Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Precious Stones.

Marvellous virtues were attributed by the ancients to the precious stones known to them, but rather perhaps in their character of amulets than as medicines. One of the so-called hymns of Orpheus, composed probably about 500 B.C., is “On Stones,” and describes the properties of many of these highly esteemed minerals. Four lines (taken from a translation in the Rev. C. W. King’s “Natural History of Precious Stones”) will serve as a sample:—

Coral, according to the same authority, acquired its special properties from Minerva. This substance was much valued by the Romans, who attached pieces of it by ribbons to their children’s necks, in the belief that it would protect them against the designs of sorcerers; and Paracelsus adopted the same view, recommending necklaces of coral to be worn as a preventive of epilepsy, “but such impostures,” says Quincy (1724), “are now deservedly laughed out of the world.” Some old writers insisted that coral worn on the person changed colour, becoming dull and pale when the wearer’s health failed.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries coral and pearls were considerably used in medicine in the form of magisteries, tinctures, syrups, and arcana. Lemery says coral was given to infants in their mothers’ milk as soon as they were born (he does not explain how) to prevent epilepsy, and he names a multitude of other disorders for which it was good. Boyle, too, in his “Collection of Remedies,” recommends it in drachm doses to “sweeten the blood and cure acidity.” The largest and reddest obtainable was to be chosen.

Pearls were used in medicine until the eighteenth century, when it began to be suspected that chalk had the same effect. The tiniest pearls, known as pearl seeds, ground to a fine powder, were prescribed as an absorbent, antacid, and cordial. This powder was also used, says Pomet, “by ladies of quality to give a lustre and beauty to the face.” It was superseded before long by Lemery’s magistery of bismuth, which, however, retained the name of pearl white. Pomet further states that a magistery of pearl was made (apparently by quacks) by combining the ground pearl with acids; an arcanum, spirits, flowers, and tinctures were also prepared and credited with marvellous virtues, “to pick fools’ pockets.”

Pearls, writes Jean de Renou (1607), “are greatly cordial and rejoice the heart. The alchemists consequently make a liquor of pearls, which they pretend is a marvellous cure for many maladies. More often than not, however, their pretended liquor is nothing but smoke, vanity, and quackery. I knew a barber in this city of Paris who was sent for by a patient to apply two leeches, and who had the impudence to demand six crowns of gold for his service. He declared that he had fed those leeches for an entire month on the liquor of pearls.”

It is on record that Pope Clement VII took 40,000 ducats’ worth of pearls and other precious stones with unicorn’s horn within fourteen days. (See Mrs. Henry Cust’s “Gentlemen Errant.”)

Emeralds had a great reputation, especially on account of their moral attributes. They were cold in an extra first degree, so cold that they became emblems of chastity, and curious tales of their powers in controlling the passions were told. Moses Maimonides, a famous Jew who lived in Egypt in the twelfth century, in a treatise he wrote by command of the Caliph as a concise guide in cases of venomous bites or poisons generally, declared that emeralds were the supreme cure. They might be laid on the stomach or held in the mouth or 9 grains of the powdered stone might be taken in wine. But recognising that emeralds were not always handy when the need arose, Moses names a number of more ordinary remedies.

Confection of Hyacinth was a noted compound formulated in all the old pharmacopœias, and regarded as a sovereign cordial, fortifying the heart, the stomach, and the brain; resisting the corruption of the humours and the malignity of the air; and serving for many other medicinal purposes. The original formula ordered besides hyacinths (which were probably amethysts), sapphires, emeralds, topazes, and pearls; silk; gold and silver leaves; musk, ambergris, myrrh, and camphor; sealed earth, coral, and a few vegetable drugs; all made into an electuary with syrup of carnations. A similar compound, but in powder form, was known as “Hungary Powder” and was believed to have been the most esteemed remedy in the Hungary Fever, to which some reference is made in the sketch of Glauber (Vol. I, pp. 260–264). The Emperor Ferdinand’s Plague Powder was another variation of the same compound. The formula given in Lemery’s Pharmacopœia orders about twenty vegetable drugs with bole, hartshorn, ivory, and one scruple each of sapphires, hyacinths, emeralds, rubies, and garnets, in a total bulk of about 4½ ounces. The dose was from ½ scruple to 2 scruples.

Sir William Bulleyn, a famous physician in the reign of Henry VIII, and said to have been of the same family as the Queen, Anne Boleyn, in his “Book of Simples,” which was a work of great renown in its day, gives the following recipe for Electuarium de Gemmis. “Take 2 drachms of white perles; two little peeces of saphyre; jacinthe, corneline, emerauldes, granettes, of each an ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace, basel seede, of each 2 drachms; redde corall, amber, shaving of ivory, of each 2 drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger, long pepper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron cardamon, of each one drachm; troch diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful; cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each 1½ drachm; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; musk, half a drachm.” The electuary was to be made with “honey emblici, which is the fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained, in equall parts, as much as will suffice.” What that may mean I do not know. The medicine, it was said, would heal cold, disease of the brain, heart, and stomach, and Bulleyn adds, “Kings and noble men have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be bold-spirited, the body to smell well, and ingendreth to the face good colour.”

There was a theory that the engraving of a design or a monogram on a gem increased its medicinal virtues. Galen doubts this, however. He states that the jasper benefits the chest and the mouth of the stomach if laid thereupon, and for complaints of these parts he recommends a necklace of jaspers hung round the neck and reaching down to the affected part. That he knew would do good. But some recommended that a serpent should be engraved on the stones, and Galen had tried this, but could not discover that the engraved stones were any better than the plain ones (Simp. Med., ix).

The idea did not die, however. Mr. King quotes the opinion of Camillo Lionhardo, physician to Cæsar Borgia, to the effect that if precious stones were engraved by a skilful person under a particular influence, that influence would be transmitted to the stone; and if the figure engraved corresponded with the virtue of the stone itself or its natural quality, the virtue of the figure and of the stone would be doubled.

Jerome Cardan and other mystic writers of the sixteenth century gave great prominence to precious stones as remedies; and Culpepper after quoting from several of them intimates that he expects some of his readers may consider the accounts given incredible. They declared that the diamond rendered men fearless, that the ruby took away idle and foolish fancies, that the emerald resisted lust, that the amethyst kept men from drunkenness and too much sleep, and so on. Culpepper’s reply to prospective sceptics is that he has named his authorities, and that he knows nothing to the contrary why it may not be as possible for these stones to have the effects attributed to them as for the sound of a trumpet to incite a man to valour, or a fiddle to dancing. Moreover, said Garcius, if the stones applied externally were so efficacious, how much more so would they be if taken internally.

The Four Officinal Capitals.

This description was applied in old medical books to Mithridatium, Venice Treacle, Philonium, and Diascordium. There were writers who ventured to criticise some of the details of composition, or some of the uses frequently made of these compounds, but the possibility of medicine existing without them was hardly contemplated previous to the eighteenth century. Of the two confections first named much has been said in other chapters; but it may be of interest to present here a conspectus of the ingredients of each, comparing the last formulas prescribed in the London Pharmacopœia with what may be regarded as the original compositions. The first pair of formulas are quoted from Galen, who gives the Mithridatium from Damocrates and the Theriaca from Andromachus. Both were in Greek verses. It is not known whether the prescription of Andromachus was versified by Nero’s physician or by his son.

Appended are the formulas for these two confections as given in the P.L. 1746. The drugs named in parentheses are those which the College officially authorised as substitutes.

Philonium,

a famous antidote invented by Philon of Tarsus, who is supposed to have lived in the early part of the first century (a contemporary probably of Saul of Tarsus). Galen says of it that it had been in great reputation for a long time, and was one of the earliest of the compounds of the kind. Philon gives his formula in Greek verses and in such enigmatic language that it would be impossible to interpret it if Galen himself had not come to the rescue. Philon writes:—

Take of the red and odorous hairs of the young lad whose blood is shed on the fields of Mercury (saffron), as many drachms as we have senses; of the Nauplium Euboic (pyrethrum), 1 drachm; the same quantity of the murderer of the son of Menetius, preserved in sheeps’ bellies (euphorbium); add 20 drachms of white fire (white pepper); the same quantity of the beans of the pigs of Arcadia (henbane); one drachm of the plant which is falsely called a root, and which comes from a country renowned because of Jupiter Pissean (spikenard); write pium, and place at the head of the word the masculine article of the Greeks (opium) 10 drachms; and mix the whole with the work of the daughters of the bull of Athens (Attic honey).

The words in parentheses are the explanations of this rather unwieldy joke as they are provided by Galen. It is conjectured from an obscure passage in Pliny that this antidote was prescribed against a peculiar form of colic which became epidemic at Rome about the time when Philon was practising there.

Philonium was the original of the confection of opium which remained in our pharmacopœias until 1867. In the first London Pharmacopœia the formula was more similar to that which Galen gives; later, a modification by Nicolas Myrepsus was adopted, the most important change being the omission of the euphorbium. Until 1746 it was called Philonium Romanum. In the P.L. 1746, the ingredients were white pepper, ginger, caraway seeds, strained opium, and syrup of poppies (or of meconium, as it was called). This had been substituted for honey in all the English formulas. The name was also changed in 1746 to Philonium Londinense. The proportion of opium in Philonium was 1 grain in 36 grains.

Diascordium,

the last of the four officinal capitals, was a medicinal compilation by Hieronymus Frascatorius, and is given in his book “De Contagio et Morbis Contagiosis.” It was devised as a preventive of plague, but it acquired such popularity that Dr. James in the introduction to his Dispensatory (1747) writing of the conventional esteem in which so many compounds are held, says, “Thus the Venice Treacle invented by Andromachus under the reign of Nero, and the Diascordium of Frascatorius, have been used by almost every physician who has practised since their publication.” The original formula, which was adopted in its integrity in the first P.L., was as follows:—

In the eighteenth century this compound became a popular household opiate, and was frequently given to children for soothing purposes, especially as the Pharmacopœia had substituted syrup of meconium (poppies) for the honey. As the preparation was rather a strong astringent it was doubly harmful as a frequently taken remedy. In the P.L. 1746 two species of diascordium were prescribed, one with and one without opium; at the same time a “pulvis e bolo compositus” was introduced in which the scordium, the dittany, the sorrel seeds, the storax, the sealed earth, the bistort, and the galbanum, as well as the wine, were omitted. Edinburgh likewise omitted the scordium and other ingredients, and made the preparation still more astringent by the addition of catechu and kino. This was called Confectio Japonica. The mangled remains of the various formulas are represented in the British Pharmacopœia by Pulvis Catechu Compositus.

Theriaca.

Theriaca was invented by Nero’s physician, Andromachus, and was devised as an improvement on Mithridatium which until then was the great antidote in Roman pharmacy. The most important addition which appeared in the new formula was the introduction of vipers. Andromachus named his electuary “Galene,” which meant tranquil, probably to suggest that it was a soothing, anodyne medicine. It soon, however, acquired its permanent name, for it is referred to as Theriaca by Pliny, who would have been a contemporary with Andromachus. Pliny, it may be remarked, was rather contemptuous of the polypharmaceutic compounds which were then becoming so popular. They were devised, he says, “ad ostentationem artis;” just to “show off,” as we should say.

Andromachus (or it may have been his son, a physician of the same name) wrote his formula, and described the virtues of his compound in Greek elegiac verses which he dedicated to Nero, and which Galen has preserved. The object of giving the formula in verse was that it should be less easy to modify it. The enumeration of the medicinal properties of the antidote left very little room for any other remedy. First it would counteract all poisons and bites of venomous animals. Besides, it would relieve all pains, weaknesses of the stomach, asthma, difficulty of breathing, phthisis, colic, jaundice, dropsy, weakness of sight, inflammation of the bladder and of the kidneys, and plague.

Galen, after describing its alexipharmic properties, states that he tested it by causing a number of fowls to be dosed with it. To these he brought others to which no theriaca had been given. The poison was administered to all. The fowls to which the theriaca had been given all survived, and all the others died. Galen’s encomiums on this compound were no doubt largely responsible for the marvellous reputation it enjoyed all through the centuries in which his authority was accepted. He declares that it resists poison and venomous bites, cures inveterate headache, vertigo, deafness, epilepsy, apoplexy, dimness of sight, loss of voice, asthma, coughs of all kinds, spitting of blood, tightness of the breath, colic, the iliac passion, jaundice, hardness of the spleen, stone, urinary complaints, fevers, dropsies, leprosies, the troubles to which women are subject, melancholy, and all pestilences.

Down to the seventeenth century these virtues were almost universally accepted, and many were the learned treatises written to explain its action; how one drug toned down the effect of others, and how the whole formed a sort of harmony in medicine. At the same time most of the old masters in pharmacy fancied they could suggest some improvement, and the original formula was modified in scores of ways.

In addition there arose new electuaries, modelled more or less closely on theriaca, but perhaps devised for some special complaints, and bearing the names of their authors. Many of these also attained to considerable fame.

For some centuries the theriaca made in turn at Constantinople, Cairo, Genoa, and Venice was in such reputation that customers would have it so branded. Ultimately the last-named city secured almost the monopoly of the manufacture. A reference to its production there occurs in Evelyn’s Diary, dated March 23, 1646. Evelyn writes: “Having packed up my purchases of books, pictures, casts, treacle, &c. (the making and extraordinary ceremony whereof I had been curious to observe, for it is extremely pompous and worth seeing), I departed from Venice.”

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth English apothecaries began to claim that they could make the confection as well as their Italian contemporaries. Some curious documents illustrating their confidence were given in an interesting research by Mr. W. G. Piper, published in The Chemist and Druggist, March 15, 1880. He quotes from William Turner, “the learned divine, daring Protestant, and first English botanist,” the title of a work on the virtues and properties of the great Triacle (published in 1568 but not now known), and also a few paragraphs from a later volume on the same subject in which, after describing the method of making the remedy, he says: “Wherefore if there be any Apothecaries in London that dare take in hande to make these noble compositions they may know where to haue them.” It appears that Hugh Morgan, the Queen’s apothecary, accepted the challenge, for in a pamphlet by him (1585) he insists that his product has been compared with other “theriacle” brought from Constantinople and Venice, and has been better commended. “It is very lamentable to consider,” he writes, “that straungers doe dayly send into England a false and naughty kinde of Mithridatium and Threacle in great barrelles more than a thousand weight in a year, and vtter ye same at a lowe price for 3d. and 4d. a pound, to ye great hurt of Her Maiesties subjects and no small game to straungers purses.”

Mr. Piper also quoted at length from another pamphlet published in 1612 by R. Band (in a subsequent edition, R. Browne), who relates how the Master and Wardens of the Grocers’ Company, having marked that “a filthy and unwholesome baggage composition” was being brought into this Realm as Tryacle of Genoa, “made only of the rotten garble and refuse outcast of all kinds of spices and drugs, hand over head with a little filthy molasses and tarre to worke it up withal,” communicated with the College of Physicians, and induced them to prescribe the proper formula and to superintend the manufacture, which was then entrusted to Mr. William Besse, apothecary in the Poultry. Mr. Besse had to take “a corporall oath” before the Lord Mayor, and every year when he made the confection had to show the ingredients and the product to the College of Physicians. His triacle was sold at not above 2s. 8d. per lb. or 2d. per ounce. It appears from the same pamphlet that nothing was alleged against Venice Treacle except its “excessive dearness.”

Prosper Alpinus, a Paduan physician, wrote an account of his three years’ residence at Cairo (“De Medicina Ægyptorum”) in 1591, and has much to say of the manufacture of Theriaca in that city. It was only allowed to be made in public, and the ceremony was performed once a year in the month of May in the Mosque of Morestan by the chief pharmacist of the city in the presence of all the physicians. The operator would give no information to Albinus, a Christian, about the composition; but he got what he wanted from a famous herbalist who collected all the materials for the compound. Albinus states that at that time Italians, Germans, Poles, Flemings, Englishmen, and Frenchmen came to Cairo to purchase this true Theriaca.

Theriaca (Tyriaca, as he calls it), was among the drugs recommended to Alfred the Great by Helias, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The manuscript is quoted in “Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms” by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne. (See Vol. I, p. 124, 131.)

Many allusions in old records show how highly the confection was esteemed by those who could afford to take it. According to Buckle (“Miscell. Works,” Vol. II, p. 303) it is first mentioned in English literature by Foucher de Chartres (1124). He had come to know of it in the first crusade. A “Pixis argenti ad Tyriacum” is named in the Close Roll of King John, 1208; in the old romance of Sir Tristrem (about 1250) a man is slain by a dragon; and “His mouth opened thai And pelt treacle in that man”; the “triacle box du pere apelle une Hakette garniz d’or” is mentioned among the precious effects of Henry V; in the Paston letters written in the reign of Edward IV we find allusions to “treacle pottes of Geane (Genoa) as my potecarie swerytht on to me, and moerovyr that they were never undoo syns that they came from Geane.”

In early English books treacle was a term used metaphorically for the divinest blessings. Nothing could better prove the high appreciation in which it was held. Piers Ploughman (about 1370) writes, “Treuthe telleth that love ys tryacle for synne”; Chaucer (1340–1400) has “Crist, which is to every harm triacle”; in Coverdale’s Bible (1535) the sentence in Jeremiah viii, 22 is rendered “Is there no triacle in Gilead?”; Sir Thomas More (1573) writes of “laying up a store of cumfort in your hart as a triacle against the poyson of desperate dread”; and later Milton speaks of “the treacle of sound doctrine”; Jeremy Taylor says, “We kill the Viper and make treacle of him; that is, we not only escape from but get advantage by temptations.”

Laurens Catelan, Master Apothecary of Montpellier, and Apothecary in Ordinary to Monseigneur the Prince de Condé, has left a full report of his discourse on the occasion of his dispensing a batch of Theriaca at Montpellier on September 23, 1628. It is a most interesting lecture, full of curious old facts chiefly about poisonings, and inspired with an unshakable faith in the importance of the operation in which he was engaged. The exordium is explanatory of the ceremony:

“The regulations and statutes under which we live in this city,” says Master Catelan, “require that whenever we prepare either Theriaca, Mithridatium, Confection of Hyacinth, or Confection Alkermes, the compounding shall be done in public, and in the presence of the very illustrious professors of this famous University of Medicine, so that they may have the opportunity of censuring or approving the ingredients, and the public may therefore be assured of the fidelity of these important medicines.

“This is why I have here spread out before you all these drugs which are used in the composition of the great and famous Theriaca.

“But as I am honoured with the attendance of such an august assembly, I ought not, I think, to omit to lay before you some of the singularities associated with the history and composition of this remedy, and I will divide what I have to say on these subjects into three sections, namely—

“(1) The discoverer of this compound; (2) the purpose of the invention; and (3) the reasons why these drugs and no others of the multitude known to us have been chosen for this purpose.”

The lecturer then entered upon a history of Mithridates and his wonderful immunity against poisons; of his defeat by Pompey, of the recovery of his formula, of the additions made to it a hundred years later by Andromachus, and of the preservation of directions for making it which Galen wrote some fifty years after Andromachus had completed his invention.

At this point the book tells us there was an interval, and some music was performed. When the lecturer resumed he proceeded to tell of the risks which princes and nobles ran of being poisoned in those old times, and of the precautions taken against such crimes. Of the rings and amulets they wore, of the tasters they employed, and of the treatment such as Mithridates went through of accustoming his system to poisons to such an extent that they took no effect on him. He quotes in support of the belief in this method of ensuring immunity against poisons two or three stories from the classics which one would have thought would have been too strong even for a professional eulogist of Theriaca.

One case was that of a girl who ate spiders from her childhood, and was so fortified against poisons as not to be afraid to take any of them. A man is alluded to by Galen who would drink a cup of wine in which a live viper had been drowned. We have also the account of a girl whose system had been so saturated with aconite that an Indian king had sent her as a present to Alexander the Great in the hope that he would kiss her, and thus imbibe the poison with which her lips would be charged; but, fortunately, Aristotle saw her first, and recognised by her flaming eyes that she was filled with some sort of poison, and thus the Indian’s purpose was frustrated.

After another interval and some more music, the lecturer came to the third part of his subject, in which he expounded the special virtues of the drugs before him. These were grouped, and it was shown that some were good for the brain, others for the chest, for the stomach, for the kidneys, the heart, and other organs. Others, like the viper’s flesh, were directly sympathetic with poisons, and would go straight for them if they were inside the body, or would lie in wait for them, as it were, if they were only expected. When the subject was exhausted, it was announced that in consequence of the lateness of the hour the weighing of the ingredients would be postponed till the next day. That ceremony was duly performed on the 24th of September, and the drugs were passed on to a “pulveriser.” It was not until the 16th of November that the final mixing was undertaken.

Kermes.

Kermes as a pharmaceutical term reaches us through the Arabic, qirmis, red. But it was not a native Arabic word. It was adopted into that language from the Persian, and was of Sanskrit origin. The word Krimija in Sanskrit meant produced by a worm, and was itself from krimi, a worm; worm is the direct English descendant of krimi. Kermes is responsible in modern English for carmine and crimson, but it need hardly be said that it has no connection with the Flemish kermess though it looks so like it. Kermess is kerkmess, or, in English, church-mass.

The kermes of the Arabs was the kokkos of the Greeks, coccus of the Romans. It was found on a species of oak, now called the Quercus ilex, a low, shrubby, evergreen bush with prickly leaves like the holly. The tree, however, bears acorns. The ancients generally regarded these insects as the fruit of the trees, though they were aware that worms came from them. But these they thought were produced from the corruption of the fruit. The principal use they made of them was in dyeing, and for this purpose they were employed until the superior coccus cacti from Mexico superseded the coccus ilicis. In the middle ages kermes was retained as the medicinal name, but for dyeing the insects were called vermiculi, and the cloth dyed by them was known as vermiculata. From this came the French word vermeil, and from that vermilion was derived.

Medicinally the coccus was principally employed by the Greek and Latin physicians as an application to wounds and for inflamed eyes. It acquired a very high reputation among the Arab doctors as a cordial for internal administration, and the famous Confection of Alkermes, invented by Mesué the younger, who was contemporary with Avicenna, continued in popular favour up to the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, the external application of kermes lingered in the use of scarlet cloth in measles, erysipelas, and other red diseases.

The original Confection of Alkermes contained juice of rennet apples, rose water, silk, kermes, sugar, ambergris, amber, yellow santal, lapis lazuli, pearls, musk, and leaf gold. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this compound was prepared publicly at Montpellier, and was supplied from that city to all Europe. It was described as good for all maladies proceeding from the melancholic humour, faintings, palpitations, heart weakness, and in slow convalescence. It fortified the stomach, rejoiced the heart, and engendered good spirits. The dose was 1 drachm, or it might be applied externally on a piece of scarlet cloth.

Mel Ægyptiacum

is a very ancient compound used chiefly by veterinarians as an escharotic. Its name suggests Egyptian origin, but it has not been traced further back than to the “Grabadin” of John Mesué, the Arabian author, about the year 800. Scribonius Largus before him gives a similar formula under the name of Hygra. Mesué’s formula was to boil 1 oz. of vinegar with 1 oz. of honey to the consistence of honey and to add 2 drachms of verdigris. This formula was modified in various ways in the different pharmacopœias in which it was adopted; alum was added in some cases, cream of tartar in others. The chemical action varied with the process, but generally the result was to reduce a part of the verdigris to an oxide of copper, metallic copper, and a little basic acetate in different proportions. The compound appeared in the London Pharmacopœia of 1721 as Unguentum Ægyptiacum; in that of 1746 as Mel Ægyptiacum; as Oxymel Æruginis in that of 1788; and as Linimentum Æruginis in the P.L. 1851. In this last edition the formula given was to dissolve 1 oz. of verdigris in 7 oz. of vinegar, and boil this with 14 oz. of honey to a proper consistence. It was not adopted in the British Pharmacopœia. In old veterinary recipes it was often combined with tincture of myrrh to form a detergent liniment, and occasionally in a very diluted form was administered internally as a tonic. On the Continent, where its employment lingered longer than in this country, an Egyptiac of Solleysel, from which the vinegar was omitted, but litharge, sulphate of zinc, and arsenic in small proportions added, was frequently preferred to the original.

An Unguentum Ægyptiacum magis compositum, containing rock alum and sal ammoniac, in addition to the other ingredients mentioned, was included in the London Pharmacopœia 1721. In some foreign pharmacopœias camphor was prescribed as an ingredient, and in one old one theriaca is ordered.

Terra Sigillata.

Various earths were celebrated as medicines in old times, that from the Island of Lemnos especially having been esteemed from the days of Herodotus among the Greeks, and this product retained its reputation in Western Europe down to the seventeenth century. It is still used by the Turks and neighbouring nations. The Lemnian earth is a greasy clay which is dug from a desolate hill in the island and consists of silica, alumina, chalk, and magnesia, with a little oxide of iron which gives it a red tint. It acquired the fame of being an antidote to all poisons, and was given in dysenteries, internal ulcers, and hæmorrhages; also in gonorrhœa, and in pestilential fevers. Externally it was applied to festering wounds. The characteristic of the best Lemnian earth was its greasy feel and freedom from grit.

A sufficient supply of this Lemnian earth is still, and has been certainly from the time of Galen, dug out of the hill only on one day of the year, with considerable ceremony and in the presence of the principal inhabitants of the island. At present the ceremony is largely a religious one, and the day fixed for it is the 6th of August, which in the Greek church calendar is the Fête of the Saviour. Formerly the ceremony was originally associated with the worship of Diana, and the date of the performance was the 6th of May. The particular earth may not be dug by any one on any other day of the year except that formally set apart for the operation. According to Dioscorides the earth was made up into a paste in his time with goats’ blood, but when Galen visited the place 150 years later he could find no evidence of this addition.

Lemnian earth was, and I presume still is, a monopoly of the Sultan of Turkey. Most of the produce of the day’s digging was sent to Constantinople and was made up into round tablets of about half an ounce in weight, which were stamped with designs similar to those shown in the accompanying sketches. At one time it is said the figure of Artemis (Diana) or the goat, which was one of her symbols appeared on the tablets, and it may be from this that the story of the goat’s blood originated.

Many other sealed earths were also more or less used in medicine, and were credited with similar virtues. The Terra Mellitea came from Malta and was alleged to have a special power against the bites of serpents, Malta, vipers, and St. Paul thus associating themselves in the public mind. These cakes bore the effigy of St. Paul, and a popular legend attributed their efficacy to a blessing on the earth of the island when the apostle landed there. There were besides Terra Samia, from the Isle of Samos; Terra Sicula or Fossil Bezoar from Sicily; Terra Portugallica, stamped with the figure of a rose, from Portugal; Terra Strigensis or Germanica from Strigonium in Hungary, stamped with a design, suggesting mountain peaks and cross-keys on them; and Terra Livonica. Naturally the temptation of selling soil at fabulous prices per shovelful appealed to all nations.

The appended formulas from Geoffroy’s Materia Medica (written before 1731) will show how this sealed earth was used. Both are for dysentery.

Lemnian earth, ʒi, syrup of quinces, 1 oz., plantain water, and knot grass water, of each 3 oz. Spoonful doses.

Lemnian earth, conserve of red roses, conserve of hips, of each ½ oz.; syrup of bearberries sufficient to make a soft electuary. Take ʒi morning and evening.

Several so-called “alexipharmic powders” or mixtures much more complex than the preceding were prescribed in small-pox, fevers, and pestilential diseases.

Oil of Bricks.

Oil of Bricks appeared in the earlier London and Edinburgh pharmacopœias and in many foreign formularies. It was long held to be a specially valuable application in gouty and rheumatic pains, and was especially in repute as a cure for deafness. It was also sometimes given as an internal remedy. Among its synonyms were those of oleum philosophorum, oleum sanctum, oleum divinum, and oleum benedictum; but as these names were adopted for selling purposes they may not have meant much. The process given in the P.L. 1746 was to heat bricks red-hot and quench them in olive oil until they had soaked up all the oil. They were then broken into small pieces and put into a retort, and by means of a sand-bath with a gradually increasing heat a distillate of oil and so-called spirit was obtained. The spirit was water impregnated with empyreumatic oil. The oil was nothing but an empyreumatic olive oil.

Arquebusade Water

was the original of many vulnerary waters invented for application to wounds, bruises, and ulcers. It was a weak, spirituous distillate from a large number of herbs and aromatic plants, such as angelica, rosemary balm, hyssop, mint, rue, sage, and wormwood. These would furnish an antiseptic lotion. As the arquebus was displaced by the musket about the end of the sixteenth century it may be supposed that the lotion acquired its name and popularity at that same period; but these evidently lasted for a long time, as we find that a certain John Thomson took out a patent for “a concentrated balsam of arquebusade” in 1786.

Four Thieves Vinegar

is the sub-title of the Antiseptic Vinegar of the French Codex. It is a strong vinegar in which a number of aromatics with camphor and garlic have been macerated. The story of its origin is that in the year 1720 a plague was raging in the city of Toulouse, and that during the period of panic four thieves went about the city plundering the dead and dying. People wondered why they never took the disease, and when they were ultimately brought to justice and convicted, they were offered pardon if they would reveal the secret of their prophylactic. This is the legend as given by Littré, who quotes it from Abbé Lemontey. Other authors make Marseilles the scene of the exploit.

Elixir Proprietatis.

This medicine was very celebrated in all countries for several centuries, and, though not in the British Pharmacopœia, was official under the name which Paracelsus gave it in the P.L. 1724, as Elixir of Aloes in the P.L. 1746, and later as Tinct. Aloes Co. In the Ph. Ed. it was called Tinct. Aloes et Myrrhæ, and this was the most usual name for it until quite recent times, and probably is still. Paracelsus wrote about it and extolled it as a compound which would prolong life to its utmost limits. That he used the same ingredients mainly as his successors is certain, but he never gave any clear formula. His disciple, Oswald Crollius, however, deduced from his writings that it was a tincture of aloes, myrrh, and saffron, with sulphuric acid. Boerhaave substituted vinegar for the sulphuric acid and left most of that behind by distillation. Van Helmont had previously made an Elixir Proprietatis without any acid; and in many continental pharmacopœias the elixir was made alkaline by the addition of carbonate of potash. This also originated with Boerhaave. Other authors added a few spices. The Elixir of Garus which still appears in the French Codex was the same sort of preparation but with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and other ingredients, diluted with syrup of maidenhair. Garus was a grocer, who acquired great popularity under the Regency with his Elixir. St. Simon says he cured the Maréchal de Villars with it, and that he would probably have saved the life of the Duchesse de Berry if the physician Chirac, jealous of his fame, had not administered to her a purgative which killed her (“Mem. de St. Simon,” cxi, pp. 140–228).

Balsam of Sulphur

was a famous medicine up to our own days. It appears now to have dropped out of use. It was highly commended by Van Helmont, Rulandos, Boyle, and indeed by most of the medical experts of the seventeenth century, and was compounded from many different formulæ. The simple balsam was made by boiling one pound of flowers of sulphur with four times its weight of olive oil until the sulphur was dissolved and a thick dark balsamic substance was obtained. This was the formula of the P.L. 1746. But linseed oil and walnut oil were often prescribed in preference to olive oil, and oil of anise, oil of amber, oil of juniper, white wine, Barbadoes tar, turpentine, myrrh, aloes, and saffron; one or more of these substances were combined with the balsam in other receipts. The use of the balsam was generally for coughs, asthmas, and lung diseases. Salmon says, “It is of good use to digest crude humours and undigested matter in any part of the body, being often anointed upon the same.” The terebinthinated balsam was given in stone; a combination with iron, Balsamum Sulphuris Martis, was prescribed in gravel. These balsams were applied externally to ulcers, or taken in doses of from five to forty drops.