring made from five
sixpences collected from five bachelors, none of whom must know the
purpose of the collection, and formed by a bachelor smith into a ring
was believed in; and in Suffolk, not very long since, nine bachelors
contributed a crooked sixpence each to make a ring for a young woman
in the village to wear for the cure of epileptic fits to which she was
subject.

THE EARL OF WARWICK’S POWDER.

The Earl of Warwick’s Powder is named in many old English, and more
frequently still in foreign dispensatories and pharmacopœias, appearing
generally under the title of “Pulvis Comitis de Warwick, or Pulvis
Warwiciensis,” sometimes also as “Pulvis Cornacchini.” It is the
original of our Pulv. Scammon Co, and was given in the P.L. 1721 in its
pristine form, thus:--

Scammony, prepared with the fumes of sulphur, 2 ounces.
Diaphoretic antimony, 1 ounce.
Cream of tartar, ½ ounce.

In the P.L. 1746 the pulvis e scammonio compositus, made from four
parts of scammony and three parts of burnt hartshorn, was substituted
for the above, but neither this nor the modern compound scammony
powder, consisting of scammony, jalap, and ginger, can be regarded as
representing the original Earl of Warwick’s powder.

The Earl of Warwick from whom the powder acquired its name was Robert
Dudley, son of the famous Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s
favourite, and of Kenilworth notoriety. His mother was the widow of
Lord Sheffield, and there was much dispute about the legitimacy of the
child, but the evidence goes to show that Leicester married her two
days before the birth of the boy. He afterwards abandoned her, but he
left his estates to the boy. Young Robert Dudley grew up a singularly
handsome and popular youth. He led an adventurous life, voyaging,
exploring, and fighting Spanish ships. He failed to establish his
claims to his titles and estates in England, and ultimately settled at
Florence, where he became a Catholic, and distinguished himself as an
engineer and architect. He won the favour of Ferdinand II, Emperor of
Austria, who created him Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland,
and the Pope recognised his nobility. He died in Italy in 1649. The
chroniclers of the time refer to a book he is said to have written
under the title of _Catholicon_, which was “in good esteem among
physicians.” If it existed it was probably a collection of medical
formulæ, but it is not unlikely that this supposed book has been
confused with one written by a Dr. Cornacchini, of Pisa, and dedicated
to Dudley. In that work, which is known, the powder is described,
and its invention is attributed to the Earl. It is alleged to have
possessed marvellous medicinal virtues.

DUKE OF PORTLAND’S GOUT POWDER.

Under this title a powder had a great reputation about the middle of
the eighteenth century, and well on into the nineteenth century. The
powder was composed of aristolochia rotunda (birthwort root), gentian
root, and the tops and leaves of germander, ground pine, and centaury,
of each equal parts. One drachm was to be taken every morning,
fasting, for three months, and then ½ drachm for the rest of the year.
Particular directions in regard to diet were given with the formula.

The compound was evidently only a slight modification of several to
be found in the works of the later Latin authors, Aetius, Alexander
of Trailles, and Paul of Egineta. These were entitled Tetrapharmacum,
Antidotus Podagrica ex duobus centauriae generibus, Diatesseron, and
other names. The “duobus” remedy was an electuary prescribed by Aetius,
and a piece the size of a hazel nut had to be taken every morning for
a year. Hence it was called medicamentum ad annum. This, or something
very like it, was in use in Italy for centuries under the name of
Pulvis Principis Mirandolæ, and spread from there to the neighbouring
countries. An Englishman long resident in Switzerland had compiled
a manuscript collection of medical formulæ, and his son, who became
acquainted with the Duke of Portland of the period, persuaded him to
give this gout remedy a trial. The result was so satisfactory that the
Duke had the formula and the diet directions printed on leaflets, and
these were given to anyone who asked for them.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S GREAT CORDIAL.

During his twelve years’ imprisonment in the Tower in the earlier part
of the reign of James I, Sir Walter Raleigh was allowed a room in
which he fitted up a laboratory, and divided his time between chemical
experiments and literary labours. It was believed that Raleigh had
brought with him from Guiana some wonderful curative balsam, and this
opinion, combined with the knowledge that he dabbled largely with
retorts and alembics in the Tower, ensured a lively public interest in
his “Great Cordial” when it was available.

The Queen, Anne of Denmark, and Prince Henry, were both warm partisans
of Raleigh, and did their best to get him released. The Queen was
convinced that the “Great Cordial” had saved her life in a serious
illness, and Prince Henry took a particular interest in Raleigh’s
experiments. When the Prince was on his death-bed Raleigh sent him some
of the cordial, declaring, it was reported, that it would certainly
cure him provided he had not been poisoned. This unwise suggestion
coming to James’s ears greatly incensed him, and darkened Raleigh’s
prospects of life and freedom considerably.

[Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

(From a mezzotint in the British Museum.)
]

No known authentic formula of the cordial exists, but Charles II was
curious about it, and his French apothecary, Le Febre, on the king’s
command, prepared some of the compound from data then available, and
wrote a treatise on it which was afterwards translated into English
by Peter Lebon. Evelyn records in his diary the demonstration of the
composition given by Le Febre to the Court on September 20, 1662.

The cordial then consisted of forty roots, seeds, herbs, etc.,
macerated in spirit of wine, and distilled. With the distillate were
combined bezoar stones, pearls, coral, deer’s horn, amber, musk,
antimony, various earths, sugar, and much besides. Vipers’ flesh, with
the heart and liver, and “mineral unicorn” were added later on the
suggestion of Sir Kenelm Digby. The official history of this strange
concoction is appended.

Confectio Raleighana was first official in the London Pharmacopœia of
1721. The formula was--

Rasurae C. Cervi lb. i.

Carnis viperarum c. cordibus et hepatibus, 6 oz.

Flor. Borag., rosmar., calendulae, roris solis, rosarum rub.,
sambuci, ana lb. ss.

Herb. scordii, cardui benedicti, melissæ, dictamni cretici,
menthæ, majoranæ, betonicæ, ana manipules duodecim.

Succi Kermis, Sem. card. maj., cubebarum, Bacc. junip., macis,
nuc. mosch., caryoph., croci, ana 2 oz.

Cinnam. opt., cort. lign. sassaf., cort. flav. malorum
citriorum, aurantiorum, ana 3 oz.

Lign. aloes, sassafras, ana 6 oz.

Rad. angelic., valerian, sylvest., fraxinell, seu dictamni
alb., serpentar. Virginianæ, Zedoariæ, tormentillæ bistort,
Aristoloch. long., Aristoloch. rotund., gentianæ, imperatoriæ,
ana 1½ oz.

These were to be cut up or crushed, and a tincture made from them with
rectified spirit. The tincture was to be evaporated in a sand-bath,
the expressed magma was then to be burned, and the ashes, lixiviated in
water, were to be added to the extract.

Then the following powders were to be added to this liquid to form
a confection:--Bezoar stone, Eastern and western, of each 1½ oz.;
Eastern pearls, 2 oz.; red coral, 3 oz.; Eastern Bole, Terra Sigillata,
calcined hartshorn, ambergris, of each 1 oz.; musk, 1½ drachms;
powdered sugar, 2 lb.

In the P.L. 1746 Confectio Raleighana appears as Confectio Cardiaca.
It is expressly stated that this new name is substituted for the old
one. The formula is simplified, but the resemblance to the original can
be traced. It runs thus:--Summitatum Rorismar, recent., Bacc, Junip.,
ana lb. i; Sem. card., min. decort., Zedoariæ, Croci. ana lb. ss. Make
a tincture with these with about 1½ gallons of diluted spirit, and
afterwards reduce it to 2½ lb. by evaporating at a gentle heat; then
add the following, all in the finest powder:--Compound powder of crabs’
shells, 16 oz. This was prepared powder of crab shells, 1 lb.; pearls
and red coral, of each 3 oz.; cinnamon and nutmegs, of each 2 oz.;
cloves, 1 oz.; sugar, 2 lb. To make a confection.

In the P.L. 1788 the compound is still further simplified, and
acquires the name of Confectio Aromatica. The index of that work gives
“Confectio Aromatica vice Confectio Cardiaca.” The formula now runs
thus:--Zedoaria, coarsely powdered, saffron, of each, ½ lb.; water, 3
lb. Macerate for 24 hours, express and strain. Evaporate the strained
liquor to 1½ lb., and add the following, all in fine powder:--compound
powder of crabs’ shells, 16 oz.; cinnamon, nutmeg, of each 2 oz.;
cloves, 8 oz.; cardamom seeds, ½ oz.; sugar, 2 lb. Make a confection.

In the 1809 P.L. the zedoary is abandoned, the quantity of saffron is
reduced to 2 ounces, the pulv. chelis cancrorum co. is described as
testarum præp., and there is no maceration of any of the ingredients.
The powders are simply mixed, and the water added little by little
until the proper consistence is attained.

This formula is retained in the Pharmacopœias of 1824 and 1836, but
in that of 1851 the powdered shells became prepared chalk. In the
Edinburgh Pharmacopœia of 1841, and in that of Dublin of 1850, the
confection was made from aromatic powders of similar composition, made
into confections in P.E. with syrup of orange peel, and in P.D. with
simple syrup and clarified honey. All that remains of this historic
remedy is Pulvis Cretæ Aromaticus B.P., and from this the saffron has
been entirely removed.

Raleigh’s Cordial occasionally turns up in histories. In Aubrey’s
“Brief Lives,” it is stated that “Sir Walter Raleigh was a great
chymist, and amongst some MSS. receipts I have seen some secrets from
him. He made an excellent cordiall, good in feavers. Mr. Robert Boyle
has the recipe and does great cures by it.”

In Strickland’s “Lives of the Queens of England” (Vol. VIII, p. 122) we
are told that, according to the newspapers of the day, William III, in
his last illness was kept alive all through his last night by the use
of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Cordial.

In Lord John Hervey’s “Memoirs of the Reign of George II” (Vol. III, p.
294), the details of the last illness of Queen Caroline, who died in
1737, are narrated. Snake root and Sir Walter Raleigh’s Cordial were
prescribed for her. As the latter took some time to prepare, Ransby,
house surgeon to the King, said one cordial was as good as another,
and gave her Usquebaugh. She, however, took the other mixture when it
came. Afterwards Daffy’s Elixir and mint water were administered.

TAR WATER AS A PANACEA.

George Berkeley was born in 1685 in Kilkenny county, Ireland, but
claimed to be of English extraction. He graduated at Trinity College,
Dublin, and became a Fellow of that College. His metaphysical
speculations made him famous. He was the originator of the view that
the actual existence of matter was not capable of proof. Having been
appointed Dean of Derry he was well provided for, but just then he
became enthusiastically desirous to convert and civilise the North
American Indians. With this object in view he proposed to establish
a University at Bermuda to train students for the work. He got some
college friends to join him, collected about £5,000 from wealthy
supporters, and after long negotiations persuaded the House of Commons
to recommend George I. to grant him a contribution of £20,000 which
never came. It was during that time that he learned of the medicinal
efficacy of tar water from some of the Indian tribes whom he visited.
Some time after his return he was made Bishop of Cloyne, and worked
indefatigably in his diocese. A terrible winter in 1739-40 caused
great distress and was followed by an epidemic of small-pox. It was
then that the Bishop remembered his American experiences. He gave tar
water as a remedy and tar water as a prophylactic, with the result,
as he reported, that those who took the disease had it very mildly if
they had taken tar water. Convinced of its value he gave it in other
illnesses with such success that with characteristic enthusiasm he
came to believe that he had discovered a panacea. Some reports of this
treatment had been published in certain magazines, but in the spring
of 1744 a little book by the Bishop appeared giving a full account of
his experiences. It was entitled “A Chain of Philosophical Reflections
and Enquiries concerning the virtues of Tar Water, and divers other
subjects connected together and arising one from another.” The treatise
was eagerly read and discussed both in Ireland and England. A second
edition was required in a few weeks, and to this the author gave the
short title “Siris” (Greek for chain).

[Illustration: BERKELEY.

(From the British Museum.)
]

The Bishop’s theory was an attractive one. The pine trees he argued,
had accumulated from the sunlight and the air a large proportion of the
vital element of the universe, and condensed it in the tar which they
yielded. The vital element could be drawn off by water and conveyed to
the human organism.

It is not necessary here to follow out his chain of reasoning from
the vital element in tar up to the Supreme Mind from which that vital
principle emanated. On the way the author quoted freely and effectively
from Plato and Pythagoras, from Theophrastus and Pliny, from Boerhaave
and Boyle, and from many other authorities. He showed how the balsams
and resins of the ancient world were of the same nature as tar. Van
Helmont said, “Whoever can make myrrh soluble by the human body has the
secret of prolonging his days,” and Boerhaave had recognised that there
was truth in this remark on account of the anti-putrefactive power of
the myrrh. This was the power which tar possessed in so large a degree.
Homberg had made gold by introducing the vital element in the form of
light into the pores of mercury. The process was too expensive to make
the production of gold by this means profitable, but the fact showed an
analogy with the concentration of the same element in the tar.

Berkeley’s process for making the tar water was simply to pour 1 gallon
of cold water on a quart of tar; stir it with a wooden ladle for five
or six minutes, and then set the vessel aside for three days and
nights to let the tar subside. The water was then to be drawn off and
kept in well-stoppered bottles. Ordinarily half a pint might be taken
fasting morning and night, but to cure disease much larger doses might
be given. It had proved of extraordinary value not only in small-pox,
but also in eruptions and ulcers, ulceration of the bowels and of the
lungs, consumptive cough, pleurisy, dropsy, and gravel. It greatly
aided digestion, and consequently prevented gout. It was a remedy in
all inflammatory disorders and fevers. It was a cordial which cheered,
warmed, and comforted, with no injurious effects.

The nation went wild over this discovery. “The Bishop of Cloyne has
made tar water as fashionable as Vauxhall or Ranelagh,” wrote Duncombe.

The Bishop’s book was translated into most of the European languages,
and tar water attained some degree of popularity on the Continent.
It owed no little of its success in this country to the opposition
it met with from medical writers. The public at once concluded that
they were very anxious about their “kitchen prospects,” to use the
symbolism of Paracelsus. Every attack on tar water called forth several
replies. Berkeley himself responded to some of the criticisms by very
poor verses, which he got a friend to send to the journals with strict
injunctions to keep his name secret.

Paris in “Pharmacologia” refers to the tar water mania, asking “What
but the spell of authority could have inspired a general belief that
the sooty washings of rosin would act as a universal remedy?” It need
hardly be pointed out that the general belief was rather a revolt
against authority than an acceptance of it.

Dr. Young, the author of “Night Thoughts,” wrote: “They who have
experienced the wonderful effects of tar water reveal its excellences
to others. I say reveal, because they are beyond what any can
conceive by reason or natural light. But others disbelieve them
though the revelation is attested past all scruple, because to them
such excellences are incomprehensible. Now give me leave to say that
this infidelity may possibly be as fatal to morbid bodies as other
infidelity is to morbid souls. I say this in honest zeal for your
welfare. I am confident if you persist you’ll be greatly benefited by
it. In old obstinate, chronical complaints, it probably will not show
its virtue under three months; though secretly it is doing good all the
time.”

KINGS BUY SECRET REMEDIES.

In past times it was not unusual for monarchs to purchase from the
inventors of panaceas the secrets of their composition for publication
for the benefit of their subjects. Several instances are mentioned in
other chapters of this book. Among these may be noted Goddard’s Drops,
bought by Charles II., Glauber’s Kermes Mineral or Poudre des Chartres,
Talbor’s Tincture of Bark, and Helvetius’s Ipecacuanha, the secrets of
which were obtained by Louis XIV for fancy prices. In Louis XIV’s reign
the French Government purchased from the Prieur de Cabrier an arcanum
to cure rupture without bandages or operations. The recipe, which was
made public, was that a few drops of spirit of salt were to be taken
in red wine frequently during the day. Mr. Stephens’s Cure for the
Stone was transferred to the public by a payment authorised by Act of
Parliament.

The Emperor Joseph II of Austria paid 1,500 florins somewhere about
the year 1785 for the formula for a secret febrifuge which was at that
time enjoying extreme popularity. It proved to be simply an alcoholic
tincture of box bark (_Buxus sempervirens_). The remedy lost its
prestige as soon as the secret was gone.

_Nouffer’s Tapeworm Cure._

Louis XVI gave 18,000 livres (about £700) to a Madame Nouffer or
Nuffer for a noted cure for tapeworm, which she had inherited from her
deceased husband. As the result of the king’s purchase, a little book
was published in 1775 explaining fully the treatment.

Nouffer was a surgeon living at Morat, in Switzerland. He had practised
his special worm cure treatment for many years, and by it he had
acquired a considerable local fame. After his death his widow, who
knew all about the secret, continued to receive patients. Among those
who came to her was a Russian, Prince Baryantinski, who was staying in
the neighbourhood and had heard of the cure. He had been troubled for
years with tapeworm, and Madame Nouffer’s remedy cured him. The Prince
reported the facts to his regular physician at Paris, and consequently
cases were sent from that city to the Swiss lady. She was so successful
that the king was induced to give her the sum named for the revelation
of her method, which was briefly as follows:--

For a day or two the patient was fed on buttered toast only. Meanwhile
enemas of mallow and marshmallow with a little salt and olive oil were
administered. Then, early in the morning, 3 drachms of powder of male
fern in a teacupful of water was taken. Candied lemon was chewed after
the dose to relieve the nauseousness, and the mouth was washed out with
an aromatic water. If the patient vomited the medicine another dose
was given. Two hours after the male fern a bolus containing 12 grains
each of calomel and resin of scammony, with 5 grains of gamboge, and
with confection of hyacinth as the excipient, had to be taken. A cup
of warm tea was recommended shortly after the bolus. The doses quoted
were regarded as average ones. They might be modified according to the
strength of the patient. Generally the treatment narrated sufficed to
expel the worm. If it did not, the whole proceeding was repeated.

Male fern was a remedy mentioned by Dioscorides and other ancient
writers, but it had been forgotten for centuries until Madame Nouffer’s
system brought it to the recollection of medical practitioners. It
again fell out of use, but a French physician named Jobert revived its
popularity in 1869. He was assisted in the preparation of the remedy by
Mr. Hepp, pharmacien of the Civil Hospital of Strasburg.

_Bestucheff’s Tincture and La Mothe’s Golden Drops._

Alexis Petrovitch Bestoujeff-Rumine, commonly called Count von
Bestoujeff or Bestucheff, was in the service of the Elector George of
Hanover when that Prince was called to reign over Great Britain. He
thereupon became George’s ambassador at St. Petersburg. On the death
of Peter the Great Bestucheff withdrew from the British diplomatic
service, and commenced a varied and stormy political career, under the
three Empresses Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II, who, with brief
intervals, succeeded each other on the Russian throne. He was Foreign
Minister under the first, Grand Chancellor and then a disgraced exile
under the second, recalled and highly honoured by Catherine. During his
banishment he interested himself in a remedy which became enormously
popular at that epoch, known in France as the Golden Drops of General
La Mothe, and in Germany and Russia as Bestucheff’s Tincture. La Mothe
had been in the service of Leopold Ragotzky, Prince of Transylvania,
but retiring from the Army he went to live at Paris and took these
golden drops with him. They were a tincture of perchloride of iron
with spirit of ether, but the public believed them to be a solution of
gold. They were recommended as a marvellous restorative medicine, and
sold (in Paris) at 25 livres (nearly £1) for the half-ounce bottle.
So famous were they that Louis XV sent 200 bottles to the Pope as a
particularly precious gift. Subsequently Louis gave La Mothe a pension
of 4,000 livres a year for the right of making the drops for his Hotel
des Invalides, La Mothe and his widow after him retaining the right to
sell to the public.

Bestucheff sold his recipe to the Empress Catherine for 3,000 roubles,
and by her orders it was passed on to the College of Medicine of St.
Petersburg, which published it under the title of the Tinctura Tonica
Nervina Bestucheffi. The formula at first published was chemically
absurd, but Klaproth corrected it, and the prestige of the quack
medicine was destroyed. But an ethereal tincture of perchloride of iron
was adopted in most of the Continental pharmacopœias.

It is not clear whether Bestucheff and La Mothe were in association at
any time, but their preparations were similar if not identical.

Under the rule of Napoleon I the French Government bought several
formulas of secret remedies for about £100 each. None of them either
had or has since acquired any popular reputation. The formulas were
published in the medical and pharmaceutical journals of the time.

XIII

CHEMICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHARMACY

Chymistry. “An art whereby sensible bodies contained in
vessels, or capable of being contained therein, are so changed
by means of certain instruments, and principally fire, that
their several powers and virtues are thereby discovered, with
a view to philosophy or medicine.”--BOERHAAVE. Quoted
as a definition in Johnson’s Dictionary, 1755.

ACIDS, ALKALIES, AND SALTS.

Under the above title almost the entire history of chemistry might
be easily comprehended. The gradual growth of definite meanings
attached to these terms has been coincident with the attainment of
accurate notions concerning the composition of bodies. To the ancient
philosophers sour wine, acetum vinæ, or acetum as it is still called,
was the only acid definitely known. When the alchemists became busy
trying to extract the virtue out of all substances they produced
several acids by distillation. These they called, for example,
spirit of vitriol, spirit of nitre, spirit of salt, meaning our
sulphuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acids respectively. They regarded
everything obtained by distillation as a spirit. When the theorists
came forward, Becher, Stahl, and their followers, they treated these
acids as original constituents of the substances from which they were
obtained. Thus, when sulphur was burned phlogiston was set free, and
acid remained. Lavoisier believed that the acidifying principle had
been discovered in oxygen, and it was on this theory that he gave that
element its name. But this idea broke down when Davy proved that there
was no oxygen in the so-called muriatic, or oxy-muriatic acid. It was
the subsequent recognition of the law of substitution which made it
clear that the acids are, in fact, salts of hydrogen or of some metal
substituted for the hydrogen.

The history of alkalies is as varied as is that of acids. The
distinction between caustic alkalies and mild alkalies was a problem as
far back as Dioscorides. By burning limestone caustic lime is produced.
It was not an unreasonable presumption that the fire had created this
causticity, and this theory was held with regard to all the alkalies
until it was proved by Joseph Black, in 1756, that the caustic alkali
was the result of a gas, fixed air, he named it, being driven off from
the mild alkali.

The ancient Jews prepared what they called Borith (translated “soap”
in Jeremiah, ii, 22, and Malachi, iii, 2) by filtering water through
vegetable ashes. Borith was therefore an impure carbonate of potash.
It is probable that the salt-wort was generally employed for this
purpose, and some of the old versions of the Old Testament give the
herb “Borith” as the proper sense of the passages referred to above.
In any case the alkaline solution produced from vegetable ashes was
used for bleaching and cleansing purposes. The Roman “lixivium” was
similarly prepared, and the process is still followed in some countries
where there are dense forests. The Arabic word “al-kali” was apparently
applied to the product from the word “qaly,” which meant “to roast.”
The earliest known use of the term is, however, found in the works
of Albertus Magnus, early in the thirteenth century. A process of
making caustic potash by filtering water through vegetable ashes with
quicklime is described in the works attributed to Geber, but this
is in a treatise now known to have been written in the thirteenth
or fourteenth century. It was only in 1736 that the three alkalies,
soda, potash, and ammonia, were definitely distinguished by Duhamel as
mineral, vegetable, and animal or volatile alkalies.

A formula for a solution of caustic potash was given in the P.L.,
1746, under the title of Lixivium Saponarium. Equal parts of Russian
potashes and quicklime were mixed, wetted until the lime was slaked,
water afterwards added freely, and after agitation the solution poured
off. This was ten years before Black’s classic investigation already
referred to. Before Black, and for some time afterwards, there were
several theories in explanation of the action of the lime on the
potashes. The lime had been tamed, but the potash had become more
virulent. One popular suggestion was that the lime had withdrawn a
kind of mucilage from the potashes; another that it had the effect
of developing the power of the potashes by a mechanical process of
comminution. A German chemist named Meyer, who vigorously opposed
Black’s conclusions, maintained that the lime contained a certain
Acidum Causticum or Acidum Pingue, which potashes extracted from it.

In the P.L., 1788, the process was altered by increasing the proportion
of the lime, and the product was described as Aqua Kali Puri.
Subsequently the proportion of the lime employed was reduced.

The word “salt” is traced back to the Greek “hals,” the sea, from which
was formed the adjective “salos,” fluctuating (like the waves), and
subsequently the Latin “sal.” Marine salt was therefore the original
salt, and salts in chemistry were substances more or less resembling
sea-salt. Generally, the term was limited to solids which had a taste
and were soluble in water, but the notion was developed that salt was
a constituent of everything, and this salt was extracted, and was
liable to get a new name each time. Salt of wormwood, for instance, is
one of the names which has survived as a synonym for salt of tartar,
or carbonate of potash. Paracelsus insisted that all the metals were
composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, but these substances were
idealised in his jargon and corresponded with the body, soul, and
spirit, respectively.

Lavoisier was the first chemist who sought to define salts
scientifically. He regarded them as a combination of an acid with a
basic oxide. But when the true nature of chlorine was discovered it was
found that this definition would exclude salt itself. This led to the
adoption of the terms “haloid” and “amphide” salts, the former being
compounds of two elements (now the combination of chlorine, bromine,
iodine, cyanogen, or fluorine with a metal), and the latter being
compounds of two oxides. The names were invented by Berzelius. Since
then salts have been the subjects of various modern theories, electric
and other, but they are always substances in which hydrogen or a metal
substituted for it is combined with a radical. In a wide sense the
acids are also salts.

ALCOHOL.

Al-koh’l was an Arabic word indicating the sulphide of antimony so
generally used by Eastern women to darken their eyebrows, eyelashes,
and the eyes themselves. Similar words are found in other ancient
languages. Cohal in Chaldee is related to the Hebrew kakhal used in
Ezekiel, xxiii, 40, in the sense of to paint or stain. The primary
meaning of alcohol therefore is a stain. Being used especially in
reference to the finely levigated sulphide of antimony, the meaning
was gradually extended to other impalpable powders, and in alchemical
writings the alcohol of Mars, a reduced iron, the alcohol of sulphur,
flowers of brimstone, and similar expressions are common. As late as
1773 Baumé, in his “Chymie Experimentale,” gives “powders of the finest
tenuity” as the first definition, and “spirit of wine rectified to
the utmost degree” as the second explanation of the term alcohol. As
certain of the finest powders were obtained by sublimation the transfer
of the word to a fluid produced by a similar method is intelligible,
and thus came the alcohol of wine, which has supplanted all the other
alcohols.

Distillation is a very ancient process. Evidence exists of its use
by the Chinese in the most remote period of their history, and
possibly they distilled wine. But so far as can be traced spirit was
not produced from wine previous to the thirteenth century. Berthelot
investigated some alleged early references to it and came to the
conclusion indicated. Aristotle alludes to the possibility of rendering
sea water potable by vaporising it, and he also notes elsewhere that
wine gives off an exhalation which emits a flame. Theophrastus mentions
that wine poured on a fire as in libations can produce a flame. Pliny
indicates a particular locality which produced a wine of Falerno,
which was the only wine that could be inflamed by contact with fire.
At Alexandria, in the first century of the Christian era, condensing
apparatus was invented, and descriptions of the apparatus used are
known, but no allusion to the distillation of wine occurs in any
existing reference to the chemistry of that period. Rhazes, who died in
A.D. 925, is alleged to have mentioned a spirit distilled from
wine, but Berthelot shows that this is a misunderstanding of a passage
relating to false or artificial wines.

Water distilled from roses is mentioned by Nicander, about 140 B.C.,
and the same author employs the term ambix for the pot or apparatus
from which this water was obtained. The Arabs adopted this word, and
prefixing to it their article, al, made it into alembic. This in
English appeared for some centuries in the abbreviated form of limbeck.
The Greek ambix was a cup-shaped vessel which was set on or in a fire,
as a crucible was used.

Pissaeleum was a peculiar form of distillation practised by the Romans.
It was an oil of pitch made by hanging a fleece of wool over a vessel
in which pitch was being boiled. The vapour which collected was pressed
out and used.

Distilled waters from roses and aromatic herbs figured prominently
in the pharmacy of the Arabs, and Geber, perhaps in the eighth
century, describes the process, and may have used it for other than
pharmaceutical purposes. Avicenna likens the body of man to a still,
the stomach being the kettle, the head the cap, and the nostrils the
cooling tube from which the distillate drips.

M. Berthelot gives the following from the Book of Fires of Marcus
Grecas, which he says could not be earlier than 1300, as the first
definite indication of a method of producing what was called aqua
ardens. “Take a black wine, thick and old. To ¼ lb. of this add 2
scruples of sulphur vivum in very fine powder, and 2 scruples of common
salt in coarse fragments, and 1 or 2 lbs. of tartar extracted from a
good white wine. Place all in a copper alembic and distil off the aqua
ardens.” The addition of the salt and sulphur, M. Berthelot explains,
was to counteract the supposed humidity.

Albucasis, a Spanish Arab of the eleventh century, is supposed from
some obscure expressions in his writings to have known how to make a
spirit from wine; but Arnold of Villa Nova, who wrote in the latter
part of the thirteenth century, is the first explicitly to refer to it.
He does not intimate that he had discovered it himself, but he appears
to treat it as something comparatively new. Aqua vini is what he calls
it, but some name it, he says, aqua vitæ, or water which preserves
itself always, and golden water. It is well called water of life, he
says, because it strengthens the body and prolongs life. He distilled
herbs with it such as rosemary and sage, and highly commended the
medicinal virtue of these tinctures.

It is worth remarking that when Henry II invaded and conquered Ireland
in the twelfth century the inhabitants were making and drinking a
product which they termed uisge-beatha, now abbreviated into whisky,
the exact meaning of the name being water of life.

Raymond Lully, who acquired much of his chemical lore from Arnold of
Villa Nova, was even more enthusiastic in praise of the aqua vitæ than
his teacher. “The taste of it exceedeth all other tastes, and the
smell all other smells,” he wrote. Elsewhere he describes it as “of
marveylous use and commoditie a little before the joyning of battle to
styre and encourage the soldiers’ minds.” He believed it to be the
panacea so long sought, and regarded its discovery as evidence that
the end of the world was near. The process for making the aqua vitæ as
described by Lully was to digest limpid and well-flavoured red or white
wine for twenty days in a closed vessel in fermenting horse-dung. It
was then to be distilled drop by drop from a gentle fire in a sand-bath.

The chemical constitution of alcohol was speculated upon rather
wildly by the chemists who experimented on it before Lavoisier.
It was held to be a combination of phlogiston with water, but
the phlogiston-philosophers disagreed on the question whether it
contained an oil. Stahl, however, later supported by Macquer, found
that an oil was actually separated from it if mixed with water and
allowed to evaporate slowly in the open air, after treating it with
an acid. Lavoisier, in 1781, carefully analysed spirit of wine and
found that 1 lb. yielded 4 oz. 4 drms. 37½ grains of carbon, 1 oz. 2
drms. 5½ grains of inflammable gas (hydrogen), and 10 oz. 1 drm. 29
grains of water. It was de Saussure who later, following Lavoisier’s
methods of investigation, but with an absolute alcohol which had
been recently produced by Lowitz, a Russian chemist, showed that
oxygen was a constituent of alcohol. Berthelot succeeded in making
alcohol synthetically in 1854. His process was to shake olefiant
gas (C_{2}H_{4}) vigorously with sulphuric acid, dilute the mixture
with eight to ten parts of water, and distil. Meldola, however (“The
Chemical Synthesis of Vital Products,” 1904), insists that an English
chemist, Henry Hennell, anticipated Berthelot in this discovery.

ALUM.

Alum is a substance which considerably mystified the ancient chemists,
who knew the salt but did not understand its composition. Ancient
writers like Pliny and Dioscorides were acquainted with a product which
the former called alumen and which is evidently the same as had been
described by Dioscorides under the name of Stypteria. Pliny says there
were several varieties of this mineral used in dyeing, and it is clear
from his account that his alumen was sometimes sulphate of iron and
sometimes a mixture of sulphate of iron with an aluminous earth. It is
the fact that where the various vitriols are found they are generally
associated with aluminous earth.

Alum as we know it was first prepared in the East and used for dyeing
purposes. Alum works were in existence some time subsequent to the
twelfth century at a place named Rocca in Syria, which may have been a
town of that name on the Euphrates, or more probably was Edessa, which
was originally known as Roccha. It has been supposed that it was the
manufacture of alum at this place which bequeathed to us the name of
Rock or Rocha alum, but the Historical English Dictionary says this
derivation is “evidently unfounded.”

The alchemists were familiar with alum and knew it to be a combination
of sulphuric acid with an unknown earth. Van Helmont was the first to
employ alum as a styptic in uterine hæmorrhage, and Helvetius made a
great reputation for a styptic he recommended for similar cases. His
pills were composed of alum 10 parts, dragon’s blood 3 parts, honey
of roses q.s., made into 4 grain pills, of which six were to be taken
daily. Alum and nutmeg equal parts were given in agues. Paris says the
addition of nutmeg to alum corrects its tendency to disturb the bowels.
It has also been advocated in cancer and typhoid, but these internal
uses have been generally abandoned. Spirit of Alum is occasionally met
with in alchemical writings. It was water charged with sulphuric acid
obtained by the distillation of alum over a naked fire.

Until the fifteenth century the only alum factories from which Europe
was supplied were at Constantinople, Smyrna, and Trebizonde. Beckman
relates that an alum factory was founded in the Isle of Ischia, on
the coast of Tuscany, by a Genoese merchant named Bartholomew Perdix,
who had learnt the art at Rocca. Very soon afterwards John de Castro,
a Paduan who had been engaged in cloth dyeing at Constantinople but
had lost all his property when that city was captured by Mahomet II
in 1453, was appointed to an office in the Treasury of the Apostolic
Chamber, and in the course of his duties found what he believed to be
an aluminous rock at Tolfa, near Civita Vecchia. He asked the Pope,
Pius II, to allow him to experiment, but it was some years before the
necessary permission was granted. When at last the truth of Castro’s
surmise was established the Pope was greatly interested. He looked
upon the discovery as a great Christian victory over the Turks, and
handsomely rewarded de Castro, to whom, besides, a monument was erected
in Padua inscribed “Joanni de Castro, Aluminis inventor.” The factory
brought in a splendid revenue to the Apostolic exchequer, and the Pope
did his utmost to retain the monopoly, for when in consequence of
the extravagant prices to which the Tolfa alum was raised merchants
began again to buy the Eastern product his Holiness issued a decree
prohibiting Christians from purchasing from the infidels under pain
of excommunication. Later, when, in Charles I’s reign, Sir Thomas
Challoner discovered an aluminous deposit near his home at Guisborough
in Yorkshire, and persuaded some of the Pope’s workmen to come there to
work the schist, he and those whom he had tempted away were solemnly
and most vigorously “cursed.”

Meanwhile the nature of the earth with which the sulphuric acid was
combined remained unknown to chemists. Stahl worked at the problem and
came to the conclusion that it was lime. The younger Geoffroy, a famous
pharmacist of Paris, ascertained (1728) that the earth of alum was
identical with that of argillaceous earth and Alumina was for some time
called Argile. Marggraf observed that he could not get alum crystals
from a combination of argile and sulphuric acid, but noting that in
the old factories it had been the custom to add putrid urine to the
solution, for which carbonate of potash was subsequently substituted,
went so far as to make the salt, but did not appreciate that it was
actually a double salt. The name alumina which the earth now bears
was given to it by Morveau. It was Vauquelin (another pharmacist) who
clearly proved the composition of alum, and Lavoisier first suggested
that alumina was the oxide of a metal. Sir Humphry Davy agreed with
this view but failed to isolate the metal. Oersted was the first to
actually extract aluminium from the oxide, but his process was an
impracticable one, but in 1828 Woehler, and in 1858 Deville, found
means of producing the metal in sufficient abundance to make it a
valuable article of industry.

AMMONIA.

The chemical history of ammonia commences in Egypt with Sal
Ammoniac. This is mentioned by Pliny under the name of Hammoniacus
sal. Dioscorides also alludes to it; but in neither case does the
description given fit in satisfactorily with the product known to us.
Dioscorides, for instance, states that sal ammoniac is particularly
prized if it can lie easily split up into rectangular fragments. It
has been conjectured that what was called sal ammoniac by the ancient
writers was, at least sometimes, rock salt.

The name is generally supposed to have been derived from that of the
Egyptian deity, Amn or Amen, or Ammon as the Greeks called him, and
in the belief that he was the same god as Jupiter he is referred to
in classical literature as Zeus-Ammon or Jupiter-Ammon. The principal
temple of this god was situated in an oasis of the Libyan desert which
was then known as Ammonia (now Siwah), and if, as is supposed, the
salt was found or produced in that locality its name is thus accounted
for. Gum ammoniacum was likewise so called in the belief that it was
obtained in that district, though the gum with which we are familiar
and which comes from India and Persia, is quite a different article
from the African gum the name of which it has usurped. Pliny derives
the name of the salt from the Greek “ammos,” sand, as it was found in
the sand of the desert; an explanation which overlooks the fact that
the stuff was called by a similar name in a country where the sand was
not called ammos. In old Latin, French, and English writings “armoniac”
is often met with. This was not inaccurate spelling; it was suggested
by the opinion that the word was connected with Greek, armonia, a
fastening or joining, from the use of sal ammoniac in soldering metals.

That Pliny did sometimes meet with the genuine sal ammoniac is
conjectured by his allusion to the “vehement odour” arising when lime
was mixed with natrum. Probably this natrum was sal ammoniac. Among the
Arabs the term sal ammoniac often means rock salt; but in the writings
attributed to Geber, some of which may be as late as the twelfth or
thirteenth century, our sal ammoniac is distinctly described. It is
also exactly described by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century,
who mentions an artificial as well as a natural product, but does not
indicate how the former was made. From this time sal ammoniac became
a common and much-prized substance in alchemical investigations, as
from it chlorides were obtained. The “volatile spirit of sal ammoniac”
was made by distilling a solution of sal ammoniac with quicklime, and
of course the same product was obtained in other ways, especially
by distilling harts’ horns, and this was always regarded as having
peculiarly valuable properties. A “sal ammoniacum fixum” was known to
the alchemists of the fifteenth century. It was obtained as a residue
after sal ammoniac and quicklime had been sublimed. It was simply
chloride of calcium.

The so-called natural sal ammoniac was for centuries brought from
Egypt, and was supposed to have been mined in the earth or sand of
that country. In 1716 the younger Geoffroy came to the conclusion
that it must be a product of sublimation, and he read a paper to the
French Academy giving his reasons for this opinion. Homberg and Lemery
opposed this view with so much bitterness, however, that the paper was
not printed. In 1719 M. Lemaire, French Consul at Cairo, sent to the
Academy an account of the method by which sal ammoniac was produced in
Egypt, and this report definitely confirmed the opinion which Geoffroy
had formed. It was, said M. Lemaire, simply a salt sublimed from soot.
The fuel used in Egypt was exclusively the dung of camels and other
animals which had been dried by the sun. It consisted largely of
sal ammoniac, and this was retained in the soot. For a long time an
artificial sal ammoniac had been manufactured at Venice, and a commoner
sort also came from Holland. These were reputed to be made from human
or animal urine. The manufacture of sal ammoniac was commenced in
London early in the eighteenth century by a Mr. Goodwin.

A formula for Sal Ammoniacum Factitium in Quincy’s Dispensatory (1724)
is as follows:--Take of Urine lb. x.; of Sea-salt lb. ii.; of Wood soot
lb. i.; boil these together in a mass, then put them in a subliming
pot with a proper head, and there will rise up what forms these cakes.
Dr. James (1764) states that at Newcastle one gallon of the bittern or
liquor which drains from common salt whilst making, was mixed with 3
gallons of urine. The mixture was set aside for 48 hours to effervesce
and subside. Afterwards the clear liquor was drawn off and evaporated
in leaden vessels to crystallisation. The crystals were sublimed. A
sal ammoniacum volatile was made by subliming sal ammoniac and salt of
tartar (or lime or chalk) together. Sometimes some spices were put into
the retort. This salt was used for smelling-bottles. Aqua regia was
made by distilling sal ammoniac and saltpetre together.

Sal Volatile Oleosum was introduced by Sylvius (de la Boe) about the
year 1650. It became a medicated stimulant of the utmost popularity,
and there were many formulas for it. One of the most famous was
Goddard’s Drop. (See page 319).

Ammonia in gaseous form was first obtained by Priestley in 1774.
He called it alkaline air. Scheele soon after established that it
contained nitrogen and Berthollet proved its chemical composition in
1785.

SPIRITUS AMMONIÆ AROMATICUS

was first inserted in the P.L. 1721, under the title of “Spiritus Salis
Volatilis Oleosus.” Cinnamon, mace, cloves, citron, sal ammoniac, and
salts of tartar were distilled with spirit of wine. In 1746 the process
was altered, sal ammoniac and fixed alkali being first distilled with
proof spirit to yield “spiritus salis anmioniaci dulcis,” to which
essential oils of lemon, nutmeg, and cloves were added, and the mixture
was then re-distilled. In 1788 the spirit became spiritus ammoniæ
compositus, and the redistillation when the oils had been added was
omitted. The name spiritus ammoniæ aromaticus was first adopted in the
P.L. 1809, and has been retained ever since, though the process of
making it has been frequently varied. That title was first given to it
in the Dublin Pharmacopœia of 1807. Spiritus Salinus Aromaticus was the
first title adopted in the Edinburgh Pharmacopœia. It was a preparation
similar to that of the P.L., but angelica, marjoram, galangal, anthos
flowers, orange, and lemon were additional flavours.

Quincy (1724) credits Sylvius with the invention of this spirit, which
he refers to as “mightily now in use,” and as “a most noble cephalic
and cordial.” It had “almost excluded the use of spirit of hartshorn.”
This preparation, invented by Sylvius, was called the Carminative
Spirit of Sylvius.

Mindererus’s Spirit, made from distilled vinegar and the volatile
spirit of hartshorn, is believed by many competent authorities to have
possessed virtues which are not contained in the modern liquor ammonii
acetati. The late Professor Redwood was one of these. He believed that
the old preparation contained a trace of cyanic ether. The new liquor,
he said, made from strong caustic solution of ammonia and strong acetic
acid, “is but the ghost of the old preparation. It is as unlike the
true Mindererus’s Spirit as a glass of vapid distilled water is unlike
the sparkling crystal water as it springs from a gushing fountain”
(_Pharm. Jnl._, Vol. V., N.S. p. 408). Mindererus was a physician of
Augsburg who died in 1621. It was Boerhaave in 1732 who advocated the
use of Mindererus’s Spirit and made it popular.

Eau de Luce, which was official in the P.L. 1824, under the title of
Spiritus Ammoniæ Succinatus, was an ammonia compound which became
popular in France, and, in some degree all over Europe, about the
middle of the eighteenth century, and was apparently first sold for
removing grease from cloth and other fabrics. It is said that one of
the pupils of Bernard Jussieu, having been bitten by a viper, applied
some of the preparation, and was cured by it. It thence acquired a
medical fame, which it still retains. The P.L. formula ordered 3
drachms of mastic, 4 minims of oil of amber, and 14 minims of oil of
lavender to be dissolved in 9 fluid drachms of rectified spirit, and
mixed with 10 fluid ounces of solution of ammonia. In some of the
Continental pharmacopœias a much larger proportion of oil of amber is
prescribed, and sometimes only that and spirit of ammonia. In some
soap is ordered. In the P.L., 1851, the oil of amber was omitted.
It has been recommended for external application in rheumatism and
paralysis.

It has been generally asserted that this preparation was devised by a
pharmacist of Lille (some say of Amsterdam), of the name of Luce. It
is also asserted that a Paris pharmacist named Dubalen originated it,
and that he and his successor Juliot made it popular; that Luce of
Lille imitated it, but that not being able to get it purely white added
some copper and gave it a blue tint which came to be a mark of its
genuineness. Among the names applied to it have been Aqua Luccana, Aqua
Sancti Luciæ, Aqua Lucii, and Eau de Lusse.

BROMINE.

Bromine, isolated by Balard in 1826, was named by the discoverer
Muride, from Muria, brine. Its actual name was suggested by Gay Lussac
from Bromos, a stench.

Schultzenberger relates, on the authority of Stas, that some years
before the discovery of bromine by Balard, a bottle of nearly pure
bromine was sent to Liebig by a German company of manufacturers of
salt, with the request that he would examine it. Somewhat carelessly
the great chemist tested the product and assumed that it was chloride
of iodine. But he put away the bottle, probably with the intention of
investigating it more closely when he had more leisure. When he heard
of Balard’s discovery he turned to this bottle and realised what he had
missed. Schultzenberger says he kept it in a special cupboard labelled
“Cupboard of Mistakes,” and would sometimes show it to his friends as
an example of the danger of coming to a conclusion too promptly.

COLLODION.

Pyroxylin was discovered by Schönbein in 1847, and the next year an
American medical student at Boston, Massachussets, described in the
American Journal of the Medical Sciences his experiments showing the
use that could be made of this substance in surgery when dissolved in
ether and alcohol. By painting it on a band of leather one inch wide
and attaching this to the hand, he caused the band to adhere so firmly
that it could not be detached by a weight of twenty pounds.

EPSOM SALTS.

The medicinal value of the Epsom springs was discovered, it is
believed, towards the end of the sixteenth century, in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. According to a local tradition the particular spring
which became so famous was not used for any purpose until one very
dry summer, when the farmer on whose land it existed bethought him to
dig the ground round about the spring, so as to make a pond for his
cattle to drink from. Having done this he found that the animals would
not touch the water, and on tasting it himself he appreciated their
objection to it. The peculiar merits of the water becoming known,
certain London physicians sent patients to Epsom to drink it, and it
proved especially useful in the cases of some who suffered with old
ulcers. Apparently the sores were washed with it. The name of the
farmer who contributed this important item to medical history was Henry
Wicker or Wickes.

In 1621 the owner of the estate where the spring had been found walled
in the well, and erected a shed for the convenience of the sick
visitors, who were then resorting to Epsom in increasing numbers.
By 1640 the Epsom Spa had become famous. The third Lord North, who
published a book called the Forest of Varieties in 1645, claimed to
have been the first to have made known the virtues of both the Epsom
and the Tonbridge waters to the King’s sick subjects, “the journey to
the German Spa being too expensive and inconvenient to sick persons,
and great sums of money being thereby carried out of the kingdom.”

After the Restoration Epsom became a fashionable watering-place. Before
1700 a ball-room had been built, and a promenade laid out; a number of
new inns and boarding-houses had been opened; sedan-chairs and hackney
coaches crowded the streets; and sports and play of all kinds were
provided. Pepys mentions visits to Epsom more than once in his Diary,
and Charles II and some of his favourites were there occasionally. The
town reached its zenith of gaiety in the reign of Queen Anne, who with
her husband, Prince George of Denmark, frequently drove from Windsor to
Epsom to drink the waters.

An apothecary living at Epsom in those times, and who had prospered
abundantly from the influx of visitors, is alleged to have done much to
check the hopeful prospects of the Surrey village. Much wanted more,
and Mr. Levingstern, the practitioner referred to, thought he saw his
way to a large fortune. He found another spring about half a mile from
the Old Wells, bought the land on which it was situated, built on it a
large assembly room for music, dancing, and gambling, and provided a
multitude of attractions, including games, fashion shops, and other
luxuries. At first he drew the crowds away from the Old Wells. But his
Epsom water did not give satisfaction. For some reason it brought the
remedial fame of the springs generally into disrepute. Then Levingstern
bought the lease of the Old Wells, and, unwisely it may be thought,
shut them up altogether. The glory of Epsom had departed, and though
several efforts were made subsequently to tempt society back to it,
they were invariably unsuccessful. The building at the Old Wells was
pulled down in 1802, and a private house built on the site. This house
is called The Wells, and the original well is still to be seen in the
garden. The very site of Mr. Levingstern’s “New Wells” is now doubtful.
He died in 1827.

In 1695 Nehemiah Grew, physician, and secretary of the Royal Society,
wrote a treatise “On the Bitter Cathartic Salt in the Epsom Water.”
Dr. Grew names 1620 as about the date when the medicinal spring was
discovered at Epsom by a countryman, and he says that for about ten
years the countrypeople only used it to wash external ulcers. He
relates that it was Lord Dudley North, who apparently lived near by,
who first began to take it as a medicine. He had been in the habit
of visiting the German spas, as he “laboured under a melancholy
disposition.” He used it, we are told, with abundant success, and
regarded it as a medicine sent from heaven. Among those whom he induced
to take the Epsom waters were Maria de Medicis, the mother of the wife
of Charles I, Lord Goring, the Earl of Norwich, and many other persons
of quality. These having shown the way, the physicians of London began
to recommend the waters, and then, Dr. Grew tells us, the place got
crowded, as many as 2,000 persons having taken the water in a single
day.

[Illustration: DR. NEHEMIAH GREW.

Born, 1628; died, 1711.

(From an engraving by R. White, from life.)

Dr. Grew was for many years secretary of the Royal Society and
editor of the _Philosophical Transactions_. He was one of the
pioneers of the science of structural botany and author of
_The Anatomy of Plants_.
]

It was Dr. Grew who first extracted the salt from the Epsom water, and
his treatise deals principally with that. He describes the effect of
adding all sorts of chemicals, oil of vitriol, salt of tartar, nitre,
galls, syrup of violets, and other substances to the solution; explains
how it differs from the sal mirabilis (sulphate of soda); and writes of
its delicate bitter taste as if he were commenting on a new wine. It
most resembles the crystals of silver, he says, in the similitude of
taste.

As to the medicinal value of this salt Dr. Grew says it is free from
the malignant quality of most cathartics, never violently agitates the
humours, nor causes sickness, faintings, or pains in the bowels. He
recommends it for digestive disorders, heartburn, loss of appetite,
and colic; in hypochondriacal distemper, in stone, diabetes, jaundice,
vertigo, and (to quote the English translation) “in wandering gout,
vulgarly but erroneously called the rheumatism.” It will exterminate
worms in children in doses of 1½ to 2 drachms, if given after 1, 2, or
3 grains of mercurius dulcis, according to age. Epsom salts were not to
be given in dropsy, intermittent fevers, chlorosis, blood-spitting, to
paralytics, or to women with child.

“I generally prescribe,” writes the doctor, “one, two, or three pints
of water, aromatised with a little mace, to which I add ½ oz. or 1 oz.,
or a greater dose of the salt.” He gives a specimen prescription which
orders 1 oz. or 10 drachms of the salt in 2 quarts of spring water,
with 1 drachm of mace. This dose (2 quarts, remember) was to be taken
in the morning in the course of two hours, generally warm, and taking
a little exercise meanwhile. This was what was called an apozem. You
might add to the apozem, if thought desirable, 3 drachms of senna and
1½ oz. or 2 oz. of flaky manna.

Mr. Francis Moult, Chymist, at the sign of the Glauber’s Head, Watling
Street, London, translated Dr. Grew’s treatise into English, and gave
a copy to buyers of the Bitter Purging Salts. Probably he was the
“furnace philosopher” referred to by Quincy (see below), though it is
difficult to see what there was to object to in his action.

George and Francis Moult (the latter was, no doubt, the chymist who
kept the shop in Watling Street) in about the year 1700 found a more
abundant supply of the popular salt in a spring at Shooter’s Hill,
where it is recorded they boiled down as much as 200 barrels of the
water in a week, obtaining some 2 cwt. of salt from these. Some time
after, a Dr. Hoy discovered a new method of producing an artificial
salt which corresponded in all respects with the cathartic salts
obtained from Epsom water, and which by reason of the price soon drove
the latter out of the market, and caused the Shooter’s Hill works to
be closed. It was known that Hoy’s salt was made from sea water, and
at first it was alleged to be the sal mirabilis of Glauber, sulphate
of soda. But this was disproved, and experiments were carried on at
the salt works belonging to Lady Carrington at Portsmouth, and later
at Lymington, where the manufacture settled for many years, the source
being the residue after salt had been made, called the bittern--salts
of magnesium, in fact. This was the principal source of supply, though
it was made in many places and under various patents until in 1816 Dr.
Henry, of Manchester, took out a patent for the production of sulphate
of magnesia from dolomite.

It should be mentioned that it was by the examination of Epsom salts
that Black was led to his epoch-making discovery of the distinction
between the alkaline earths, and also of fixed air, in 1754.

In Quincy’s “Dispensatory” (1724), medicinal waters like those of Epsom
are described as Aquæ Aluminosæ. It is stated that there are many
in England, scarce a county without them. The principal ones about
London are at Epsom, Acton, Dulwich, and North-hall. They all “abound
with a salt of an aluminous and nitrous nature,” and “greatly deterge
the stomach and bowels.” But it is easy to take them too frequently,
so that “the salts will too much get into the blood, which by their
grossness will gradually be collected in the capillaries and glands to
obstruct them and occasion fevers.” After some more advice Quincy adds--

“It is difficult to pass this article without setting a mark
upon that abominable cheat which is now sold by the name
of Epsom waters. Dr. Grew, who was a most worthy physician
and an industrious experimenter, made trial how much salt
these waters would leave upon evaporation, and found that a
gallon left about two drams, or near, according to my best
remembrance, for I have not his writings by me. He likewise
found the salt thus procured answered the virtues of the water
in its cathartic qualities. Of this an account was given
before the Royal Society in a Latin dissertation. But the
avaricious craft of a certain furnace-philosopher could not
let this useful discovery in natural knowledge rest under the
improvement and proper use of persons of integrity; but he
pretended to make a great quantity for sale; and to recommend
his salt translated the Doctor’s Lecture into English to give
away as a quack-bill.”

Quincy proceeds to tell us how other competitors came in, and how
the price was so reduced that what was first sold at one shilling an
ounce, and could not honestly be made under (Quincy apparently refers
to the salt made by evaporation), came down in a short time to thirty
shillings per hundredweight.

ETHER.

The action of sulphuric acid on spirit of wine is alluded to in
the works of Raymond Lully in the thirteenth century, and in those
attributed to Basil Valentine, by whom the product is described as
“an agreeable essence and of good odour.” Valerius Cordus, in 1517,
described a liquor which he called Oleum Vitrioli Dulce in his
“Chemical Pharmacopœia.” This was intended to represent the Spiritus
Vitrioli Antepilepticus Paracelsi. It was prepared by distilling a
mixture of equal parts of sulphuric acid and spirit of wine, after this
mixture had been digested in hot ashes for two months. Probably the
product obtained by Cordus was what came to be called later the sweet
oil of wine, and not what we know as sulphuric ether.

The first ether made for medicinal purposes was manufactured in the
laboratory directed by Robert Boyle, and it is said that he and Sir
Isaac Newton made some experiments with it at the time. A paper
describing his ether investigations was published by Newton in the
“Philosophical Transactions” for May, 1700. In 1700 a paper on ether
was published by Dr. Frobenius in the “Philosophical Transactions,” and
in the same publication in 1741 a further paper appeared giving the
process by which Frobenius had prepared his “Spiritus Vini Ethereus.”
Equal parts of oil of vitriol and highly rectified spirit of wine by
weight were distilled until a dense liquid began to pass; the retort
was then cooled, half the original weight of spirit was added, and
the distillation again renewed. This process was repeated as long as
ether was produced. Frobenius had been associated with Ambrose Godfrey
in Boyle’s laboratory, and Godfrey had been supplying ether for some
years, but he does not seem to have published his process. It was in
Frobenius’s first paper, published in 1730, that the name of ether was
first proposed for the product, which had been previously known as Aqua
Lulliana, Aqua Temperata, Oleum Dulce Paracelsi, and such-like fancy
titles. Frobenius, it was understood, was a _nom de plume_. Ambrose
Godfrey Hanckwitz, Boyle’s chemist, sharply criticised Frobenius’s
article, said it was a rhapsody in the style of the alchemists, and
that the experiments indicated had been already described by Boyle.
Godfrey was, in fact, at that time making and selling this interesting
substance. In France, the Duke of Orleans, a clever chemist, who was
suspected to have had some association with the famous poisonings of
his time, and whose laboratory was at the Abbaye Ste. Genevieve, was
the first to produce ether in quantities of a pint at a time.

Hoffmann’s “Mineral Anodyne Liquor,” the original of our Spiritus
Ætheris Co., was a semi-secret preparation much prescribed by the
famous inventor. He said it was composed of the dulcified spirit of
vitriol and the aromatic oil which came over after it. But he did not
state in what proportion he mixed these, nor the exact process he
followed.

The chemical nature of sulphuric ether was long in doubt. Macquer, who
considered that ether was alcohol deprived of its aqueous principle,
was the most accurate of the early investigators. Scheele held
that ether was dephlogisticated alcohol. Pelletier described it as
alcohol oxygenised at the expense of the sulphuric acid. De Saussure,
Gay-Lussac, and Liebig studied the substance, but it was Dumas and
Boullay in 1837, and Williamson in 1854, who cleared up the chemistry
of ethers.

Ether is alcohol, two molecules deprived of H_{2}O [alcohol,
C_{2}H_{5}O HO; ether, (C_{2}H_{5})_{2}O]. Distilling spirit of wine
and sulphuric acid together, it seemed obvious that the sulphuric
acid should possess itself of the H_{2}O, and leave the ether. But on
this theory it was not possible to explain the invariable formation
of sulphovinic acid (a sulphate of ethyl) in the process, nor the
simultaneous distillation of water with the ether. Williamson proved
that the acid first combined with the alcohol molecule, setting
the water free, and that then an excess of alcohol decomposed the
sulphovinic acid thus formed into free sulphuric acid and ether, this
circuit proceeding continuously.

SPIRIT OF NITROUS ETHER.

This popular medicine has been traced back to Raymond Lully in the
thirteenth century, and to Basil Valentine. But the doctor who brought
it into general use was Sylvius (de la Boe) of Leyden, for whom it was
sold as a lithontryptic at a very high price. It first appeared in
the P.L., 1746, as Spiritus Nitri dulcis. In English this was for a
long time called “dulcified spirit of nitre,” and in the form of sweet
spirit of nitre still remains on our labels. In the P.L., 1788, the
title was changed to Spiritus Ætheris nitrosi, and in that of 1809 to
Spiritus Ætheris nitrici. The process ordered in the first official
formula was to distil 6 oz. (apoth. weight) of nitric acid of 1·5
specific gravity, with 32 fluid oz. of rectified spirit. Successive
reductions were made in the proportion and strength of the acid in the
pharmacopœias of 1809, 1824, and 1851, to 3½ fluid ounces of nitric
acid, sp. gr. 1·42, with 40 fluid ounces of rectified spirit, and a
product of 28 fluid ounces. The object of these several modifications
was to avoid the violent reaction which affected the nature of the
product.

ETHIOPS.

Æthiops or Ethiops originally meant a negro or something black. The
word is alleged to have been derived from aithein, to burn, and ops,
the face, but this etymology was probably devised to fit the facts.
There is no historical evidence in its favour. Most likely the word
was a native African one of unknown meaning. It became a popular
pharmaceutical term two or three hundred years ago, but is now almost
obsolete, at least in this country. In France several mercurial
preparations are still known by the name of Ethiops. There are, for
instance, the Ethiops magnesium, the Ethiops saccharine, and the
Ethiops gommeux; combinations of mercury with magnesia, sugar, and gum
acacia respectively. These designations echo the mysteries of alchemy.

Ethiops alone meant Ethiops Mineral. This was a combination of mercury
and sulphur, generally equal parts, rubbed together until all the
mercury was killed. It was a very uncertain preparation, but was
believed to be specially good for worms. “Infallible against the
itch,” says Quincy, 1724. Its chemical composition varied from a mere
mixture of the two substances to a mixture of sulphur and bisulphide
of mercury, according to the conditions in which it was kept. It was
formerly known as the hypnotic powder of Jacobi.

Ethiops Martial was the black oxide of iron. It was a mixture of
protoxide and sesquioxide of iron. Lemery’s process was the one
usually recommended, but perhaps not always followed. It was to keep
iron filings always covered with water and frequently stirred for
several months until the oxide was a smooth black powder. Lemery’s
Crocus Martis was a similar preparation but contained more of the
sesquioxide. The Edinburgh and Dublin Pharmacopœias of 1826 ordered
simply scales of iron collected from a blacksmith’s anvil, purified by
applying a magnet, and reduced to a fine powder. This was a favourite
preparation of iron with Sydenham. Made into pills with extract of
wormwood, the Ethiops Martial constituted the pilula ferri of Swediaur.

Ethiopic pills were similar to Plummer’s pills (pil. calomel. co.).
Guy’s ethiopic powder was once a well-known remedy for worms. It was
composed of equal parts of pure rasped tin, mercury, and sulphur.
Vegetable ethiops was the ashes of fucus vesiculosus which were
given in scrofulous complaints and in goitre before iodine was
discovered. The ashes contain a small proportion of iodine. Dr. Runel
(“Dissertation on the Use of Sea Water,” 1759) says it far exceeds
burnt sponge in virtue.

Huxham recommended an Aethiops Antimoniale, composed of two parts of
sulphide of antimony and one part of flowers of sulphur. The older
Aethiops Antimoniale was a combination of antimony chloride with
mercury, and was given in venereal and scrofulous complaints. Mercury
with chalk was sometimes called absorbent ethiops, or alkalised ethiops.

IODINE

was discovered by Bernard Courtois in 1811. Courtois, who was born at
Dijon in 1777, was apprenticed to a pharmacist at Auxerre named Fremy,
grandfather of the noted chemist of that name, and was afterwards
associated as assistant with Seguin, Thénard, and Fourcroy. He had
worked with the first-named of these in the isolation of the active
principle of opium, whereby Seguin so nearly secured the glory of
the discovery of the alkaloids. In 1811 Courtois was manufacturing
artificial nitre, and experimenting on the extraction of alkali from
seaweed. He had crystallised soda from some of the mother liquor until
it would yield no more crystals, and then he warmed the liquor in a
vessel to which a little sulphuric acid had been accidentally added.
He was surprised to see beautiful violet vapours disengaged, and from
these scales of a grayish-black colour and of metallic lustre were
deposited.

Courtois was too busy at the time to follow up his discovery, but he
brought it to the notice of a chemist friend named Clement. The latter
presented a report of his experiments to the Academy of Sciences on
November 20th, 1813, two years after Courtois’s first observation. No
suggestion was made by Courtois or Clement of the new substance being
an element.

This deduction became the occasion of an acrimonious dispute between
Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy. The English chemist happened to be in
Paris (by special favour of Napoleon) at the time when Clement read
his paper. He immediately commenced experimenting, and was apparently
the first to suspect the elementary nature of iodine. His claim
was confirmed by a communication he made to Cuvier. But Gay-Lussac
forestalled his announcement in a paper he read at the Academy on
December 6th, 1813. Davy complained of the trick Gay-Lussac played him,
and Hofer, who investigated the circumstances, came to the conclusion
that Davy was certainly the first to recognise iodine as a simple
_body_, and to give it its name from the Greek, Ion, violet. Ion was
originally Fion, but had lost its initial. The Latin viola was derived
from the original word.

Jean Francois Coindet, of Geneva (an Edinburgh graduate), suspected
that iodine was the active constituent of burnt sponge, which had long
been empirically employed in goitre and scrofula, and having proved
that this was the case, was the first physician to use iodine as a
remedy. The pharmaceutical forms and the medical uses of iodine have
been very numerous during the century which has almost elapsed since
its introduction, but it would be impossible even to detail them here.

Iodoform was first prepared by Serullas about 1828, and its chemical
composition was elucidated by Dumas soon after. It was first used in
medicine by Bouchardat in 1836, and then dropped out of practice for
about twenty years, when it again appeared in French treatises, and its
use soon became general as an antiseptic application.

Bernard Courtois was awarded 6,000 francs by the Academy of Sciences in
1832, but he died in Paris in 1838 in poverty. He had been ruined in
1815 by the competition of East Indian saltpetre with the artificial
nitre which he was manufacturing. In that year the prohibitive duty on
the native product was removed. When the Academy awarded 6,000 francs
to Courtois it also voted 3,000 francs to Coindet, who had so promptly
made medical use of Courtois’ discovery.

LITHIUM.

Lithium, the oxide of which was discovered in 1807 by Arfwedson, was
first suggested as a remedy for gout by Dr. Ure in 1843. He based his
proposal on an observation by Lipowitz of the singular power of lithium
in dissolving uric acid. Dr. Garrod popularised the employment of the
carbonate of lithium in medicine. Most of the natural mineral waters
which had acquired a reputation in gouty affections have been found to
contain lithium.

MAGNESIA.

The first use of carbonate of magnesia medicinally was in the form
of a secret medicine which must have acquired much popularity in the
beginning of the eighteenth century. It was prepared, says Bergmann,
by a regular canon at Rome, sold under the title of the powder of the
Count of Palma, and credited with almost universal virtues. The method
of preparation was rigidly concealed, but it evidently attracted the
attention of chemists and physicians, for it appears that in 1707
Valentini published a process by which a similar product could be
obtained from the mother liquor of “nitre” (soda) by calcination. In
1709 Slevogt obtained a powder exactly resembling it by precipitating
magnesia from a solution of the sulphate by potash. Lancisi reported
on it in 1717, and in 1722 Hoffmann went near to explaining the
distinction between the several earthy salts, which in his time were
all regarded as calcareous.

Hoffmann’s process to obtain the powder was to add a solution of
carbonate of potash to the mother liquor from which rough nitre had
been obtained (solution of chloride of magnesium), and collect the
precipitate. This being yielded by two clear solutions gave to the
carbonate of magnesia precipitated the name of Miraculum Chemicum.

Magnesia was the name of a district in Thessaly, and of two cities in
Asia Minor. The Greek “magnesia lithos,” magnesian stone, has been
frequently applied to the lodestone, but this can hardly have been
correct, as the magnesian stone was described as white and shining
like silver. Liddell and Scott think talc was more probably the
substance. The alchemists sometimes mention a magnesia, but the name
seems to have been a very elastic one with them. The Historical English
Dictionary quotes the following reference to the word from “Norton Ord.
Alch.,” 1477:--“Another stone you must have ... a stone glittering
with perspicuitie ... the price of an ounce conveniently is Twenty
Shillings. Her name is Magnetia. Few people her knows.”

Paracelsus uses the term in the sense of an amalgam. He writes of the
Magnesia of Gold. In Pomet’s “History of Drugs,” 1712, magnesia meant
manganese. Hoffmann, 1722, first applied the name to oxide of magnesia,
adapting it from the medical Latin term, magnes carneus, flesh magnet,
because it adheres so strongly to the lips, the fancy being that it
attracts the flesh as the lodestone attracts iron.

Hoffmann’s observations on magnesia and its salts, which were published
in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, were very intelligent,
and undoubtedly it was he who first distinguished magnesia from chalk.
He says “A number of springs, among which I may mention Eger, Elster,
Schwalbach, and Wilding, contain a neutral salt which has not yet
received a name, and which is almost unknown. I have also found it
in the waters of Hornhausen which owe to this salt their aperient
and diuretic properties. Authors commonly call it nitre; but it has
nothing in common with nitre. It is not inflammable, its crystallising
form is entirely different, and it does not yield aqua fortis. It is a
neutral salt similar to the arcanum duplicatum (sulphate of potash),
bitter in taste, and producing on the tongue a sensation of cold.”
He further states that the salt in question appears to proceed from
the combination of sulphuric acid with a calcareous earth of alkaline
nature. The combination “is effected in the bosom of the earth.” In
another of his works Hoffmann distinguishes the magnesian salt from one
of lime, showing particularly that the latter was but slightly soluble
and had scarcely any taste. Crabs’ eyes and egg shells he notes combine
with sulphuric acid and form salts with no taste. The sulphate of this
earth (Epsom salt) he found had a strong bitter taste.

The true character of magnesia and its salts was not clearly understood
until Joseph Black unravelled the complications of the alkaline salts
by his historic investigation, which became one of the most noted
epochs of chemistry by its incidental revelation of the combination of
the caustic alkalies with what Black termed “fixed air,” subsequently
named carbonic acid gas by Lavoisier in 1784. When Black was studying
medicine at Edinburgh a lively controversy was in progress in medical
circles on the mode of action of the lithontriptic medicines which
had lately been introduced. Drs. Whytt and Aston, both university
professors, were the leaders in this dispute. Whytt held that lime
water made from oyster shells was more effective for dissolving calculi
in the bladder than lime water prepared from ordinary calcareous stone.
Alston insisted that the latter was preferable. Black was interested,
and his experiments convinced him of the scientific importance of his
discoveries. He postponed taking his degree for some time in order
to be sure of his facts. His graduation thesis, which was dated June
11, 1754, was entitled “De humore acide cibis orto et magnesia alba.”
His full treatise, “Experiments upon magnesia alba, quicklime, and
some other alkaline substances,” was published in 1756. It had been
previously believed that the process of calcining certain alkaline
salts whereby caustic alkalies were produced was explained by the
combination with the salt of an acrid principle derived from the
fire. Now it was shown that something was lost in the process; that
the calcined alkali weighed less than the salt experimented with. The
something expelled Black proved was an air, and an air different from
that of the atmosphere, which was generally supposed to be the one
air of the universe. He identified it with the “gas sylvestre” of Van
Helmont, and named it “fixed air.” Magnesia alba first appeared in the
London Pharmacopœia of 1787 under that name.

[Illustration: JOSEPH BLACK LECTURING (AFTER JOHN RAY)

(From a print in the British Museum.)
]

The oxide of magnesia was believed to be an elementary substance until
Sir Humphry Davy separated the metal from the earth by his electrolytic
method in the presence of mercury. By this means he obtained an
amalgam, and by oxidising this he reproduced magnesia and left the
mercury free, thus proving that the earth was an oxide of a metal.
In 1830 Bussy isolated the magnesium by heating in a glass tube some
potassium covered with fragments of chloride of magnesium, and washing
away the chloride of potassium formed. Magnesium in small globules
was left in the tube. The metal is now prepared on an industrial
scale either by electrolysis, or by fusing fluor-spar with sodium. At
present the uses of magnesium and of its derivatives are infinitesimal
in comparison with the vast quantities available in deposits, as in
dolomite, and in the sea.

NITRE

among the ancient Greeks and Romans generally meant carbonate of soda,
sometimes carbonate of potash. The Arab chemists, however, clearly
described nitrate of potash. In the works attributed to Geber and
Marcus Græcus, especially, its characters are represented. Raymond
Lully, in the thirteenth century, mentions sal nitri, and evidently
alludes to saltpetre, and Roger Bacon always meant nitrate of potash
when he wrote of nitre. It was not, however, until the seventeenth
century that the term acquired the definite meaning which we attach to
it.

At the beginning of that century there was much discussion as to the
formation of nitre, as it had been held that the acid which combined
with the alkali was ready formed in the atmosphere. Glauber was the
first to argue that vegetables formed saltpetre from the soil. Stahl
taught that the acid constituent of nitre was vitriolic acid combined
with phlogiston emanating from putrefying vegetable matter.

After gunpowder had become a prime necessity of life, saltpetre bounded
upwards in the estimation of kings and statesmen. In France in 1540
an Edict was issued commissioning officials called “salpêtriers” in
all districts who were authorised to seek for saltpetre in cellars,
stables, dovecotes, and other places where it was formed naturally.
No one was permitted to pull down a building of any sort without
first giving due notice to the salpêtriers. The “Salpêtrière” Asylum
in Paris recalls one of the national factories of nitre. During the
French Revolution citizens were “invited” to lixiviate the soil and
ceilings of their cellars, stables, etc., and to supply the Republic
with saltpetre for gunpowder. The Government paid 24 sous, 1s., a pound
for the nitre thus procured, though, as this was no doubt paid in
assignats, it was cheap enough. It was estimated that 16,000,000 lbs. a
year were thus provided.

PETROLEUM.

Under the name of naphtha and other designations petroleum has been
known and used from the earliest times. The Persians were the first,
as far as is known, to employ it for lighting, and also for cooking.
They likewise made use of it as a liniment for rheumatism. So in this
country, a kind of petroleum was sold as a liniment under the name of
British oil; and in America, long before the great oil industry had
been thought of, petroleum was popular as a liniment for rheumatism
under the name of Seneca Oil.

Asphalt, or Bitumen of Judæa, was used by the Egyptians for embalming.
Probably they reduced its solidity by naphtha. Naphtha was employed
by Medea to render the robe which she presented to her rival Glauca
inflammable, and this legend is given to account for the name of Oil
of Medea, by which petroleum was anciently known. It was no doubt the
principal ingredient in the Greek Fire of the middle ages.

Petroleum has been called by many other names. Oil of Peter or Petre
was a common one, meaning, like petroleum, simply rock oil. Myrepsus,
in the thirteenth century, refers to it as Allicola. The monks called
it sometimes oil of St. Barbarus, and oil of St. Catherine.

Dioscorides said naphtha was useful as an application in dimness of
sight. Two centuries ago it was occasionally given in doses of a few
drops for worms, and was frequently applied in toothache. Petroleum
Barbadense, Barbadoes tar, had some reputation in pectoral complaints
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was admitted into the
P.L. as the menstruum for sulphur in the balsamum sulphuris Barbadense.

PHOSPHORUS.

Phosphorus, or its Latin equivalent, Lucifer, was the name given by the
ancient astronomers to the planet Venus when it appeared as a morning
star. When it shone as an evening star they called it Hesperus. Do we
invent such seductive names now, or do they only seem attractive to us
because they are ancient or foreign?

The phosphorescent properties of certain earths had been occasionally
noticed by naturalists, but no observation of the kind has been traced
in ancient writings. The earliest allusion to a “fire-stone” known
occurs in the work of a gossipy French historian named De Thou. In
a history of his own times this writer relates that in 1550, when
Henri II made his state entry into Boulogne on the occasion of its
restoration to France by the English, a stranger in foreign costume
presented the king with a fire-stone which, he said, had been brought
from India. De Thou narrates that this wonderful stone glowed with
inconceivable splendour, was so hot that it could not be touched
without danger, and that if confined in a close space it would spring
with force into the air.

Sometime early in the seventeenth century, a shoemaker of Bologna, one
Vincent Cascariolo, who, in addition to his ordinary business dabbled
in alchemy, discovered a stone in the neighbourhood of his city which
was luminous in the dark. The stone, which is now known to have been
a sulphate of barium, and which the shoemaker calcined, ground, and
formed into little round discs about the size of a shilling, and sold
for a fancy price, was called the sun-stone. The discs, exposed to a
strong light for a few minutes and then withdrawn into a dark room,
gave out the incandescent light which we know so well. The discovery
excited keen interest among scientific men all over Europe.

[Illustration: JOHANN KUNCKEL.

(From the Collection of Etchings in the Royal Gallery at Berlin.)
]

About 1668 two alchemists named Bauduin and Frueben, who lived at
Grossenhayn in Saxony, conceived the idea of extracting by chemical
processes the spirit of the world (Spiritus Mundi). Their notion was
to combine earth, air, fire, and water in their alembic, and to obtain
the essences of all of these in one distillate. They dissolved lime in
nitric acid, evaporated to dryness, exposed the residue to the air,
and let it absorb humidity. They then distilled this substance and
obtained the humidity in a pure form. History does not tell us what
questions they put to their spirit of the world when they had thus
caught it. It appears, however, that the stuff attained a great sale.
It was supplied at 12 groschen the loth, equal to about 1s. 6d. per
ounce, and lords and peasants came after it eagerly. Rain-water would
have been just as good, Kunckel, who tells the story, remarks. But one
day Bauduin broke one of the vessels in which was contained some of the
calcined nitrate of lime, and he observed that this, like the Bologna
stone, was luminous in the dark after exposure to sunlight. Bauduin
appreciated the importance of his discovery, and, taking some of his
earth to Dresden, talked about it there. Kunckel, who was then the
Elector’s pharmacist, and keenly interested in new discoveries, heard
about this curious substance, and was very curious to find out all he
could. He visited Bauduin and tried to draw from him the details of
his process. But Bauduin was very shy of Kunckel, and the latter has
left an amusing account of an evening he spent with his quarry. Kunckel
tried to talk chemistry, but Bauduin would only take interest in music.
At last, however, Kunckel induced Bauduin to go out of the room to
fetch a concave mirror to see if with that the precious phosphorus (for
Bauduin had already appropriated this name to the stuff) would absorb
the light. While Bauduin was gone Kunckel managed to nip a morsel with
his finger-nail. With this, aided by the fragments of information he
had been able to steal from Bauduin’s conversation, he commenced to
experiment by treating chalk with nitric acid, and ultimately succeeded
in producing the coveted luminous earth. He sent a little lump of it to
Bauduin as an acknowledgment of the pleasant musical evening the latter
had given him.

It was now 1669. Kunckel was visiting Hamburg, and there he showed to
a scientific friend a piece of his “phosphorus.” To his surprise the
friend was not at all astonished at it, but told Kunckel that an old
doctor in Hamburg had produced something much more wonderful. Brandt
was the name of the local alchemist. He had been in business, had
failed, and was now practising medicine enough to keep him, but was
devoting his heart and soul and all his spare time to the discovery of
the philosopher’s stone. The two friends visited Brandt, who showed
them the real “phosphor” which he had produced, to which, of course,
the other substances compared as dip candles might to the electric
light, but nothing would induce the old gentleman to disclose any
details of his process. Kunckel wrote to a scientific friend happily
named Krafft at Dresden about the new “phosphor.” Honour seems to have
been cheap among scientific friends at that time, for Krafft posted off
to Hamburg, without saying anything to Kunckel about his intention,
caught Brandt in a different humour, or perhaps specially hard-up, and
bought his secret for 200 thalers.

According to another story, the German chemist Homberg also succeeded
in securing Brandt’s secret by taking to him as a present one of those
weather prognosticators in which a figure of a man and another of a
woman come out of doors or go in when it is going to be wet or fine, as
the case may be; a toy which had just then been invented.

Stimulated perhaps by Brandt’s obstinacy and Krafft’s treachery,
Kunckel set to work and in time succeeded in manufacturing phosphorus.
It may be taken as certain that he had picked old Brandt’s brains a
little, and his own skill and shrewdness enabled him to fill up the
gaps in his knowledge. However he acquired the art, he soon became the
first practical manufacturer of phosphorus.

Brandt discovered phosphorus because he had arrived at the conviction
that the philosopher’s stone was to be got from urine. In the course of
his experiments with that liquid, phosphorus came out unexpectedly from
the process of distilling urine with sand and lime.

The new substance excited great curiosity in scientific circles all
over Europe, but the German chemists who knew anything about it kept
their information secret, and only misleading stories of its origin
were published. Robert Boyle, however, who was travelling on the
Continent when the interest in the discovery was keenest, got a hint
of the method of manufacture, and on his return to England proceeded
to experiment. His operator and assistant in these investigations
was Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, who became the founder of a London
pharmaceutical business which still exists. Ultimately Boyle and
Hanckwitz were completely successful, and for many years the “English
phosphorus” supplied by Hanckwitz from his laboratory in Southampton
Street, Strand, monopolised the European market. According to a
pamphlet published by him, entitled “Historia Phosphori et Fama,” the
continental phosphorus was an “unctuous, dawbing oyliness,” while his
was the “right glacial” kind.

In 1680 Boyle deposited with the Royal Society, of which he was then
president, a sealed packet containing an account of his experiments and
of his process for the production of the “Icy Noctiluca,” as he called
his phosphorus.

It is related in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences of Paris for
1737 that in that year a stranger appeared in Paris and offered for
a stipulated reward to communicate the process of making phosphorus
to the French Government. A committee of the Academy, with Hellot as
its president, was appointed to witness the stranger’s manipulation.
According to the report of this committee, the experiment was
completely successful.

It only remains to add, to complete the history, that in 1769, Gahn, a
Swedish mine owner, discovered phosphorus in bones, and that working
from this observation Scheele in 1775 devised the process for the
manufacture of phosphorus which is still followed.

Such a remarkable substance as phosphorus, extracted as it had been
from the human body, was evidently marked out for medical uses.
Experiments were soon commenced with it. Kunckel’s “luminous pills”
were the first in the field, so far as is known. His report was
published in the “Chemische Anmerkungen” in 1721. He gave it in
three-grain doses, and reported that it had a calmative effect!
Subsequently it was tried in various diseases by continental
practitioners. Mentz commended it in colic, Langensalz in asthenic
fevers, Bonneken in tetanus, Wetkard in apoplexy, and Trampel in gout.

In 1769 Alphonse Leroy, of Paris, reported a curious experience. He was
sent for to a patient apparently on the point of death from phthisis.
Seeing that the case was hopeless, he prepared and administered a
placebo of sugared water. Calling the next day, Leroy found his patient
somewhat revived, and on examining the sugar which he had used for
his solution, he found that some phosphorus had been kept in it for
a long time. The patient was much too far gone to recover, but she
survived for fifteen days, and Leroy attributed this amelioration to
the phosphorised water which he had accidentally given her.

Gahn discovered phosphorus in the bones in 1768, and in 1779 another
German chemist named Hensing ascertained its presence in a fatty matter
which he extracted from the brain. Medical theories were naturally
based on these observations. Couerbe, a French chemist quoted by Dr.
Churchill, wrote thus in 1830:

“The want of phosphorus in the brain would reduce man to
the sad condition of the brute; an excess of this element
irritates the nervous system, excites the individual, and
throws him into that terrible state of disturbance called
madness, or mental alienation; a moderate proportion gives
rise to the sublimest ideas, and produces that admirable
harmony which spiritualists call the soul.”

British practitioners took but very little notice of phosphorus as a
remedy in the first century of its career, although it remained for a
large part of that period an English product.

It is rather curious, too, that neither in this country nor on the
Continent did it get into the hands of the empirics, as mercury,
antimony, and other dangerous drugs did. It may be supposed that it
was not so much the danger that checked them as the pharmaceutical
difficulties in the way of preparing suitable medicines. The earliest
preparations of phosphorus, such as Kunckel’s pills, were a combination
of it in a free state with conserve of roses. This method was gradually
abandoned on account of the difficulty of subdividing the phosphorus
so perfectly that the dose could be measured accurately. But as Dr.
Ashburton Thompson remarks,[3] “although it is not so specifically
mentioned, the uncertainty of action which imperfectly divided
phosphorus exhibits” had something to do with the rejection of the old
formulas. That is putting it very gently. The three-grain doses must
have killed more people than they cured. The author just quoted says
that in the early days “the dose employed seldom fell below 3 grains,
while it occasionally rose as high as 12 grains.” Even Leroy, he adds,
instituted his experiments by taking a bolus of 3 grains, and he did
not seriously suffer from it. The recommended dose has been regularly
declining. In 1855 Dr. Hughes Bennett gave it at one-fortieth to
one-eighth of a grain. The Pharmacopœia now prescribes one-hundredth to
one-twentieth of a grain.

THE HYPOPHOSPHITES.

The hypophosphites in the form of syrup were introduced by Dr. J. F.
Churchill, of Paris, as specifics in consumptive diseases about 1857.
His preference of these salts over the phosphates was based on the
theory that the deficiency in the system in a phthisical condition
was not of phosphates, which had been completely oxidised, but of
a phosphide in an oxidisable condition, and this requirement was
fulfilled by the hypophosphites. The latter he compared to wood or
coal, the phosphates to ashes, so far as active energy was concerned.
Dr. Churchill’s interest in a special manufacture of the hypophosphite
syrups prejudiced the medical profession against his theories, and it
is not certain that he got a fair hearing in consequence. The general
verdict was that his results were not obtained by other experimenters,
but for a good many years past syrups of the hypophosphites have been
among the most popular of our general tonics.

Phosphorus is soluble in alcohol, ether, chloroform, bisulphide of
carbon, and to a very small extent in water.

* * * * *

Phosphor paste as a vermin killer was ordered by the Prussian
Government to be substituted for arsenical compounds in 1843, and it is
probable that to some degree the alteration has been successful, though
in France it was found that phosphorus in this form became a popular
agent for suicide and criminal poisoning.

SAL PRUNELLA

was at one time in high esteem, as it was believed that by the process
adopted for making it the nitre was specially purified. Purified nitre
was melted in an iron pot and a little flowers of sulphur (1 oz. to 2
lb.) was sprinkled on it, a little at a time. The sulphur deflagrating
was supposed to exercise the purifying influence on the nitre. The
actual effect was to convert a small part of the nitrate of potash into
sulphate. It was first called Sal Prunella in Germany from the belief
that it was a specific against a certain plum-coloured quinsy of an
epidemic character. Boerhaave advised the omission of the sulphur, but
believed that melting the pure nitre and moulding it was of medicinal
value by evaporating aqueous moisture.

Nitre and flowers of sulphur were deflagrated together before the Sal
Prunella theory was invented, equal quantities being employed. The
resulting combination, which was of course sulphate of potash, was
known as Sal Polychrestum, the Salt of Many Virtues.

SAL GEMMÆ.

Sal Gemmæ or Sal Fossile was the name given to rock salt, particularly
to the transparent and the tinted varieties. It was believed to be more
penetrating than the salt derived from sea water, and this property
Lemery ascribed to the circumstance that it had never been dissolved in
water, and therefore retained all its native keenness.

SPIRIT OF SALT.

Spiritus Salis Marini Glauberi was one of the products discovered by
Glauber, to whom we owe the name of spirit of salt. He was a keen
observer and remarked on the suffocating vapour yielded as soon as
oil of vitriol was poured on sea-salt. It is astonishing to his
biographers that he just missed discovering chlorine. The spirit of
salt was highly recommended for many medicinal uses; for exciting the
appetite, correcting the bile, curing gangrene, and dissolving stone.
Its remarkable property of assisting nitric acid to dissolve gold was
soon observed and was attributed to its penetrating power.

TARTAR.

Tartarus was the mythological hell where the gods imprisoned and
punished those who had offended them. Virgil represents it as
surrounded by three walls and the river Phlegethon, whose waters were
sulphur and pitch. Its entrance was protected by a tower wrapped in a
cloud three times as black as the darkest night, a gate which the gods
themselves could not break, and guarded by Cerberus.

There is nothing to associate this dismal place with the tartar of
chemistry, except that in old books it is said that Paracelsus so named
the product because it “produces oil, water, tincture, and salt, which
burn the patient as Tartarus does.” Paracelsus did not invent the name
of tartar; it is found in many alchemical books long before his time.
The earliest found use of it is in an alchemical work by Hortulcuus, an
English alchemist of the eleventh century.

Paracelsus was writing about “tartarous diseases” (“De Morbis
Tartareis”), those, that is, which resulted from the deposit of
concretions. Stone, gravel, and gout were among these diseases of
tartar, and evidently it was this morbid tartar which he associated
with the legendary Tartarus. The word tartar, applied to the deposit
from wine, is sometimes supposed to have descended from an Egyptian
term, dardarot, meaning an eternal habitation, and etymologists
generally prefer it as the origin of the name. If it was, the sense
development of the term as applied to the chemical is not clear. The
Greek word _tartarizein_, meaning to shiver with cold, does not help
much in tracing the history of the word. Another frequently advocated
derivation is the Arab, _durd_, dregs, sediment, which it is said was
actually applied to the tartar of wine. It appears, too, that the Arabs
used this term also as we do to represent the deposit on teeth; they
also had a word, _dirad_, to mean a shedding of teeth, and by _darda_
they signified a toothless old woman. Some etymologists consider,
however, that the transition from durd to tartar would be most unlikely.

When the alchemists began to experiment with tartar their first process
would be to distil it. The residue left in their retorts they called
the salt of tartar. They knew this substance under other names, salt
of wormwood, for instance, but they did not recognise the identity. By
treating tartar with vinegar they produced acetate of potash, which
they called regenerated tartar. Oswald Crollius, the compiler of the
first European pharmacopœia, gave the name of vitriolated tartar to
what we now know as sulphate of potash.

The iatro-chemists of the next century, who obtained it by various
methods, gave to sulphate of potash distinct names which show in what
esteem it was held. Among other designations it appears as Specificum
purgans, Arcanum duplicatum, Nitrum fixum, Panacea holsatica, and Sel
de duobus. Glaser, who produced it from sulphur, saltpetre, and urine
distilled together, sold it as Sal Polychrest of Glaser.

Cream of tartar was known to the ancients under the name of Fæx Vini,
which is the designation for it used by Dioscorides.

The tartar of wine was found to be only soluble in water with
difficulty; but if boiled in water a turbid liquor was yielded which in
the boiled condition continually threw up a sort of skin or scum. This
was taken off with a skimmer and dried; it was naturally called Cream
of Tartar.

Paracelsus and other chemists distilled this cream and got an oil
from it which they called oil or spirit of tartar. It was chiefly a
pyro-tartaric acid with some empyreumatic constituents. It was a thin,
light yellow, bitter tasting but rather tart, and pleasant smelling
oil, and was credited with remarkable penetrating powers. It was used
in disorders of the ligaments, membranes, and tendons. Particularly
surprising to them was the fact that the residue of a distinctly acid
substance was a strong alkali. This “salt of tartar” was found to yield
another oil called oleum tartari per deliquium, or lixivium tartari,
which was the name by which it was called in the Pharmacopœia. Salt of
tartar and cream of tartar together yielded the tartarum tartarisatus.
It was when making this that Seignette produced by accident his double
tartrate of potash and soda, now familiarly known as Rochelle salt.

VITRIOL.

Visitando Interiora Terræ Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem
Veram Medicinam. (Visiting the interior of the earth you may find, by
rectifying the occult stone, the true medicine.) This acrostic is first
found in the works attributed to Basil Valentine.

The vitriols enjoyed an enormous reputation in medicine, at least until
their chemical composition was definitely explained by Geoffrey in
1728. It was certainly known that the green vitriols contained iron,
and they were sometimes named vitriol of Mars; that the blue vitriols
contained copper, which obtained for them the designation of vitriol
of Venus; and the white was understood to be associated with calamine,
though by some it was supposed to be only green vitriol which had been
calcined.

The name of vitriol cannot be traced further back than to Albertus
Magnus in the thirteenth century. He expressly applies the term to
atramentum viride, the Latin name for sulphate of iron. Presumably
it was given to the salt on account of its glassy appearance. The
alchemists, on distilling these vitriols found that they always yielded
a spirit or oil, to which they naturally gave the name of spirit or oil
of vitriol.

In Greek the vitriols were called chalcanthon, as they were extracted
from brass; the common name in Latin was atramentum sutorium, because
they were employed for making leather black. Dioscorides states that
this substance is a valuable emetic, should be taken after eating
poisonous fungi, and will expel worms. Pliny recommends it for the cure
of ulcers, and Galen used it as a collyrium. There was a good deal of
confusion between the vitriols and the alums, and the Greek stypteria
and the Latin alumens were often an aluminous earth combined with some
vitriol. Pliny gives a test for the purity of what he calls alum, which
consists in dropping on it some pomegranate juice, when, he says, it
should turn black if it is pure. Evidently his alum contained sulphate
of iron.

Paracelsus declared that, with proper chemical management, vitriol
was capable of furnishing the fourth part of all necessary medicine.
It contained in itself the power of curing jaundice, gravel, stone,
fevers, worms, and epilepsy.

Mayerne was another strong advocate of the medicinal virtues of
vitriol. According to him it possessed the most diverse properties. It
was hot and cold, attenuative and incressant, aperitive and astringent,
coagulative and dissolvant, corroborative, purgative, and sudorific.

A multitude of medicines were made from the vitriols. A vitriolum
camphoratum was included in the P.L. of 1721 by distilling spirit of
camphor from calcined vitriol; but Quincy remarks:--“Its intention I am
not acquainted with, nor have ever met with it in prescription.” In Dr.
Walter Harris’s “Pharmacopœia Anti-Empirica,” 1683, allusion is made to
a remedy made by one Bovius, which consisted of spirit of vitriol, and
was designed to lie a universal remedy. Added to an infusion of balm,
marjoram, and bugloss, it would cure headache and vertigo; with rose
water, fevers; with fumitory water, itch; with fennel water it would
restore decayed memory; with plantain water it was a remedy against
diarrhœa; and with lettuce water it became a narcotic. “A rare fellow,”
quaintly comments the doctor. Homberg’s narcotic salt of vitriol was a
combination of green vitriol and borax made after a very complicated
process. The Gilla Vitrioli was a purified white vitriol used as
an emetic. Spiritus Vitrioli dulcis was an imitation of Hoffmann’s
Anodyne. This distilled with hartshorn made the Diaphoretic Vitriol.

One of the precious secrets of the alchemists, occasionally sold to
kings and wealthy amateurs, was that of converting iron into copper
by means of blue vitriol. A strong solution of the salt was prepared,
and an iron blade, or any iron instrument, was immersed in it for a
certain time. When taken out it appeared to be a blade or instrument
of copper. Kunckel was the first chemist to explain the fallacy.

Elixir of Vitriol was devised by Adrian Mynsicht, a famous German
physician, in the early part of the seventeenth century. He published
an Armamentarium Medico-Chymicum which became very popular. His Elixir
(under the name of Elixir Vitrioli Mynsichti) was first given in the
P.L. of 1721 as follows:--cinnamon, ginger, cloves, of each 3 drachms:
calamus aromaticus, 1 oz.; galangal root, 1½ oz.; sage, mint, of each ½
oz.; cubebs, nutmegs, of each 2 oz.; lign. aloes, lemon peel, of each 1
drachm; candied sugar, 3 oz. Digest in spirit of wine, 1½ lb., and oil
of vitriol 1 lb. for twenty days. Then filter.

In the P.L. 1746 the formula was simplified by mixing 4 oz. of oil of
vitriol with 1 lb. of Aromatic Tincture, and the title was changed
to Elixir Vitrioli Acidum. In the P.L. 1778 there was no Elixir of
Vitriol, dilute sulphuric acid taking its place. This was then called
Acidum Vitriolicum Dilutum. Under the name of Acidum Sulphuricum
Aromaticum, however, an acidulated tincture, flavoured with ginger
and cinnamon, was retained, and this, with the synonym of Elixir of
Vitriol, is still in the B.P.

Quincy (1724) states that this medicine had lately come greatly in
practice, and deservedly. “It mightily strengthens the stomach,”
he says, “and does good service in relaxations from debauches and
overfeeding.”

The alga “nostoch,” so-called by Paracelsus, who also described it as
flos cœlorum, acquired the name of vegetable vitriol, and sometimes
spittle of the stars, because it appeared after rains in places where
it had not been seen before.

XIV

MEDICINES FROM THE METALS

Metals are all identical in their essence; they only differ by
their form. The form depends on accidental causes which the
artist must seek to discover. The accidents interfere with the
regular combinations of sulphur and mercury; for every metal
is a combination of these two substances. When pure sulphur
meets pure mercury, gold results sooner or later by the action
of nature. Species are immutable and cannot be transformed
from one into the other; but lead, copper, iron, silver, &c.,
are not species. They only appear to be from their diverse
forms.
ALBERTUS MAGNUS:--“De Alchemia.” (About 1250.)

ANTIMONY.

Some of the old writers insisted that antimony (the native sulphide)
was used as a medicine by Hippocrates who called it Tetragonon, which
simply meant four-cornered, and of which we also know that it was made
up with the milk of a woman. The reason which the iatro-chemists gave
for believing that this compound was made from antimony was worthy of
the age when it was the practice to apply enigmatic names to medicinal
substances, a practice, however, quite foreign to Hippocrates. They
understood the term to imply four natures or virtues, and they said
antimony had four virtues, namely, sudorific, emetic, purgative, and
cordial; therefore tetragonon meant antimony.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF ANTIMONY.

The name of this metal is one of the curiosities of philology. The
old legend was that Basil Valentine, testing his medicine on some of
his brother monks, killed a few of them. “Those who have ears for
etymological sounds,” says Paris in “Pharmacologia,” “will instantly
recognise the origin of the word antimonachos, or monks-bane.” Another
version of the monk story is to the effect that after Basil Valentine
had been experimenting with antimony in his laboratory he threw some of
his compounds out of the window, and pigs came and ate them. He noticed
that after the purgative action had passed off the pigs fattened. On
this hint he administered the same antimonial preparation to certain
monks who were emaciated by long fasts, and they died through the
violence of the remedy.

These stories were probably the invention of some French punster,
who worked them into shape out of the French name of the substance,
antimoine, which, without the change of a letter, might mean bad for
the monk. Littré entirely demolished any possibility of their truth
by discovering the name in the writings of the Salernitan physician,
Constantine, the African, who lived at the end of the eleventh century,
three or four hundred years before the earliest dates suggested for
Basil Valentine.

Other suggested derivations have been anti-monos, for the reason that
the sulphide was never found alone; anti-menein, in reference to its
tonic properties; and anti-minium, because it was used as an eye
paint in the place of red lead. These are all guesses unsupported by
evidence.

The modern philological theory is that the early Latin stibium and the
late Latin antimonium have the same etymological origin. Stibium was
the Latinised form of the Greek stimmi. Stimmi declined as stimmid--and
this may have found its way into the Arabic through a conjectural
isthimmid to the known Arabic name uthmud, which via athmud and athmoud
became Latinised again into antimonium.

AL-KOHOL.

The antimony known to the ancients as stibium or stimuli was the native
sulphide which Eastern women used for darkening their eyelashes.
Probably it was used by Jezebel when, expecting Jehu at Samaria, “she
painted her eyes and tired her head.” The Hebrew expression is “she
put her eyes in paint,” and the Hebrew word for the paint is Phuph;
(2 Kings, c. 9, v. 30). In Ezekiel, c. 23, v. 40, a debauched woman
is described who painted her eyes, and in this case the Hebrew word
employed is Kohol. The Septuagint translated both Phuph and Kohol by
stimmi. The method is still used by Arabic women. They have a little
silver or ivory rod which they damp and dip into a finely levigated
powder called ismed, and draw this between the eyelids. Karrenhappuch,
one of Job’s daughters, meant a vessel of antimony. The writer of
the Book of Enoch says that the angel Azazel taught the practice to
women before the Flood. He “taught men to make swords, and knives, and
shields, and coats of mail, and made known to them metals, and the art
of working them; bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony,
and the beautifying of the eyebrows, and the most costly and choicest
stones, and all colouring tinctures, so that the world was changed.”
Some of the early Christian fathers condemned the vanity. “Inunge
oculos non stibio diaboli, sed collyrio Christi,” writes Tertullian.

ALCHEMICAL HOPES OF ANTIMONY.

The alchemists and the early chemical physicians had great hopes of
antimony. “They tormented it in every possible manner,” says Fourcroy,
“in the hope of getting from it a universal remedy.” With it, too,
they were convinced that they were coming near to the transmutation
of other metals into gold. Noticing how readily it formed alloys with
other metals they named it Lupus Metallorum, the Wolf of Metals.
Their process for getting the Powder of Projection, as well as can be
gathered from their mystic jargon was to first fuse the crude antimony,
the sulphide, with iron which withdrew the sulphur from the antimony.
The metal thus obtained they called the Martial Regulus of Antimony.
Regulus, or little king, implied an impure gold. Combining this with
corrosive sublimate and silver, and subliming the mixture they got the
lunar butter of antimony. The sublimation had to be repeated eight or
ten times, the residue, or fæces, being added to the sublimate every
time. At last the sublimed butter of antimony was transferred to an
oval glass vessel capable of containing twelve times its quantity,
and hermetically sealed. The Philosophic Egg, as the vessel with its
contents was called, was then placed in a sand-bath and kept at a
moderate heat for several months. When it had become converted into a
red powder, the operation was finished. This powder was the Powder of
Projection. It was sprinkled on other metals in a state of fusion,
mercury being an ingredient of the fused mass, and yellow gold was
produced.

ANTIMONIAL COMPOUNDS.

By other processes the early experimenters obtained various other
products. By simply heating crude antimony in a crucible they would
sometimes get a vitreous substance in consequence of some of the silica
of the crucible combining with the antimony. That was their glass of
antimony, which was generally an oxide with some sulphide. In other
cases the so-called liver of antimony resulted, a compound containing
a larger proportion of the sulphide. This they also called crocus
metallorum or saffron of the metals, and one or other of these products
was originally the basis of antimonial wine.

It was digested with Rhine wine, and the tartar of the wine formed a
tartrate of antimony, but, as may be supposed, the composition of the
wine was very variable. Emetic tartar was subsequently substituted for
the liver.

The crystalline protoxide of antimony obtained by inflaming,
volatilising, and condensing the regulus was known as argentine flowers
of antimony. The regulus heated with nitric acid yielded a compound of
metal with antimonious acid, and was called mineral bezoar; a compound,
really a suboxide, got by fusing sulphide of antimony and nitre was
called diaphoretic antimony; the chloride, first made by distilling
crude antimony (the native sulphide) with corrosive sublimate, yielded
the thick soft butter of antimony; the addition of water to this
chemical caused the precipitation of a white oxychloride which was
long known as Algaroth’s powder, or mercury of life. It contained no
mercury, but was the most popular emetic before the introduction of
the tartrate. Victor Algarotti, who introduced it, was a physician, of
Verona, who died in 1603. It was alleged that he was poisoned by his
local rivals in consequence of the success of his remedy. He was also
the inventor of a quintessence of gold.

The regulus of antimony in alloy with some tin was used to make the
antimony cups from which antimonial wine originated. It was also made
into the pilulæ perpetuæ, or everlasting pills, which, passing through
the body almost unchanged, were kept as a family remedy and taken
again and again. It is probable that the surface of these pills became
slightly oxidised, and consequently acquired a medicinal effect.

KERMES MINERAL.

One of the most famous of the antimony compounds was the kermes
mineral, which it is understood was invented by Glauber about 1651. He
made it by treating a solution of the oxide of antimony with cream of
tartar, and then passing a current of sulphuretted hydrogen through
the solution. An orange-red powder was obtained, and famous cures were
effected by it. Glauber kept his process secret, but a Dr. de Chastenay
learnt it after Glauber’s death from one of his pupils and confided
it to a surgeon named La Ligerie, who in his turn communicated it to
Brother Simon, a Carthusian monk, who at once commenced successfully to
treat his brother monks with it, and soon after the Poudre des Chartres
was one of the most popular remedies in France for many serious
diseases, small-pox, ague, dropsy, syphilis, and many others. In 1720
Louis XIV bought the formula for its preparation for a considerable
sum from La Ligerie. It has been agreed by chemists, Berzelius and
others, who have studied Kermes Mineral, that it is a mixture of about
40 per cent. or less of oxide of antimony with a hydrated sulphide of
the metal, and a small proportion of sulphide of sodium or potassium
(according to the method of preparation). It is still official in the
Pharmacopœias of the United States and of many Continental countries.

From the solution from which the Kermes had been deposited a further
precipitate was obtained by the addition of hydrochloric acid. This,
too, was a mixture, consisting of protosulphide and persulphide of
antimony with some sulphur. It was the golden sulphuret which in
association with calomel became so noted in the form of Plummer’s
powder and Plummer’s pills. The powder was at first known as Plummer’s
Æthiops Medicinalis.

It would be tedious to go through the multitude of antimonial
compounds which have become official, and it would be impossible
in any reasonable space even to enumerate the quack medicines with
an antimonial base which were so recklessly sold in this and other
countries, especially in the earlier half of the seventeenth century.
The most important of all the antimonial compounds, or, at least, the
one which has maintained the favour of the medical profession in all
countries, is, of course, the tartrate of antimony and potassium,
emetic tartar.

EMETIC TARTAR.

Adrian Mynsicht, physician to the Duke of Mecklenburg in the early part
of the seventeenth century, is generally credited with the invention
of emetic tartar. Certainly the earliest known description of it is
found in his “Thesaurus Medico-Chymicum,” published in 1631. But Hofer
has pointed out that the mixture known as the Earl of Warwick’s Powder,
which consisted of scammony, diaphoretic antimony (a binantimoniate of
potash) and cream of tartar, which Cornachinus of Pisa described in
1620, was really its forerunner, and he considers that the salt was
recognised in medicine before Mynsicht published his description.

Glauber, in 1648, described the process of making Mynsicht’s emetic
tartar from cream of tartar and argentine flowers of antimony.

ANTIMONY CONTROVERSY.

No medicine has been more violently attacked or so enthusiastically
praised as antimony. The virulent antagonism to it manifested by the
Faculty of Physicians of Paris was unquestionably the exciting cause
of much of the fame to which it attained. It is generally stated that
on the instigation of the Faculty the Parliament of Paris decreed
that it should not be employed in medicines at all. This, however,
has been proved to be incorrect. Certainly the Faculty in 1566 did,
in fact, forbid its own licentiates to use it, and actually expelled
one of their most able associates, Turquet de Mayerne, because he had
disobeyed their injunction. But M. Teallier has shown by documentary
evidence that the decree of the Parliament did not go beyond requiring
that antimony should not be supplied for medicinal use except on the
order of a qualified physician. The action of the Faculty, although
approved for a time, was later almost disregarded, and when the
court physicians cured the young king, Louis XIV, in 1657, by the
administration of antimony, the defeat of the anti-antimonists was
completed. The repeal of the decree against antimonials was dated 1666,
just a century after its promulgation.

Louis XIV was taken dangerously ill at Calais, in 1657, when he was
19 years of age. A physician (Voltaire says a quack) of Abbeville had
the audacity to treat him by the administration of emetic tartar, and
the King himself and his Court were convinced that he owed his life to
this remedy. The opponents of antimony were silenced, though they did
not yield in their opinion. Gui Patin, who had termed the new medicine
“tartre stygiè” (its usual French name was tartre stibié), protested
against the attempt to canonise this poison, and asserted that the cure
of the king was due to his own excellent constitution.

To illustrate the earnestness, not to say the ferocity, of medical
controversy at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the record of
the expulsion of Turquet de Mayerne from the College of Physicians of
Paris, in 1603, quoted from the minutes of the College and translated
by Nedham, may be given. It should be remembered that Turquet was
the favourite physician of Henri IV, and, nominally, his offence was
that he had published a defence of his friend, Quercetanus, who had
prescribed mercurial and antimonial medicines. The minute is in the
following terms:--

The College of Physicians in the University of Paris, being
lawfully congregated, having heard the Report made by the
Censor to whom the business of examining the Apology published
under the name of Turquet de Mayerne, was committed, do with
unanimous consent condemn the same as an infamous libel,
stuffed with lying reproaches and impudent calumnies, which
could not have proceeded from any but an unlearned, impudent,
drunken, mad fellow: And do judge the said Turquet to be
unworthy to practise physick in any place because of his
rashness, impudence, and ignorance of true physick: But do
exhort all physicians which practise Physick in any nations or
places whatsoever that they will drive the said Turquet and
such like monsters of men and opinions out of their company
and coasts; and that they will constantly continue in the
doctrine of Hippocrates and Galen. Moreover, they forbid all
men that are of the Society of the Physicians of Paris, that
they do not admit a consultation with Turquet or such like
person. Whosoever shall presume to act contrary shall be
deprived of all honours, emoluments, and privileges of the
University and be expunged out of the regent Physicians.
Dated December 5, 1603.

[Illustration: ANTIMONY CUP.

(From an illustration to a note by Professor Redwood in the
_Pharmaceutical Journal_, July 1, 1858.)
]

ANTIMONY CUPS (POCULA EMETICA)

were in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, more perhaps
in Germany than in this country. The one illustrated is in the Museum
of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street. It was bought for a shilling at a
sale at Christies’ in 1858, and was described in the catalogue as “An
old metal cup, with German inscription and coronet, gilt, in woodcase.”
The cups are said to have been made of an alloy of tin and antimony,
and wine standing for a time in one of them would become slightly
impregnated with emetic tartar, the tartar of the wine acting on the
film of oxide of antimony which would form on the inner surface of the
cup. How far these cups were used in families does not appear, but it
is said they were common in monasteries, and that monks who took too
much wine were punished by having to drink some more which had been
standing in the poculum emeticum. Dr. Walter Harris, in “Pharmacopœia
Anti-Empirica” (1683) refers to the cups, and says, “their day is
pretty well over. It is rare to meet with one now.”

It was supposed by the early chemical physicians that antimony imparted
emetic properties to wine without any loss of weight. Angelo Sala tells
of a German who attained some fame in his time by letting out a piece
of glass of antimony on hire. The patient was instructed to immerse
this in a cup of wine for three, four, or five hours (according to the
strength of the person prescribed for), and then to drink the wine. The
practitioner charged a fee of a dozen fresh eggs for the use of his
stone, and, as he had hundreds of clients, patients had to wait their
turn for their emetic.

BISMUTH.

Bismuth, the metal, was not known to the ancients nor to the Arabs. It
was first mentioned under that name by Agricola, in 1546, in “De Natura
Fossilium,” and was not then regarded as a distinct body. Agricola
considered it to be a form of lead, and other mining chemists believed
that it gradually changed into silver. The Magistery (trisnitrate or
oxynitrate) was the secret blanc de fard which Lemery sold in large
quantities as a cosmetic. He bought the secret from an unknown chemist
and made a large fortune out of it. His process was to dissolve one
ounce of the metal in two ounces of nitric acid and to pour on the
solution five or six pints of water in which one ounce of sea-salt
had been dissolved. The sea-salt would yield a proportion of bismuth
oxychloride in the precipitate. Lemery made a pomatum, ʒi to the
ounce, and a lotion, ʒi to ʒiv of lily water.

Until the latter part of the eighteenth century bismuth salts were
regarded as poisonous and were scarcely used in medicine by way of
internal administration. Even Odier, of Geneva, to whom we owe the
introduction of this medicine in dyspepsia and diarrhœa, prescribed it
in 1 grain doses with 10 grains each of magnesia and sugar.

Lemery says the bismuth of his time was a compound made in England from
the gross and impure tin found in the English mines. “The workmen mix
this tin with equal parts of tartar and saltpetre. This mixture they
throw by degrees into crucibles made red hot in a large fire. When
this is melted they pour it into greased iron mortars and let it cool.
Afterwards they separate the regulus at the bottom from the scoriæ and
wash it well. This is the tin-glass, which may be called the regulus of
tin.” Pomet says much the same about the composition. He adds, “It is
so true that tin-glass is artificial that I have made it myself, and am
ready to show it to those who won’t believe me.”

Those writers belonged to the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
A quarter of a century later Quincy is telling us that the metal called
Bismuth “is composed of tin, tartar, and arsenic, made in the northern
parts of Germany, and from thence brought to England.”

Meanwhile Stahl and Dufay had been studying bismuth and had established
its character and elementary nature.

Liquor Bismuthi et Ammonii Citratis was introduced into the B.P. 1867,
as an imitation of the proprietary Liquor Bismuthi, which Mr. G. F.
Schacht, pharmaceutical chemist, of Clifton, had invented a few years
previously. It was found that the official preparation differed from
the proprietary one in taste and action principally because no attempt
had been made to free it from the nitric acid used to dissolve the
bismuth. This was corrected in 1885 by a liquor prepared from citrate
of bismuth dissolved by solution of ammonia. This method has been
further elaborated. Continental physicians have not favoured a solution
of bismuth. They consider that the remedial value of bismuth depends on
its insolubility; this view now obtains in England also.

Trochisci Bismuthi Compositi of the B.P. 1864, were believed to
be intended to imitate the “Heartburn Tablets,” made by Dr. Burt,
an eminent medical practitioner of Edinburgh in the early part
of the nineteenth century, and sold for him at a guinea a pound.
Notwithstanding the price, perhaps because of it, these tablets
attained to considerable popularity. It was said that Dr. Burt and his
apprentices made all he supplied in his kitchen. Some said that his
tablets contained no bismuth, the antacid properties being due entirely
to chalk. In 1867 rose-flavour was substituted for cinnamon in the
official lozenges, and in 1898 the oxynitrate of bismuth gave place to
oxycarbonate.

GOLD.

For gold in physick is a cordiall,
Therefore he loved gold in special.
Chaucer’s _Doctour of Phisike_.

The employment of gold as a remedy is but rarely mentioned in ancient
medical literature. Gold leaf was probably used by the Egyptians to
cover abrasions of the skin. Pieces of it have been found on mummies
apparently so applied. Some of the Arab alchemists, Geber among them,
are believed to have made some kind of elixir of life from gold, but
their writings are too enigmatical to be trusted. Avicenna mentions
gold among blood purifiers, and the gilding of pills originated with
the Eastern pharmacists. Probably it was believed that the gold added
to the efficacy of the pills. It was not, however, until the period of
chemical medicine in Europe that gold attained its special fame.

Arnold of Villa Nova, and Raymond Lully were among the advocates of
the medicinal virtues of gold; but in the century before Paracelsus
appeared, Brassavolus, Fallopius, and other writers questioned its
virtues. With Paracelsus, Quercetanus, Libavius, Crollius, and others
of that age, however, gold entered fully into its kingdom. They could
hardly exalt it too highly. But it is difficult to ascertain from the
writings of this period what the chemical physicians understood by gold.

Paracelsus says it needs much preparation before it can be
administered. To make their aurum potabile some of the alchemists
professed to separate the salt from the fixed sulphur, which they held
was the real principle of gold, its seed, as some of them called it,
and to obtain this in such a form that it could be taken in any liquor.
The seed of gold was with many of them the universal medicine which
would cure all diseases, and prolong life indefinitely. It was the
sulphur of the sun with which that body revivifies nature.

Paracelsus prescribed gold for purifying blood, and intimates that
it is useful as an antidote in cases of poisoning, and will prevent
miscarriages in women. He considered it not so cordial as emeralds, but
more so than silver. He also states that if put into the mouth of a
newly-born babe it will prevent the devil from acquiring power over the
child.

The Archidoxa Medicinæ of Paracelsus, his famous Elixir of Long
Life, is believed to have been a compound of gold and corrosive
sublimate. He recommended gold especially in diseases connected with
the heart, the organ which the sun was supposed to rule. Among the
earlier Paracelsians Angelo Sala wrote a treatise on gold, entitled
“Chrysologia, seu Examen Auri Chymicum,” Hamburg, 1622. Sachsens
prepared a Tinctura Solis secundem secretiorem Paracelsi Mentem
preparata. But Thurneyssen, who carried on his quackeries on the
largest scale, did the most to push the gold business. His Magistery
of the Sun attained to great popularity in Germany, and these and
his other preparations, together with the astrological almanacks
and talismans which he sold, enabled him to live in great splendour
at Frankfort, where he is said to have employed 200 persons in his
laboratory. His fame departed, however, and he died in poverty at
Cologne, in 1595.

AURUM POTABILE.

Roger Bacon is said to have held that potable gold was the true elixir
of life. He told Pope Nicholas IV that an old man in Sicily, ploughing,
found one day a golden phial containing a yellow liquid. He thought it
was dew, drank in off, and was immediately transformed into a hale,
robust, handsome, and highly accomplished youth. He entered into the
service of the King of Sicily, and remained at court for the next
eighty years.

Francis Anthony was a famous quack in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and
James I. The College of Physicians took proceedings against him several
times, fined him and imprisoned him, but aristocratic influences were
exerted on his behalf and ultimately the College found it prudent to
let him alone. His panacea “Aurum potabile” professed to be a solution
of gold, and the wealthy classes of the period had unbounded belief in
its wonderful remedial virtues. Some years after the death of Anthony
the famous Honourable Robert Boyle (the “Father of philosophy and
brother of the Earl of Cork”) in the “Sceptical Chymist” wrote that
though he was prejudiced against all such compositions, he had known
(and he describes) some such wonderful cures resulting from this aurum
potabile that he was compelled to bear testimony to its efficacy. Boyle
also states that he had seen in part the preparation of this nostrum.
He rather enigmatically reports that there was but a single ingredient
associated with the gold, that this came from above, and was reputed to
be one of the simplest substances in nature.

* * * * *

Anthony claimed that his product would cure most diseases; vomitings,
fluxes, stoppages, fevers, plague, and palsies were included among
the evils which it overcame. Several of the well-known physicians of
the time wrote angry pamphlets denouncing Anthony’s pretensions. Dr.
Matthew Gwynne’s “Aurum non aurum,” and Dr. Cotta’s “Cotta contra
Antonium” were two of the most noted. Of course these gave Anthony
opportunities of reply, and largely promoted the business. In one of
his later publications Anthony boldly offered to exhibit his process
to a committee of proper and unbiassed witnesses with the object of
proving that the compound was truly a solution of gold. The challenge
appears to have been accepted, and the Master of the Mint, Baron
Thomas Knivet, and other experts were present when the test was made.
According to Gwynne the result was failure, but I do not find any
unprejudiced report of the experiment.

The writer of the life of Anthony in the old “Biographia Britannica,”
who is his warm partisan, gives what he declares to have been the
genuine formula for the aurum potabile. It had long been in the
possession of Anthony’s descendants, he says, and was given to him
(the author of the biography) by an eminent chemist. If this is true
it is evident that a solution of gold would not have resulted from the
process.

This is what the alleged Anthony’s manuscript prescribes:--The object,
Anthony says, is to so far open the gold that its sulphur may become
active. To open it a liquor and a salt are required, these together
forming the menstruum. The liquor was 3 pints of red wine vinegar
distilled from a gallon; the salt was block tin burnt to ashes in an
iron pan; these to be mixed and distilled again and again. Take one
ounce of filed gold, and heat it in a crucible with white salt; take it
out and grind the mixture; heat again; wash with water until no taste
of salt is left; mix this with the menstruum, one ounce to the pint,
digest, and evaporate to the consistence of honey. The Aurum Potabile
was made by dissolving this in spirit of wine.

Whatever may have been the opinion of the experts who watched Anthony
make his Aurum Potabile, the sale of the panacea was not destroyed,
perhaps not injured by the result. Anthony made a handsome fortune out
of it and continued to sell it largely until his death in 1623, and
according to the authority already quoted, his son John Anthony, who
qualified as an M.D. and held the licence of the College, derived a
considerable income from the sale of the remedy. Dr. Munk, however, in
the “Roll of the College of Physicians” intimates that this gentleman
was free from the hereditary stain. “He succeeded to the more reputable
part of his father’s practice,” is the pleasant way in which Dr. Munk
describes John Anthony, M.D. John, however, wrote the following epitaph
on his father:

Though poisonous Envy ever sought to blame
Or hide the fruits of thy Intention;
Yet shall all they commend that high design
Of purest gold to make a Medicine
That feel thy Help by that thy rare Invention.

Glauber (1650) expounds “the true method of making Aurum Potabile,”
knowledge of which, he says, was bestowed on him from the highest.
“Haply there will be some,” he remarks at the beginning of his treatise
on this subject, who will deny “that gold is the Son of the Sun,
or a metallic body, fixed and perfect, proceeding from the rays of
the Sun; asking how the Solary immaterial rays can be made material
and corporeal?” But this only shows how ignorant they are of the
generation of metals and minerals. Disposing of such incredulity by a
few comments, and referring the sceptics to his treatise De Generatione
Metallorum, he deals with several other irrelevant matters, and at last
describes his process in prolix and unintelligible terms.

“℞ of living gold one part, and three parts of quick mercury, not of
the vulgar, but the philosophical everywhere to be found without
charges or labour.” He recommends, but not as essential, the addition
to the gold of an equal part of silver. “The mixture of male and female
will yield a greater variety of colours, and who knoweth the power of
the cordial union of gold and silver?” These metals being mixed in a
philosophical vessel will be dissolved by the mercury in a quarter of
an hour, acquiring a purple colour. Heating for half an hour, this
will be changed to a green. The compound is to be dissolved in water
of dew, the solution filtered and abstracted in a glass alembic three
times until the greenness turns to a black like ink, “stinking like a
carcase.” After standing for forty hours the blackness and stink will
depart, leaving a milky white solution. This is to be dried to a white
mass, which will change into divers colours, ultimately becoming a
finer green than formerly. That green gold is to be dissolved in spirit
of wine, to which it will impart a quintessence, red as blood, which
is the quickening tincture, a superfluous ashy body being left. After
some more distillations and abstractions a strong red solution will be
obtained which is capable of being diluted with any liquid and may be
kept as a panacea for the most desperate diseases. Next to “the stone”
this is the best of all medicines.

The author cautions his readers against the yellow or red waters sold
by distillers of wine at a great price as potable gold. Further he
explains that the solution of gold made with aqua regia or spirit of
salt is of little or no medicinal value, because the Archeus cannot
digest it, but can only separate the gold and discharge it in the
excrements.

In the “Secrets of Alexis” (John Wight’s translation) a recipe for a
potable liquor of gold is given which “conserveth the youth and health
of man, and will heal every disease that is thought incurable in the
space of seven doses at the furthest.” Gold leaf, lemon juice, honey,
common salt, and spirit of wine were to be frequently distilled. “The
oftener it is distilled the better it be.”

Kenelm Digby made a tincture of gold thus:--Gold calcined with three
salts and ground with flowers of sulphur; burnt in a reverberatory
furnace twelve times, and then digested with spirit of wine.

Lemery gives a formula for potable gold, or tincture of gold, or
diaphoretic sulphur of gold:--Dissolve any quantity of gold you like in
aqua regia; evaporate to dryness, and make a paste of the residue with
essence of cannella. Then digest it in spirit. He adds, sarcastically
I suppose, “This tincture is a good cordial because of the essence of
cannella and the spirit of wine.”

About 1540 Antoine Lecoque, a physician of Paris, acquired considerable
reputation for his cures of syphilis by gold. Fallopius, Hoffmann,
and Dr. Pitcairn, of Edinburgh, more or less fully adopted his
treatment, but the theory gradually dropped out of medical practice.
It was revived early in the nineteenth century by Dr. Chrestien, of
Montpellier, a physician of considerable reputation, and his ardent
advocacy had for a time considerable effect. But subsequent trials in
the French hospitals gave negative results.

There were, no doubt, many honest attempts to make aurum potabile,
and certainly there were a multitude of frauds palmed off on to a
public who had come to believe in the miraculous remedial powers of
the precious metal. The following is one of the simplest formulas for
extracting the virtue of gold. It is given in “Lewis’s Dispensatory,”
1785, but not with any suggestion of its medicinal value:--One drachm
of fine gold was dissolved in 2 ounces of aqua regia. To the solution
1 ounce of essential oil of rosemary was added, and the mixture well
shaken. The yellow colour of the acid solution was transferred to the
oil, which was decanted off, and diluted with 5 ounces of spirit of
wine. The mixture was digested for a month, and then acquired a purple
colour. Lewis explains that the oil takes up some of the gold, which,
however, is deposited on the sides of the glass, or floats on the
surface in the form of a slight film.

AURUM FULMINANS

was described in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, and later
by Oswald Crollius. It is sometimes termed Volatile Gold. Valentine
explains very clearly the process of making it, that is, by dissolving
gold leaf in aqua regia and precipitating the fulminating gold by
salt of tartar. By treatment with vinegar or sulphur its explosive
properties were to be reduced. It was supposed to possess the medicinal
value of gold in a special degree, and was particularly recommended
as a diaphoretic. It appears from reports that it occasioned violent
diarrhœas, and was, no doubt, often fatal. The so-called Mosaic Gold,
which was given as a remedy for convulsions in children, was an amalgam
of mercury with tin, ground with sulphur and sal ammoniac.

Hahnemann insisted that gold had great curative powers, and several
homœopathic physicians of our time have highly extolled it. Dr. J. C.
Burnett, in “Gold as a Remedy,” recommended triturations of gold leaf,
one in a million, as a marvellous heart tonic, especially in cases of
difficult breathing in old age.

IRON.

Iron was not regarded as of special medicinal value by the ancients.
The alleged administration of the rust of iron by Melampus was
apparently looked upon as a miracle, and though this instance is often
quoted as the earliest record of ferruginous treatment, it does not
appear to have been copied. Classical allusions, such as that of the
rust of the spear of Telephus being employed to heal the wounds which
the weapon had inflicted, which is referred to by Homer, can hardly be
treated as evidences of the surgical skill of that period. Iron is not
mentioned as a remedial agent by Hippocrates, but Dioscorides refers to
its astringent property, and on this account recommends it in uterine
hæmorrhage. He states that it will prevent conception; it subsequently
acquired the opposite reputation. The same authority, as well as
Celsus, Pliny, and others, allude to a practice of quenching a red-hot
iron in wine or water in order to produce a remedy for dysentery, weak
stomachs, or enlargement of the spleen.

The later Latin physicians made very little use of iron or its
compounds. Oribasius and Aetius write of the uses of its oxide
outwardly in the treatment of ulcers, and Alexander of Tralles
prescribes both an infusion and the metal in substance for a scirrhus
of the spleen. He was probably the earliest physician who discovered
its value as a deobstruent. Rhazes, the Arab, gave it in substance, and
in several combined forms, but Avicenna regarded iron as a dangerous
drug, and suggested that, if any had been accidentally taken, some
loadstone should be administered to counteract any evil consequences.

Vitriol (sulphate of iron and sulphate of copper) was the iron medicine
most in use up to the sixteenth century; but it was not given with
the special intention of giving iron. Paracelsus had great faith in
the Arcanum Vitrioli, which, indeed, appears to have been sulphur. He
also introduced the use of the magnet, but only externally. It was in
the century after him that the salts of Mars came into general medical
use. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the
preparations of iron became very numerous. Iron filings brought into an
alcohol, that is very finely powdered, were much employed, sometimes
alone and sometimes saccharated, or combined with sugar candy. Crocus
martis was the sesquioxide, æthiops martial was the black oxide,
and flores martis, made by subliming iron filings and sal ammoniac,
yielding an ammoniated chloride of iron, was included in the several
British pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century.

The association of iron with Mars probably influenced the early
chemical physicians in their adoption of iron salts in anæmic
complaints, and as general tonics. The undoubted effect of iron
remedies in chlorotic disease was naturally observed, and the
reputation of the metal was established for the treatment of this
condition long before it was discovered that iron is an invariable
constituent of the human body. When this physiological fact came to be
recognised it was supposed that the action of iron salts was explained;
but, in fact, the investigations of the last century have only tended
to make this theory doubtful.

It is known that in health the proportion of iron in the body is fairly
constant. An average man’s blood contains about 38 grains, almost all
of which is contained in the hæmoglobin. He requires from one to two
grains every day to make up for waste, and this he gets in the meat and
vegetable food which he absorbs. The vegetables obtain iron from the
soil, and animals acquire it from the corn, roots, or grasses which
they eat. So far as is known it is from these sources only that human
beings assimilate the iron they require. It is very doubtful whether
a particle of the iron administered in any of the multitudinous forms
which pharmacy provides is retained. A noted modern physiologist,
Kletzinsky, says “From all the hundredweights of iron given to anæmics
and chlorotics during centuries not a single blood corpuscle has
been formed.” For all that there is no medical practitioner of any
considerable experience who has not found directly beneficial results
follow the administration of these medicines in such cases.

To Sydenham and Willis, two of the most famous physicians of the
seventeenth century, the general employment of iron as a medicine may
be traced. Sydenham, in his treatise on hysteric diseases, which, he
says, are occasioned by the animal spirits being not rightly disposed,
and not as some supposed by the corruption of the blood with the
menstrual fluid, points out that the treatment must be directed to
the strengthening of the blood, for that is the fountain and origin
of the spirits. In cachexies, loss of appetite, chlorosis, and in
all diseases which we describe as anæmic, he recommends that if the
patient is strong enough recourse should be had first to bleeding,
this to be followed by a thirty days’ course of chalybeate medicine.
Then he describes, much the same as modern treatises do, how rapidly
iron quickens the pulses, and freshens the pale countenances. In his
experience he has found that it is better to give it in substance than
in any of the preparations, “for busy chemists make this as well as
other excellent medicines worse rather than better by their perverse
and over officious diligence” (Pechey’s translation). He advises 8
grains of steel filings made into two pills with extract of wormwood to
be taken early in the morning and at 5 p.m. for thirty days; a draught
of wormwood wine to follow each dose. “Next to the steel in substance,”
he adds, “I choose the syrup of it prepared with filings of steel
or iron infused in cold Rhenish wine till the wine is sufficiently
impregnated, and afterwards strained and boiled to the consistence of a
syrup with a sufficient quantity of sugar.”

[Illustration: DR. THOMAS SYDENHAM. 1624-1689.

(Originator of Sydenham’s Laudanum.)
]

Dr. Willis had a secret preparation of iron of which Dr. Walter Harris,
physician in ordinary to Charles II, in “Pharmacologia Anti-Empirica”
(1683), writes:--“The best preparation of any that iron can yield us
is a secret of Dr. Willis. It has hitherto been a great secret and
sold at a great price. It was known as Dr. Willis’s Preparation of
Steel.” Dr. Harris thinks it will not be an unacceptable service to
the public to communicate this masterpiece of that eminent and ever
famous man. “It was no strained stately magistery, no sublimation or
salification, no calcined crocus, and no chemical mystery; but an easy
and a natural way of opening this hard body that it may open ours.” It
was given particularly for the removal of obstructions. The formula
was equal parts of iron filings and crude tartar powdered and mixed
with water in a damp mass in a glazed earthen vessel. This was to be
dried over a slow fire or in the sun; wetted and dried again; and this
process repeated four or five times. It might be given in white wine,
or made into a syrup, or into pills, electuary, or lozenges. Dr. Willis
preferred the crude tartar because the cream of tartar sold by the
druggists was generally a cheat, often combined with alum. The crude
could be bought at 6d. to 8d. per lb. In the apothecaries’ shops cream
of tartar was sold at 3s. to 3s. 6d. per lb.

[Illustration: THOMAS WILLIS, M.D. 1621-1675.]

Quincy (1724), who frequently offers explanations of the exact way in
which medicines exercise their remedial power, thus scientifically
describes the action of iron in removing obstructions:--“Mechanics
teach nothing more plainly than that the momenta of all percussions
are as the rectangles under the gravities and celerities of the moving
bodies. By how much more gravity then a metalline particle has more
than any other particle in the Blood, if their celerities are equal,
by so much the greater will the stroke of the metalline particle be
against everything that stands in its way than of any other not so
heavy; and therefore will any Obstruction in the Glands and Capillaries
be sooner removed by such particles than by those which are lighter.
This is a way of reasoning that is plain to the meanest Capacity.”

Tartarised iron has always been a favourite form for its
administration. The Balls of Mars (boules de Mars, or boules de
Nancy), still a popular medicine in France, are a tartarised iron
prepared by a complicated process. First, a decoction of vulnerary
species is made from 12 parts of water and 2 of the species. This is
strained and poured on 12 parts of pure iron filings in powder. The
mixture is evaporated to dryness and powdered. On this powder another
decoction, 18 of water and 3 of species, is poured, and 12 parts of
red tartar added. This compound is evaporated to the consistence of a
firm paste, and a third decoction, 35 water and 5 species, is added
to 25 of the paste and 25 of red tartar. This is evaporated to the
proper consistence to make balls, which are usually about 1 oz. or 2
oz. in weight. They are kept to dry and then wrapped in wrapper. They
are taken in doses of 4 to 5 grains much as Blaud’s pills are taken
here. Sometimes the balls are dipped in water until a brown colour is
imparted to the liquid. This water is also used as an application to
bruises.

Mistura Ferri Composita was adopted in the P.L., 1809, from the formula
of his anti-hectic mixture which Dr. Moses Griffith, of Colchester,
had published thirty or forty years previously. Paris quotes it as a
successful instance of a medical combination which could not receive
the sanction of chemical law; and he testifies to the opposition
offered on that ground to its official acceptance, but adds that
subsequent inquiry had proved that the chemical decompositions which
constituted the objections to its use were in fact the causes of its
utility. It yields a protocarbonate of iron in suspension, and a
sulphate of potash in solution. The compound of iron is in the state in
which it is most active.

As evidence of the faith in ferruginous waters as tonics of the
generative system, Phillips quotes from the thesis of Dr. Jacques, of
Paris, a curious marriage contract said to have been common at one time
among the burghers of Frankfort to the effect that their wives should
not visit the iron springs of Schwalbach more than twice in their lives
for fear of being too fruitful. The story looks suspiciously like an
advertisement of Schwalbach.

Tincture of perchloride of iron acquired its reputation in the 18th
century from the secret medicines known as La Mothe’s “gouttes d’or,”
and Bestucheff’s Nerve Tincture (see page 321). The formula of the
latter, published by the Academy of Medicine of St. Petersburg, was
corrected by Klaproth, and under various names and in different forms
found its way into all the pharmacopœias. Klaproth’s process was to
dissolve powdered iron in a mixture of muriatic acid 3, and nitric acid
1; evaporate to dryness, and then leave the mass to deliquesce to a
brown liquor. Mix this with twice its weight of sulphuric ether. The
saturated ethereal solution to be mixed with twice its volume of spirit
of wine, and kept in small bottles exposed to light until the liquid
acquired the proper golden tint. A similar preparation is retained in
the French Codex under the title of ethereal-alcoholic tincture of
muriate of iron.

Reduced Iron, or Iron reduced by hydrogen, was first prepared by
Theodore Quevenne, chief pharmacist of the Hôpital de la Charité,
about the year 1854. Pharmacological experiments were made with it by
himself in association with Dr. Miquelard. It was believed at first
that the metallic iron obtained by the process described, which was to
heat the hydrated oxide of iron in a porcelain tube to dull red, and
then to pass a current of hydrogen through the tube, was absolutely
pure, and from experiments on dogs they came to the conclusion that the
metal in this form was more assimilable than any of its salts. It had
besides the advantage of being almost tasteless. Quevenne’s treatise
describing the process and the experiments was published in 1854 under
the title of “Action physiologique et therapeutique des ferrugineux.”
Later investigations, while supporting the original opinion to a great
extent as to the assimilability of the reduced iron, established that
the product is not and cannot be pure. Dusart showed in 1884 that the
proportion of actual iron could not exceed 87 per cent., and was not
likely to be more than 84 per cent. Oxides, and carbonates of iron
were inevitable, while sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, and silicon were
probable contaminations from the gas.

Citrate of Iron in scales was introduced by Beral, of Paris, in 1831.
His formula is given in the _Pharm. Jnl._, vol. I, p. 594.

Syrup of Phosphate of Iron was introduced in a paper read to the
Medical Society of London in 1851 by Dr. Routh, and Mr. Greenish
subsequently described to the Pharmaceutical Society the process by
which it was prepared. The formula was afterwards improved by Mr. Gale,
and his process was adopted in the B.P. It has since been modified.

A solution of iodide of iron was first employed in medicine in this
country by Dr. A. T. Thomson some time in the ’30’s of the nineteenth
century. It was introduced into the London and Edinburgh Pharmacopœias
in the form of a solid salt, and in the latter also in the form of
a solution. Neither of those preparations could be preserved from
decomposition, and the first suggestion of a syrup appears to have
been made in Buchner’s Repertorium in 1839, and soon after by other
experimenters. Dr. Thomson gave a formula for a syrup of iodide of iron
to one of the earliest meetings of the Pharmaceutical Society in 1841,
reported in the first volume of the _Pharm. Jnl._

LEAD.

Lead is one of the ancient metals and was associated in classical
writings with Saturn. The lead compounds used by the ancients in
medicine were white lead or ceruse (carbonate and hydrate), and
litharge (oxide). Ceruse is supposed to owe its name to cera, and to
mean waxy; litharge is from Greek, and means silver stone; it was
regarded as the scum of silver. Red lead or minium was also used to
some extent in the form of an ointment.

Although not much used now as a medicine for internal administration,
lead in various forms has been tried and advocated by doctors,
usually as a sedative. The Pil. Plumbi c. Opio is what remains in
our Pharmacopœia of these recommendations. Galen mentions lead as
a remedy in leprosy and plague, and little bullets of lead were at
one time given in cases of twisted bowels. The sedative property of
lead salts has caused them to be prescribed for neuralgia, hysteria,
and convulsive coughs; Goulard, recognising the anticatarrhal and
astringent effects of the acetate, recommended it in urethritis; and
on the theory that lead poisoning and phthisis were incompatible
French practitioners at one time hoped to find in lead a remedy for
tuberculosis.

Litharge was the basis of most of the popular plasters, and a century
or two ago there were about a hundred of these either official or in
demand. Litharge was called lithargyrum auri or lithargyrum argenti,
according to its colour; but the deeper tint was only the result of a
stronger fire in preparing the oxide. White lead was an ingredient in
several well-known old ointments, the unguentum tripharmacum of Mesuë,
which was the ceratum lithargyri of Galen, the unguentum nutritum, the
unguentum diapomphologos, in which it was associated with pompholyx
or oxide of zinc, and others. To a large extent these ointments were
superseded after Goulard’s time by the unguentum Saturninum which he
introduced. The ointment of Rhazes was composed of white lead, wax, and
camphor dissolved in oil of roses. He also ordered the addition of the
white of an egg to every half-pound, but this came to be omitted as it
caused the ointment to become odorous. The Mother’s Ointment (onguent
de la Mère) has long been a favourite ointment in France for promoting
suppuration, and it is included in the Codex. It was made empirically
by a nun at the Hotel Dieu, named La Mère Thecle, and as it became much
sought after she furnished the formula. It is made by heating together
mutton suet, lard, and butter, and when vapours are being exhaled,
finely powdered litharge is sifted into the fats, causing a violent
effervescence. Some wax and pure black pitch are afterwards added. The
process has been studied by several pharmacists, and the conclusion
come to is that the fats are decomposed and a number of fatty acids
with some acroleine are produced. The operation is a rather dangerous
one, especially if there is any naked light in the vicinity.

Magistery of Saturn was a white lead precipitated from a solution of
the acetate by carbonate of potash. This was the principal ingredient
in the Powder of Saturn devised by Mynsicht. The other components of
this powder, which was recommended in phthisis and asthma especially,
were magistery of sulphur (lac sulphuris), squine root, flowers of
sulphur, pearls, coral, oatmeal, Armenian bole, flowers of benzoin,
olibanum, sugar candy, saffron, and cassia.

The chief apostle of lead in medical practice was Goulard, whose name
has become inseparably associated with the solution of the acetate.
Some account of the bearer of this familiar name, and of his medicinal
preparations of lead will be found in the section on Masters in
Pharmacy.

QUICKSILVER

is first alluded to in Greek writings by Theophrastus, about 315
B.C., but it was certainly known and used medicinally by the
Chinese and in India long before. Apparently, too, it was known by the
Egyptians. Dioscorides invented the name hydrargyrum, or fluid silver,
for it. Pliny treats it as a dangerous poison. Galen adopted the
opinion that the metal is poisonous, but states that he had no personal
knowledge of its effects. With these authors argentum vivum was the
term generally used to mean the native quicksilver, while hydrargyrum
was more usually employed to describe the quicksilver obtained from the
sulphide, cinnabar. Ancient writers appear to have regarded the two
substances as distinct. Dioscorides points out that cinnabar was often
confused with minium (red lead). The name Mercury, and the association
of the metal (or demi-metal, as it was often regarded) with the planet
and with its sign, formerly associated with tin, dates from the middle
ages. It is mentioned first in this connection in a list of metals by
Stephanus of Alexandria, in the seventh century.

[Illustration]

ARABS USED MERCURY MEDICINALLY.

The Arabs, who inherited the medical lore of the Greeks, and probably
added to this in the case of mercury knowledge acquired from India,
were much interested in mercury. In the chemical works attributed to
Geber not only the metal itself, but its compounds, red precipitate
and corrosive sublimate, are described. Much use of mercury was made
by the Arabs in the form of ointments for skin diseases, for which
Mesuë recommended it, and Avicenna was probably the first physician
to express doubt in regard to the poisonous nature of the metal. He
observed that many persons had swallowed it without any bad effect, and
he noted that it passed through the body unchanged.

MERCURY PRESCRIBED INTERNALLY.

Fallopius (1523-1562) remarks that in his time shepherds gave
quicksilver to sheep and cattle to kill worms, and Brassavolus
(1500-1554) states that he had given it to children in doses of from 2
to 20 grains, and had expelled worms by that means. Matthiolus (died
1577) relates that he had known women take a pound of it at a dose with
the object of procuring abortion, and says it had not produced any bad
result.

FRICTIONS AND FUMIGATIONS.

Sprengel fixes the year 1497 as that in which mercury was first
employed externally for the cure of syphilis. Frictions, fumigations,
and plasters were the earliest forms in which it was employed.
Berenger de Carpi, a famous surgeon and anatomist of Bologna, who
practised in the early part of the sixteenth century, is said to have
made an immense fortune by inventing and prescribing frictions with
mercurial ointment for syphilis. John de Vigo was a strong partisan of
fumigations in obstinate cases. His fumigations were made from cinnabar
and storax. It is not quite clear whether this physician gave red
precipitate internally in syphilis. He expressly indicates its internal
use in plague.

MERCURY A REMEDY FOR SYPHILIS.

Peter Andrew Matthiolus, born at Sienna in 1500, died at Trent in
1577, latterly the first physician to the Archduke Ferdinand of
Austria, a botanist and author of “Commentaries on Dioscorides,” was,
according to Sprengel, the first who is known for certain to have
administered mercury internally. Paracelsus, however, was without doubt
the practitioner who popularised its use. He gave red precipitate,
corrosive sublimate, and nitrate of mercury, and describes how each
of these was made. Sprengel credits him also with acquaintance with
calomel, but other authors do not recognise this in any of his writings.

VIGO’S PLASTER.

The Emplastrum Vigonium was a highly complicated compound, which was
held in great veneration and is the subject of innumerable comments
in the pharmaceutical writings of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries. Charas, Lemery, Baumé, and others modified and
simplified it. John de Vigo was a native of Naples, where he was born
about 1460, and he became the first physician of Pope Julius II. His
plaster still figures in the French Codex, and contains 600 parts of
mercury by weight in 3,550 parts. This made into a liquid with olive
oil and spread on calico makes the sparadrap of Vigo, in which form it
is most frequently used, as an application to syphilitic eruptions.

Ambrose Paré gives the earliest formula for Vigo’s plaster, which was
then called Emplastrum Vigonium seu de Ranis. It was looked upon as a
masterpiece of combination. First 3½ oz. of earthworms were washed in
water, and afterwards in wine. Then they and twenty-six live frogs were
macerated in 2 lb. of odoriferous wine, and the whole was boiled down
to two-thirds of its volume. A decoction of camel’s hay (andropogon
schœnanthus), French lavender, and matricaria (chamomilla) was then
mixed with this wine. Meanwhile 1 lb. of golden litharge had been
“nourished” for twelve hours with oils of chamomile, dill, lilies, and
saffron; these were melted down with 1 lb. each of the fat of the pig,
calf, and viper. Human fat might be used instead of that of vipers.
Juices of elder root and of elecampane with euphorbium, frankincense,
and oil of spike were then worked in and the whole melted with white
wax. Lastly, quicksilver extinguished by turpentine, styrax, oil of
bitter almonds, and oil of bay, were added. In Lemery’s time the
minimum proportion of mercury was 1 drachm to 1 oz. of the plaster.
There was also a simple Vigo’s plaster made without mercury. In the
Codex formula the worms, the frogs, the fats, the herbs, roots, and
oils have all gone, but some more aromatic resins are added.

THE FIRST MERCURIAL PILLS.

The first formula for mercurial pills was one which Barbarossa II, a
famous pirate and king of Algiers, and admiral of the Turkish Fleet
under Soliman, Sultan of Turkey, sent to Francis I, king of France,
some time in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The recipe
was published (says Dr. Etienne Michelon, of Tours, in his “Histoire
Pharmacotechnique de Mercure”) in 1537 by Petrus de Bayro, physician
to the Duke of Savoy. He does not give the exact formula, but Lemery
quotes it as follows:--

“Best aloes, and quicksilver extinguished by rose juice, aa 6 drachms;

“Trochises of agaric, ½ oz.; selected rhubarb, 2 drachms;

“Canella, myrrh, mastic, aa 1 drachm; musk, amber, aa 1 scruple;

“Make a mass with Venice turpentine.”

Lemery says you cannot kill the mercury with rose juice, but must use
some of the Venice turpentine.

These pills were largely used in syphilis, but they were practically
superseded later by the pills of Belloste, which are still official in
the French Codex. These were very similar. Belloste was a French Army
surgeon, and his formula was devised about the year 1700. A formula for
them was published in the Pharmacopœia of Renaudot during Belloste’s
lifetime, but after the death of Belloste in 1730 his son tried to
make a mystery of the pills and sold them as a proprietary product,
which probably had the effect of making them popular. The formula of
Renaudot, which is also that of the Codex, was: Mercury, 24 (killed
with honey); aloes, 24; rhubarb, 12; scammony, 8; black pepper, 4. Made
into pills, each of which should contain 5 centigrams of mercury.

THE TREATMENT OF SYPHILIS.

It was at the close of the fifteenth century that syphilis began to
spread through Europe. There are doubtful evidences of its existence
in both Europe and Asia long previously, but the theory is generally
accepted that it was brought from America by the sailors of the
earliest expeditions, while its rapid spread throughout the old world
in the decade from 1490 to 1500 has often been attributed to the
Spanish Jews in the first place, and also particularly to the siege
of Naples by the French in 1495. That large numbers of the French
soldiers then engaged contracted it in the course of that war is
undoubted, and as they were largely instrumental in spreading the
contagion the disease soon came to be known as the French disease, or
morbus Gallicus, though it has been questioned whether the adjective
was not originally a reference to the skin diseases known under the
name of “gale” or “itch.” The opinion that syphilis came from the west
is not universally adopted. It has been pointed out that Columbus only
reached Lisbon on March 6, 1493, on his return from his first voyage of
discovery; and there are several more or less authentic allusions to
the French disease before that date.

The rapidity with which this epidemic seized on all the countries of
Europe, and the virulence of its symptoms, alarmed all classes and
staggered the medical men of the day. Special hospitals were opened
and Parliamentary edicts were promulgated in some of the French and
German cities, ordering all persons contaminated to at once leave the
neighbourhoods. Mercury was one of the first remedies to suggest itself
to practitioners. It had been employed by the Arabs in the form of
ointments and fumigations for skin diseases, and quacks and alchemists
had long experimented with it in the hope of extracting a panacea from
it. Before Paracelsus had begun to administer it, Torrella, physician
to the Borgias, had prescribed mercurial lotions made from corrosive
sublimate, and Jean de Vigo, of Naples, had compounded his mercurial
plaster, and mercurial ointment, and had even given red precipitate in
pills.

At the time when syphilis was causing excitement through Europe
sarsaparilla and guaiacum were much praised as sudorifics, and
wonderful cures of syphilis by them were reported. The poet and
reformer Ulrich von Hutten wrote a book, De Morbo Gallico, in which he
related his own years of suffering from the disease, and his complete
cure by means of guaiacum in 30 days. “You may swallow these woods
up to the tomb,” said Paracelsus. He had not much more respect for
fumigations with cinnabar, which he regarded as a quack treatment by
which it was impossible to measure the dose of the mercury, though he
recognised that it cured sometimes. Red precipitate with theriacum
made into pills with cherry juice was his favourite remedy, and was
one of his laudanums. His Catholicon, or universal panacea, was a
preparation of gold and corrosive sublimate, which was largely used by
his followers under the name of Aurum Vitæ.

Corrosive sublimate was the great quack remedy for syphilis for more
than a century, and the so-called vegetable remedies, syrups and
decoctions of guaiacum, sarsaparilla, and sassafras, maintained their
reputation largely in consequence of the perchloride of mercury,
which was so often added to them. Aqua Phagadænica, 1 drachm of
corrosive sublimate in 1 pint of lime water, was a very noted lotion
for venereal ulcers. It began from a formula by Jean Fernel, a Paris
medical professor and Galenist (1497-1558), who dissolved 6 grains of
sublimate in 3 oz. of plaintain water. This was known as the Eau Divine
de Fernel. By the time when Moses Charas published his Pharmacopœia
this lotion had acquired the name by which it was so long known, and
was made from ½ oz. of sublimate in 3 lb. of lime water, and ½ lb. of
spirit of wine. It yielded a precipitate which varied in colour from
yellow to red.

A curious controversy prevailed for a long time among the chemical
and medical authorities in France in regard to a popular proprietary
remedy for syphilis known as Rob Boyveau-Laffecteur. It was sold as a
non-mercurial compound. It was first prepared or advertised in 1780
by a war office official named Laffecteur, whose position enabled
him to get it largely used in the army. Subsequently a Paris doctor
named Boyveau bought a share in the business, but in time the partners
separated, and both sold the Rob. Boyveau wrote a bulky volume on
the treatment of syphilis, and in that he strongly praised the Rob.
After the deaths of Laffecteur and Boyveau the business came into the
hands of a Dr. Giraudeau, of St. Gervais. This was about the year
1829. In 1780 the Academie de Medicine had examined this preparation,
and had apparently, though not formally, tolerated its sale. Their
chemist, Bucquet, had been instructed specially to examine the syrup
for sublimate. He reported that he could not find any, but he was by
no means sure that there was none there, for he stated that he had
himself added 2 grains to a bottle, and could not afterwards detect
its presence. Between that time and 1829 several chemists studied the
subject, and came to the conclusion that if corrosive sublimate had
been added to the syrup the vegetable extractive or the molasses with
which it was made so concealed it or decomposed it into calomel that
it could not be detected. In 1829 Giraudeau was prosecuted for selling
secret medicines, and for this offence was fined 600 francs. But the
interesting feature of this trial was the testimony of Pelletier,
Chevallier, and Orfila that the Rob contained no mercurial. They
reported that the formula given by the maker might be the correct one,
but that in that case the mixture would contain too small a quantity
of active substances to possess the energetic properties claimed for
it. Guaiacum and sarsaparilla were the principal ingredients, but there
were also lobelia, astragalus root, several other herbs, and a little
opium. The history of this discussion is related at some length in Dr.
Michelon’s “Histoire Pharmacotechnique et Pharmacologique du Mercure”
(1908).

RED PRECIPITATE.

Red precipitate was one of the first preparations of mercury known.
It is traced to Geber, but when the works attributed to that chemist
were written is doubtful. Avicenna in the tenth century was acquainted
with it. In his writings he says of the metal mercury that “warmed in a
closed vessel it loses its humidity, that is to say its liquid state,
and is changed into the nature of fire and becomes vermilion.” Being
obtained direct from mercury acted on by the air, it became known to
the early chemical experimenters as “precipitatus per se.” Paracelsus
obtained it by acting on mercury with aqua regia and heating the
solution until he got the red precipitate. Then he reduced it to the
necessary mildness for medicinal purposes by distilling spirit of wine
from it six or seven times. Charas described a method of obtaining the
precipitate by nitric acid but by a complicated process, and to the
product he gave the name of arcana corallina. Boyle obtained the red
oxide by boiling mercury in a bottle fitted with a stopper which was
provided with a narrow tube by which air was admitted. The product was
called Boyle’s Hell, because it was believed that it caused the metal
to suffer extreme agonies.

OTHER MERCURIAL PRECIPITATES.

The multitude of experiments with mercury yielded many products, and
often the same product by a different process which acquired a distinct
name.

Turbith mineral was a secret preparation with Oswald Crollius who gave
it this name, probably, it is supposed, on account of its resemblance
in colour to the Turbethum (Convolvulus) roots which were in his time
much used in medicine. It is a subsulphate, made by treating mercury
with oil of vitriol and precipitating with water.

The precipitation of mercury by sal ammoniac was first described by
Beguin in 1632. For a time it was given as a purgative and in venereal
diseases. A double chloride of mercury and ammonium was also made by
the alchemists and was highly esteemed by them, especially as it was
soluble. It was called Sal Alembroth and also Sal Sapientiæ. The origin
of the first name is unknown, but it has been alleged to be of Chaldean
birth and to signify the key of knowledge.

A green precipitate was obtained by dissolving mercury and copper
in nitric acid, and precipitating by vinegar. This was also used in
syphilis.

Homberg put a little mercury into a bottle and attached it to the wheel
of a mill. The metal was thereby transformed into a black powder (the
protoxide.)

By a careful and very gradual precipitation of a solution of nitrate of
mercury by ammonia Hahnemann obtained what he called soluble mercury.
Soubeiran proved that this precipitate was a mixture in variable
proportions of sub-nitrate and ammonio-proto-nitrate of mercury.

CALOMEL.

Calomel was introduced into practice by Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne
about the year 1608. It has been said that he was the inventor of the
product, but as it was described and, perhaps, to some extent used
by other medical authorities, Crollius among these, who lived and
died before Turquet was born, this was evidently impossible. Theodore
Turquet de Mayerne had been a favourite physician to Henri IV, but
he had been compelled to leave Paris on account of the jealousies
of his medical contemporaries. His employment of mineral medicines,
antimony and mercury especially, was the occasion of bitter attacks,
but his professional heresy was perhaps actually less heinous than his
firm Protestantism. Both James I and Charles I accepted his services
and placed great confidence in his skill. He was instrumental, as
explained in another section, in the independent incorporation of the
apothecaries, and was also one of the most active promoters of the
publication of the “London Pharmacopœia.”

It appears likely that Turquet invented the name by which this milder
form of mercurial has come to be most usually known. The alchemical
writers of the time called it Aquila Alba or Draco Mitigatus. A
notorious Paracelsian of Paris, Joseph Duchesne, but better known by
his Latinised surname of Quercetanus, who shared with Turquet the
animosity of Gui Patin and his medical confederates, and for similar
reasons, also made calomel and administered it, probably sold it, under
the designation of the mineral Panchymagogon, purger of all humours.
Panacea mercurialis, manna metallorum, and sublimatum dulce, were among
the other fanciful names given. It was believed by the old medical
chemists that the more frequently it was resublimed the more dulcified
it became. In fact, resublimation was likely to decompose it, and thus
to produce corrosive sublimate.

What the name “calomel” was derived from has been the subject of much
conjecture. “Kalos melas,” beautiful black, is the obvious-looking
source, but it does not seem possible to fit any sense to this
suggested origin. A fanciful story of a black servant in the employ
of de Mayerne manufacturing a beautiful white medicine is told by
Pereira with the introduction of “as some say.” A good remedy for
black bile is another far-fetched etymology, and another conceives
the metal and the sublimate in the crucible as blackish becoming a
fair white. Some thirty years ago, in a correspondence published in
the “Chemist and Druggist,” Mr. T. B. Groves, of Weymouth, and “W.
R.” of Maidstone, both independently broached the idea that “kalos”
and “meli” (honey) were the constituents of the word, forming a sort
of rough translation of the recognised term, dulcified mercury; a not
unreasonable supposition, though this leaves the “kalos” not very well
accounted for. In Hooper’s “Medical Dictionary” it is plausibly guessed
that the name may have been originally applied to Ethiops Mineral, and
got transferred to the white product; and Paris quotes from Mr. Gray
the opinion that a mixture of calomel and scammony which was called the
calomel of Rivierus may have been the first application of the term,
meaning a mixture of a white and dark substance.

Beguin (1608) is generally credited with having been the first
European writer to describe calomel. He gave it the name of “Draco
mitigatus” (corrosive sublimate being the dragon). But Berthelot, in
his “Chemistry of the Middle Ages,” has shown that the protochloride
of mercury was prepared as far back as Democritus, and that it is
described in certain Arab chemical writings. It is also alleged to have
been prepared in China, Thibet, and India many centuries before it
became known in Europe.

QUICKSILVER GIRDLES,

made by applying to a cotton girdle mercury which had been beaten up
with the white of egg, were used in the treatment of itch before the
true character of that complaint was understood.

BASILIC POWDER

was the old Earl of Warwick’s powder or Cornachino’s powder (equal
parts of scammony, diaphoretic antimony, and cream of tartar), to which
calomel, equal in weight to each of the other ingredients, was added.
But I have not succeeded in tracing why or when the name of basilic
(royal) was given to the compound.

CORROSIVE SUBLIMATE.

Van Swieten’s solution of corrosive sublimate was introduced in the
middle of the eighteenth century as a remedy for syphilis, and for a
long time was highly esteemed. Its author, Baron von Swieten, was of
Dutch birth, and was a pupil of Boerhaave. He was invited to Vienna by
the Empress Maria Theresa, and exercised an almost despotic authority
in medical treatment. His original formula was 24 grains of corrosive
sublimate dissolved in two quarts of whisky, a tablespoonful to be
taken night and morning, followed by a long draught of barley-water.

Corrosive sublimate was the recognised cure for syphilis, at least in
Vienna, at that time. Maximilian Locher, another noted physician of the
same school, claimed to have cured 4,880 cases in eight years with the
drug. This was in 1762.

CINNABAR.

The bisulphide of mercury (cinnabar) was also used in many nostrums.
Paris says it was the active ingredient in Chamberlain’s restorative
pills, “the most certain cure for the scrophula, king’s evil, fistula,
scurvy, and all impurities of the blood.”

“KILLING” MERCURY.

The art of extinguishing or “killing” mercury has been discussed and
experimented on from the fifteenth century until the present day.
The modern use of steam machinery in the manufacture of mercurial
ointment, mercurial pills, and mercury with chalk has put a check on
the ingenuity of patient pharmacists, who were constantly discovering
some new method for accelerating the long labour of triturating, which
many operators still living can remember. Venice turpentine, or oil of
turpentine, various essential oils, sulphur, the saliva of a person
fasting, and rancid fat were among the earlier expedients adopted and
subsequently discarded. The turpentines made the ointment irritating,
the sulphur formed a compound, and the rancid fat was found to be worse
than the turpentines. Nitrate of potash, sulphate of potash, stearic
acid, oil of almonds and balsam of Peru, the precipitation of the
mercury from its solution in nitric acid, spermaceti, glycerin, and
oleate of mercury have been more modern aids.

It would be outside the purpose of this sketch to deal with the
questions which the numerous processes suggested have raised.
Apparently it is not completely settled now whether the pill, the
powder, and the ointment depend for their efficiency on any chemical
action such as the oxidation of the metal in the cases of the two
former, or on a solution in the fat in the case of the ointment. These
theories have been held, and do not seem unlikely; but there also seems
good reason to believe that mercury in a state of minute division has
definite physiological effects by itself. At any rate, it is well
established that the more perfectly the quicksilver is “killed” the
more efficient is the resulting compound.

SILVER.

The moon was universally admitted under the theory of the macrocosm
and the microcosm to rule the head, and as silver was the recognised
representative of Luna among the metals the deduction was obvious that
silver was the suitable remedy for all diseases affecting the brain,
as apoplexy, epilepsy, melancholia, vertigo, and failure of memory.
Tachenius relates that a certain silversmith had the gift of being
able to repeat word for word anything that he heard, and this power
he attributed to his absorption of particles of silver in the course
of his work. It does not appear, however, that all silversmiths were
similarly endowed.

The Greek and Latin doctors make no allusion to silver as a medicine,
and the earliest evidence of its actual employment as a remedy is found
in the writings of Avicenna, who gave it in the metallic state “in
tremore cordis, in fœtore oris.” He is also believed to have introduced
the practice of silvering pills with the intention of thereby adding
to their efficacy. To John Damascenus, a Christian saint who lived
among the Arabs before Avicenna, is attributed the remark concerning
silver, “Remedium adhibitum est, et in omnibus itaque capitis morbis,
ob Lunæ, Argenti, et Cerebri sympathicam trinitatem.” This association
of the moon, silver, and the brain was believed in firmly by the
chemical doctors of the sixteenth century, and for a long time a
tincture of the moon, tinctura Lunæ, was the most famous remedy in
epilepsy and melancholia. A great many high authorities, among them
Boyle, Boerhaave, and Hoffmann in the eighteenth century, continued
to prescribe this tincture or the lunar pills, but silver gradually
dropped out of fashion. A great number of medical investigators since
have from time to time recommended the nitrate or the chloride of
silver in various diseases, but without succeeding in securing for
silver a permanent reputation as an internal medicine.

The Pilulæ Lunares were generally composed of nitrate of silver
combined with opium, musk, and camphor. Nitrate of silver was given in
doses varying from a twentieth to a tenth of a grain. The tincture of
the moon was a solution of nitrate of silver with some copper, which
gave it a blue tint and probably was the active medicinal ingredient.
Fused nitrate of silver or lunar caustic seems to have succeeded to
the reputation of fused caustic potash as a cautery, and also to
have acquired the name of lapis infernalis (sometimes translated
“hell-stone” in old books) originally applied to the fused potash.

The only reason assigned for this title is the keen pain caused by the
application of the caustic, though probably it was first adopted to
contrast it with the lapis divinus, which was a combination of sulphate
of copper and alum used as an application to the eyes.

Christopher Glaser, pharmacien at the court of Louis XIV, who
subsequently had to leave France on suspicion of being implicated in
the Brinvilliers poisonings, was the first to make nitrate of silver in
sticks.

TIN.

Tin came into medical use in the middle ages, and acquired its position
particularly as a vermifuge. For this purpose tin had a reputation
only second to mercury. Several compounds of this metal were popular
as medicines both official and as nostrums in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and tin did not drop out of medicinal employment
until early in the nineteenth century.

The beautiful mosaic gold (aurum musivum), a pet product with many
alchemists, was probably the first tin compound to be used in
medicine. It was made by first combining tin and mercury into an
amalgam, and then distilling this substance with sulphur and sal
ammoniac. It is now known to be a bisulphide of tin. The mercury only
facilitates the combination of the tin and the sulphur, and the sal
ammoniac has the effect of regularising the temperature in the process.
The product is a beautiful golden metal of crystalline structure and
brilliant lustre. It was given in doses of from 4 to 20 grains; was
sudorific and purgative; and was recommended in fevers, hysterical
complaints, and venereal disorders. The subsequent preparations of tin
which came to be used principally as vermifuges were the Calx Jovis
(the binoxide), the sal Jovis (sometimes the nitrate and sometimes the
chloride), and the Amalgama Jovis. These, however, were all ultimately
superseded by the simple powder of tin given either with chalk, sugar,
crabs’ eyes, or combined with honey or some conserve. The dose was
very various with different practitioners. Some prescribed only a
few grains, others gave up to a drachm, and Dr. Alston, an eminent
Edinburgh physician in the eighteenth century, said its success
depended on being administered in much larger doses. He recommended
an ounce with 4 ounces of treacle to be given on an empty stomach. To
be followed next day with ½ oz., and another ½ oz. the day after; the
course to be wound up by a cathartic.

The Anti-hecticum Poterii was a combination of tin with iron and
antimony, to which nitrate of potash was added. It was sudorific and
was thought to be especially useful in the sweats of consumption and
blood spitting. Flake’s Anti-hæmorrhoidal Ointment was an amalgam
of tin made into an ointment with rose ointment, to which some red
precipitate was added. Brugnatelli’s Poudre Vermifuge was a sulphide of
tin. Spielman’s Vermifuge Electuary was simply tin filings and honey.

Oxide of tin is the basis of certain applications for the finger nails.
As supplied by perfumers the pure oxide is coloured with carmine and
perfumed with lavender. Piesse says pure oxide of tin is similarly used
to polish tortoiseshell.

ZINC.

The earliest known description of zinc as a metal is found in the
treatise on minerals by Paracelsus, and it is he who first designates
the metal by the name familiar to us. Paracelsus says:

“There is another metal, zinc, which is in general unknown. It is
a distinct metal of a different origin, though adulterated with
many other metals. It can be melted, for it consists of three fluid
principles, but it is not malleable. In its colour it is unlike all
others, and does not grow in the same manner; but with its _ultima
materia_ I am as yet unacquainted, for it is almost as strange in its
properties as argentum vivum.”

The alloy of zinc with copper which we call brass was known and much
prized by the Roman metal workers, and they also knew the zinc earth,
calamine, and used this in the production of brass. Who first separated
the metal from the earth is unknown; so too is the original inventor
of white vitriol (sulphate of zinc). Beckmann quotes authorities who
ascribe this to Julius, Duke of Brunswick, about 1570. Beckmann says
white vitriol was at first known as erzalaum, brass-alum, and later
as gallitzenstein, a name which he thinks may have been derived from
galls, as the vitriol and galls were for a long time the principal
articles used for making ink and for dyeing. Green vitriol, he adds,
was called green gallitzenstein. The true nature of several vitriols
was not understood until 1728, when Geoffrey studied and explained them.

The ideas entertained of zinc by the chemists who studied it were
curious. Albertus Magnus held that it was a compound with iron;
Paracelsus leaned to the idea that it was copper in an altered form;
Kunckel fancied it was congealed mercury; Schluttn thought it was tin
rendered fragile by combination with some sulphur; Lemery supposed
it was a form of bismuth; Stahl held that brass was a combination of
copper with an earth and phlogiston; Libavius (1597) described zinc as
a peculiar kind of tin. The metal he examined came from India.

The white oxide of zinc was originally known as pompholyx, which
is Greek for a bubble or blister, nihil album, lana philosophica,
and flores zinci. The unguentum diapompholygos, which was found in
the pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century, and was a legacy from
Myrepsus, was a compound of white lead and oxide of zinc in an ointment
which contained also the juice of nightshade berries and frankincense.
It was deemed to be a valuable application for malignant ulcers.

Oxide of zinc as an internal medicine was introduced by Gaubius,
who was Professor of Medicine at Amsterdam about the middle of the
eighteenth century. It had been known and used under the name of
flowers of zinc from Glauber’s time. A shoemaker at Amsterdam, named
Ludemann, sold a medicine for epilepsy which he called Luna fixata, for
which he acquired some fame. Gaubius was interested in it and analysed
it. He found it to be simply oxide of zinc, and though he did not
endorse the particular medical claim put forward on its behalf he found
it useful for spasms and to promote digestion.

END OF VOL. I

R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BREAD ST. HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Schelenz in “Geschichte der Pharmacie,” 1904, has collected
a remarkable number of facts and documents illustrative of the
development of pharmacy in Germany. He quotes a Nuremberg ordinance of
1350 which forbids physicians to be interested in the business of an
apothecary, and requires apothecaries to be satisfied with moderate
profits.

[2] Dr. Monk gives a copy of the Latin minute in the books of the
College referring to this curious recantation. The actual words which
Geynes signed were these:--“Ego, Johannes Geynes, fateor Galenum in
iis, quae proposui contra eum, non errasse.”

[3] “Free Phosphorus in Medicine,” 1874.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious spelling, punctuation and printers’ errors have been
silently corrected.

2. Where appropriate, original spelling has been retained.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated words have been kept as in the
original.

4. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. I of II" ***

Home