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.)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Antimony Cup.
(From an illustration to a note by Professor Redwood in the Pharmaceutical Journal, July 1, 1858.)
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, 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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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.”
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.
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 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.