Besides the above, precious stones in powder, and diamond powder, which was regarded as a powerful poison, commanded very high prices.
To obtain a clear conception of the great advance that has been made in medicine and pharmacy, it is necessary to look back through the vista of centuries at the Elizabethan apothecary. In doing so, we should note how the influence of superstition and charlatanry, with which the art of healing was surrounded and intermixed, has been gradually dispersed under the searching light of science. One can picture the apothecary’s shop in the days of “good Queen Bess”. Up a narrow winding street, paved with round cobble stones, and no pathway to protect you from the jostling and nudges of the passing chair-bearers, French pages, and watermen who throng the thoroughfares, his abode may be denoted perhaps by the gilded crocodile which hangs over the doorway, accompanied by a pole from which depends a pair of brightly-burnished metal pans, denoting the practice of the chirurgical art. The overhanging gables of the half-timbered houses darken the low-roofed shop, through whose small windows filled with little panes of bottle glass, a very dim light penetrates. A mysterious odour permeates the interior and strange things are seen hanging from the rafters,—flying fish, tortoises, and a long alligator float mid-air. Strings of poppy-heads, bunches of chamomile and centuary, also glass jars containing adders and worms adorn the counter. On one shelf an array of bright brass mortars, and round about on others, a great collection of quaint bottles and earthen pots, containing electuaries, unguents, and lohochs; syrup bottles with long curved spouts, and bladders full of seeds and wax. In the corner stands the great iron mortar, whose heavy pestle is suspended from a spring beam, and another is filled with little drawers to hold the gums and spices.
Away at the back a red glow appears from the furnace, and alembics, big and little, lie about. At night the shop is crowded with poor women buying worm-seed for their children or treacle to drive out the measles, and with country people who have come for drugs and drenches for their sick cattle. “There are serving-men waiting for their masters’ purgatives and electuaries, or the fops’ facewashes of oil of tartar, lac virginis, and camphor dissolved in verjuice. Smart maids are buying conserves and sackets for their mistresses, or perfumes for my lady’s chamber. Here desperadoes and rakish gallants could purchase poisons, and blushing maidens would buy their love charms and philtres, or antidotes to counteract the same. Some apothecaries kept a little room for taking tobacco, furnished with silver trays, and a maple block for cutting it, where the gallants met and gossiped, or learned tricks in smoking from fashionable professors, for nearly all the apothecaries sold tobacco—real Timidado—nicotine cane, and pudding, as it was called.” The old apothecary’s prescriptions were composed of strange ingredients, sometimes crab’s eyes and boar’s teeth, or powdered pearls, and viper broth. He would recommend you a toad, well dried in the sun, put in a bag, and hung round the neck by a string low enough to touch the region of the heart, to allay hæmorrhage. A preparation of garlic and honey smeared on the person was a certain charm against the bites of vicious dogs and reptiles, or the stings of venomous insects. Toothache could be charmed away by a few leaves of the “shepherd’s purse” placed in the sole of the shoe. An excellent recipe for sore eyes was the expressed juice of the calyx of the red honeysuckle, provided always that the flowers were gathered kneeling and repeating nine Pater nosters in honour of the Trinity, nine more “to greet our Ladye,” and a creed. My Ladye Falkenbrydge’s recipe for eye-water was much esteemed, and ran thus: “Corne-flowers gathered with their cuppes and bruyse them; macerate them in snowe or snowe water for twentye-foure houres, then dystyl in a moderate sandebath and applye it night and morning”. This was prescribed in 1553. A favourite cure for rickety children was to pass them through the split stem of a tree. For ague, a very well salted herring, split open, was applied hot to the soles of the feet; or an emerald worn round the neck formed a potent charm against the same complaint. The learned Boorde, in his Breviary of Health, says: “The medical treatment of the day was a mixture of religious theories, superstition, and white magic”. He recommends for a bad rheum the application of oil of scorpions and fox fat; for a bruised skin, washing it with white wine and plastering with an oak leaf; and he quaintly states “the best remedy for itching is long nails and scratching,” which, at any rate, is common-sense. To preserve the health and a good complexion, he recommends young maids to wipe their faces daily with a scarlet cloth, and only wash them once a week.
Another peculiar phase of pharmacy in those early days was the instructions of the various apothecaries’ guilds to their members as to prayer. The compounder of prescriptions was directed to go down on his knees and supplicate before he commenced his labours. Many old herbals and works on pharmacy, especially in Germany, contain curious wood-cut illustrations of the apothecary at his devotional exercises. Cyriacus Schnaus, an apothecary of Nuremberg, published a book in 1565, wherein he, in person, is represented as kneeling on a large mortar before a sacred picture. This custom may have been originated by the monks, many of whom followed the art of healing.
A writer of the time states that the itinerant dentist was also a well-known figure at the street corner. For 100 marks he would put out both your eyes, and quite cure your inflammation with one drop of his aqua mirabilis, at twelve-pence a drop. He offered you an antidote from stab or bullet for five marks, and by his side waved a banner stuck all over with horses’ teeth, to show his skill.
He cured your toothache by charms, sometimes writing mysterious words on a paper, and burning it under your nose; or he would sear your teeth with hot wires, most effectively; or make you inhale the hot vapour of henbane seeds, and then show you the worms that he had conjured out, which are certes now wriggling in the water. He wore a chain of molar teeth around his neck, and shook them from time to time as he held up a bottle of liquid and called out: “These are the spirits that pass with the blood into the rheum, to vex the teeth of men”. His descendants may still be seen at the present day working wondrous cures, decked out in similar fantastic garb, or extracting teeth gratis, and by sheer bold impudence reaping a golden harvest.
Having thus shown how the now almost forgotten pioneers of science laid the foundation of the arts of medicine and pharmacy, and how much we owe to their patience and diligence, a brief reference may be made to the class of medicaments in use in the days of Queen Elizabeth, immediately prior to the differentiation in England of the first pharmacists—the apothecaries—and the beginnings of pharmacy as a separate art.
“A few simples,” says Burton, “well prepared and understood, are better than such a heap of nonsense, confused compounds, which are in apothecaries’ shops ordinarily sold.”
For madness and melancholy, wormwood was used. Another remedy was clarified whey, with borage, bugloss, endive, succory, etc., a good draught of which was taken in the morning, fasting. For the spleen and liver, syrups were prescribed composed of borage, thyme, epithyme, hops, scolopendra, fumitory, maiden-hair, and bizantine. These syrups were mixed with distilled water by the apothecaries, or stirred into juleps.
Of conserves there were innumerable varieties, and ointments of oil and wax, as well as liniments and plasters of herbs and flowers, well boiled with oil or spirits.
Cataplasms and salves were frequently made of green herbs sodden, pounded, and applied externally.
Gradually, as the years have rolled on, and as the science of chemistry has unlocked the marvellous resources and products of nature, most of these old relics of the days of superstition and witchcraft have been left behind and forgotten, and it remains only for some old black-lettered tome to tell the story and for us to fill in the background to the picture.
In the early part of the eighteenth century, the enterprising empiric seems to have hit on a new method of lining his pockets at the expense of the public, and we have the advent of the so-called proprietary or quack nostrum, which has developed into such gigantic proportions in later years. To bring some special drug into notoriety in those days it was first necessary to spread some tale abroad as to its extraordinary virtues, then by means of a pamphlet (for there were few other advertising media) recount the marvellous cures it had performed, and back them up by mentioning a few great names. In this way the quack medicines originated.
In a similar manner, some drugs that have since proved of great use to humanity were brought into note. Peruvian bark was first imported into Spain by the Jesuits, where it remained seven years before a trial was given to it. It was first administered to a Spanish priest in 1639, and but for the supreme power of the Church of Rome it would in all probability have sunk into oblivion. Pope Innocent X., however, at the intercession of Cardinal de Lugo, ordered the bark to be duly examined by the best experts of the time, and on a favourable report being presented, it at once rose high in favour.
The “Elixirs of Life” made by the early alchemists may be said to have been the forerunners of quack medicines, and for these concoctions fabulous prices were demanded. Those made by Paracelsus and Van Helmont were known throughout Europe, and must have brought considerable grist to the mill of their proprietors. The Collyrium of Danares, which enjoyed a wide reputation in the seventeenth century, was sold at £9 per bottle. Then there was the Sympathetic Powder of Sir Kenelm Digby, noted for healing wounds, and Hoffman’s Water of Magnanimity. Another famous nostrum made by Paracelsus was called Præcipitatus Diaphoreticus Paracelsi, and warranted to cure a fever in four days.
“Dutch drops,” which were originally sold for half a guinea a bottle, are said to have brought the proprietors £2000 in one year.
The Eau Médicinale de Husson, another well-known quack nostrum, was introduced by an officer of that name in the service of Louis XVI. It is said to have been simply a decoction of meadow saffron. Dr. James’ celebrated fever powder, which enjoyed a great reputation in this country, is stated to have been the invention of an Italian named Lisle, and a recipe for its preparation was published in Colborne’s English Dispensary in 1756. Oliver Goldsmith believed this to be a remedy for all ills and took it regularly up to his death.
The Count St. Germain, a Frenchman, realised large sums by vending an artificial tea, which he affirmed would prolong life. It is said to have been composed chiefly of senna and fennel leaves. The Chevalier d’Ailhoud was another adventurer who introduced a powder which met with such a sale that he soon saved enough to buy a whole county. That prince of empirics the Count Cagliostro sold his Balm of Life, or stomach elixir, at an exorbitant price. He asserted that he had lived 200 years by its use, and was rendered invulnerable against poison of every description.
During his residence in Strasburg, while boasting and expounding the virtues of his nostrum and antidote to a large assembly of the townsfolk, a physician who was present, and who had not taken part in the conversation, quitting the room quietly, went to an apothecary’s shop and ordered two pills to be made of equal size. Taking them with him, he made his way back to the room, and walking up to the loquacious quack he said, “Here, my worthy Count, are two pills. The one contains a deadly poison, and the other is perfectly innocent. Choose one and swallow it, and I will take the one you leave.”
The Count took alarm, and after making all kinds of apologies and excuses, at last refused to swallow the pill. The physician, smiling, then took his place on the platform, and in view of the company swallowed both, and then, to the discomfort of Cagliostro, announced that both pills were simply composed of bread. The Count beat a speedy retreat.
In 1794 considerable sensation was excited by the account of some wonderful cures made by a Count Thün of Leipzig, who professed to cure gout, hypochondria, and hysteria by laying his hands on the head of the patient.
The early part of the present century saw a great increase in the number of these nostrums, the usual method adopted by their proprietors being to set up in great style in a fashionable part of the town, and by lavish display and various eccentricities, to attract general attention.
Among the foremost in London was a German Jew who called himself Doctor Brodum. This individual, who, it is said, started life as a footman, took a large house in a fashionable square in the west-end, and drove a pair of horses in a gorgeous chariot. He called his nostrum “Nervous Cordial,” its properties being set forth in a pamphlet entitled A Guide to Old Age. He is said to have amassed a fortune in a very short time.
Another notorious quack was Doctor Solomon, who eventually settled in Liverpool. He originally sold blacking in Newcastle, but finding it did not pay, came to Liverpool, where he tried to establish a newspaper. This effort also proved a failure, and Solomon at length turned his attention to quack doctoring, and brought out a nostrum called “The Balm of Gilead”. This proved successful, and he soon made enough money to build himself a substantial house in Kensington, which was at that time a fashionable suburban district. To advertise his preparation he wrote a pamphlet called The Guide to Health, extolling the virtues of the “Balm of Gilead and Anti-Impetigines”. This treatise, the cover of which was adorned with an engraving of his mansion at Kensington, stated “the most learned physicians have been unable to discover in the cordial Balm of Gilead the least particle of mercury, antimony, or any other mineral except pure virgin gold and the balm of Mecca”.
The Doctor was a well-known character in the streets of Liverpool in the early part of this century, and in his daily promenade always carried an elaborate gold-headed cane. The celebrated “balm” is said to have been simply brandy flavoured with some aromatic oil, and although sold at a guinea a bottle, was in great demand.
A story is told of a prominent tradesman of the time, who discovered that his wife was consuming considerable quantities of the invigorating balm. Being further informed that this had become a common habit with many of her friends, he took counsel with the husbands of these ladies, with the result that they determined to punish the doctor by carrying out the following plot. On a certain dark night, a messenger was despatched to the doctor’s house, asking him to come at once and see a patient a little way out in the country, and to be sure and bring with him several bottles of his Balm of Gilead. The unsuspecting victim soon set out on foot along the country lanes, and on getting to a very lonely part, was pounced upon by four men disguised in cowskins, who, with long horns and tails, looked like fiends incarnate. The poor doctor thought his last hour had come, and went down on his knees and invoked all the prophets he could think of; but his tormentors dragged him off to a field close by, where they made him swallow bottle after bottle of his own nostrum, then ducked him in a pond and tossed him in a blanket.
Solomon was so incensed at this outrage he determined to leave Liverpool and settle in Birmingham, but in a short time returned to the former city, where he died, and was buried, according to his directions, in his own garden.
The following verse, referring to these empirics, is extracted from an old ballad:—
The electropathic girdles of our own time had their anti-type in Perkin’s far-famed tractors for preserving health, for which the proprietor demanded the sum of five guineas a set. The wonderful properties attributed to them were set forth in a small book, entitled The Influence of the Metallic Tractors on the Body.
Among the nostrums that enjoyed popularity in the early part of this century were De Velno’s Vegetable Syrup, Dr. Senate’s Lozenges of Steel to prolong life, Leake’s Patent Pills, Dr. Burton’s Vital Wine, Beddoe’s Volatile Cordial Oxygen Gas for preserving life, Dr. Squirrel’s Tonic Drops and Powders, Godbold’s Vegetable Balsam, and many others.
The foibles of many of the most prominent empirics of the period are well hit off in the following old ballad:—
The mortar is the most ancient of pharmaceutical implements, its earliest use carrying us back to prehistoric times, when the early Briton bruised his grain in the hollow of a granite boulder. There is little doubt indeed that mortars were employed for the purpose of bruising and reducing hard bodies to powder, centuries before medicine as an art was thought of or known.
The name is derived from the Latin word mortarium, which is probably from the root mordeo, to bite, akin to the Sanscrit mrid, to grind or to pound; the literal meaning of the word being a vessel in which substances may be pounded with a pestle.
The origin of the mortar appears to have been identical with that of the mill or quern as it was called in ancient times. The primitive implement used by prehistoric nations for the purpose of crushing their grain, was simply made by hollowing out a cup-shaped hole in a block of stone or granite, and pounding the grain placed in this receptacle with a smaller stone of suitable form. These grain-crushers, together with stone rollers and pounders, have been found in the circular huts of the Britons in several parts of North Wales.
This method was also used by the early Jews before the Christian era for crushing their spices and gums, the knowledge of which they doubtless gathered from the Egyptians during the captivity.
In many of the ancient Egyptian papyri we find directions given to bruise certain herbs and roots, but no mention is made of the implement used for that purpose; carvings in stone, however, are extant which show the mortars used by the Egyptians were similar in form to those employed several centuries later.
It is interesting to note that the mortar has also been known to several Oriental and savage races from time immemorial; and in the mortar employed by the pharmacist to-day we have an implement that links us not only with prehistoric man, but also with the savage races of the world. In Africa, mortars and pestles of wood have been used from a period of unknown antiquity for the purpose of crushing grain. The one illustrated in Fig. 1 is composed of wood, and was brought from Central Africa. In India, stone mortars with wooden pestles have for centuries been used for shelling and pounding rice. Fig. 2 represents a Cingalese mortar of stone, from two to three feet in height, taken from a drawing of the seventeenth century.
Coming to the time of the Roman Empire, we have the first real evidence of the use of the mortar for pharmaceutical purposes. Medicine and pharmacy allied, in the time of Celsus, had become practical arts; and we know from the preparations described by that author that practical appliances were necessary. Thus the malagma used as an application to the skin was a kind of soft mass directed to be beaten up to the consistency of a thick paste; and the ingredients of the catapotia were often ordered to be bruised before being mixed.
Roman mortaria composed of earthenware are very commonly found, and many examples may be seen in most of our museums among other Roman remains. They were chiefly made for domestic use, and although they vary very little in pattern, the sizes are numerous. The larger ones are, as a rule, very strongly made, and all have a thick divided rim with a rounded moulding. The inside was roughened with splinters of flint or hard stone, or hard-burnt earthenware, which was fixed on with a kind of “slip” or liquid clay with which the Romans finished their ware. A wooden pestle was used with these mortaria, which were no doubt chiefly employed for triturating and mixing various condiments for domestic use. The Roman mortarium shown in Fig. 3 is twenty-eight inches in breadth, and bears the stamp of the maker’s name, showing it to be the work of one Publius Raso.
Some of the smaller mortaria found are composed of a very white clay of a vitreous character burnt hard like porcelain, and are nonabsorbent. These were probably used for mixing more delicate condiments.
There were large manufactories for mortaria in Britain, situated chiefly in the south of England, at the mouth of the Thames, and in Essex and Staffordshire. From these factories there was a considerable export trade to Rome and Gaul.
Roman mortars of stone are much rarer, and the one depicted in Fig. 4 is a unique specimen, and was with little doubt at one time used for pharmaceutical purposes. Composed of stone, with a solid square base, it stands about twelve inches high, and is about eight inches broad. The notches at the corners are evidently intended for fixing it down on a wooden table or slab, to keep it steady when being used for pounding or breaking up hard substances. Closely akin to mortars were the querns or small mills used for grinding purposes from the Roman period. In shape they somewhat resembled the mortar, but were covered in at the top, having a hole in the centre through which the pestle was worked. They were made of stone and wood. A beautiful example of a wooden quern is depicted in Fig. 5.[8] It stands thirteen inches high, and is made of very hard wood. It is an exquisite specimen of the turner’s art, some of the side mouldings being of great delicacy, no thicker than a fine needle, yet perfectly true in every particular. The pestle was worked through the hole in the centre of the cover. These wooden querns were used during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
There is little doubt that marble succeeded stone as a material for making mortars, and this brings us down to mediæval times, when the apothecaries, combining the practice of medicine and pharmacy, became wielders of the pestle.
The value of the mortar as a pharmaceutical implement was recognised by these early practitioners, and was given the most prominent position in their shops, and so the pestle and mortar became a symbol or trade sign of pharmacy.
The great bell-shaped mortar, which was of considerable capacity, usually stood, mounted on a solid block of wood, near the centre of the shop, the huge pestle, three feet or more in length, being suspended from a long wooden spring beam by a chain and ring. One can readily picture the youthful apprentice, clad in jerkin and trunk hose, exercising his muscles with the ponderous pestle, and with what mingled feelings he would essay the task of pounding half a hundred-weight of aloes to begin his day’s work and give him an appetite for his midday meal. These large mortars were usually bell-shaped in form, as illustrated in Fig. 6, and composed of iron or bell-metal. The smaller mortars of this period were made of brass, copper, and bell-metal, and were occasionally ornamented with some symbol or device. Many were very elegant in form, and they usually stood in bright array on the counter. The pestles were made flat, top and bottom, so that either end could be used for pounding.
The bell-metal mortar depicted in Fig. 7 dates from the time of Oliver Cromwell, and bears the arms of the Commonwealth on both sides. It was probably once the property of an official State apothecary. The brass mortar shown in Fig. 8 is peculiar in shape, and is supported by four short legs. It dates from the early part of the seventeenth century, and round the middle are inscribed the letters of the alphabet. Fig. 9 represents a particularly handsome example of the brass mortar of the seventeenth century. Copper mortars when polished have a very elegant appearance, and are somewhat rare. A specimen is depicted in Fig. 10. A very fine bell-shaped mortar of brass was found in Chester about two years ago, and is now deposited in the museum of that city. It stands nearly two feet high, and dates from the early part of the eighteenth century.
Small brass mortars were also formerly used by housewives in the stillroom, and for other domestic purposes, and may often yet be found ornamenting the kitchen mantelshelf in old country houses.
During the last and the early part of this century Italian marble was largely employed for making mortars, but with the introduction of wedgewood and composition ware, which is lighter, more durable, and less liable to be acted on by chemicals, marble mortars have now almost gone out of use with pharmacists.
Small antique mortars of bronze are still to be found in many French pharmacies, often bearing some symbol or device, such as St. Michael and the dragon.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales present one of the most interesting pictures of life and manners in the fourteenth century we have in English literature. The father of English poetry was born in 1328, and London is generally believed to have been his birthplace. It was his fortune to live under the wing of that chivalrous and high-spirited king, Edward III., a time when gallantry, prowess, and courage were counted in the highest esteem. In his Canterbury Tales he embodies some vivid sketches of the times and characters among which he lived. A physician of course forms one of his motley crew of pilgrims, who beguile the monotony of their ride to Canterbury, to pay homage at the shrine of Thomas à Becket, by the quaint stories related.
The pilgrim doctor is thus described:—
One can thus picture the ancient physician riding his steady jennet, clad in doublet and hose of red and blue, with cloak of sendall, a fine silk material, all lined with taffata. In telling the stars and casting horoscopes he would be learned, as astrology entered very largely into his practice, and brought many big fees. So learned a leech would doubtless have a large practice, and the apothecaries evidently vied with one another in preparing his prescriptions. The names of ancient philosophers with whom he was familiar is quite formidable, nearly all the old authors being enumerated. It is satisfactory to know he was no glutton, and had an easy conscience. That he was a wise and careful man is evident from the fact that when an epidemic came he lived but moderately, and saved extra money that flowed in during the plague time.
The closing couplet is a pretty bit of wit, and alludes to the frequent use of gold in medicine in ancient times.
Among the pilgrims also was a cook—
The former ingredient, probably a kind of baking powder, is now unknown, and the use of galingal in cookery has been quite forgotten. This aromatic condiment was commonly used as a culinary spice in the middle ages. Reference is made to the drug in the writings of Ibn Khurdadbah, the Arabian geographer, in the year 869. It was used mixed with cloves and cardamoms, and also employed in medical practice as early as the ninth century.
In the course of the knight’s romantic tale, Palamon, a gallant young knight, escapes from a prison in which he has been immured for seven years, by drugging the jailer:—
Clary was Hippocras wine made with spices, probably chosen in order to mask the taste of the opium and other narcotics, of which it was evident Palamon must have given the unfortunate jailer a large dose if he slept through the vigorous shaking which is said to have been administered. The opium of Thebes was much used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Prosper Alpinus, who visited Egypt in 1580-83, states that opium or meconium was in his time prepared in the Thebäid from the expressed juice of poppy-heads, and it was called Opium Thebaïcum. Later in the story a sharp encounter occurs between two bands of knights, in which:—