The most valuable and original records of the history of drugs are to be found in “Pharmacographia” by F. A. Flückiger of Strasburg and Daniel Hanbury of London (published by Macmillan & Co.). I have as a rule avoided copying details from that work, although I have dealt with no subject without referring to it. In this section, however, the drugs named are of course treated in “Pharmacographia,” and necessarily the facts given must to some extent correspond. But comparison would show that I have only selected subjects which were capable of discussion from a somewhat different point of view from that which guided Messrs. Flückiger and Hanbury.[1]

Aloes.

Dioscorides is the earliest medical writer to mention aloes as a medicine. According to him it should be given in doses of from half a drachm to one drachm as a gentle purge, or of three drachms if its full cathartic effect were required. The drug is not named by Hippocrates nor by Theophrastus.

Celsus describes it as specially valuable for city men and men of letters (urbani et literarum cupidi); he says it is an ingredient in all purgatives, and it is clear from the later Greek and Roman writers how highly this remedy was esteemed. In “Pharmacographia” Hanbury refers to the legend of Alexander the Great visiting the Island of Socotra at the instance of Aristotle particularly on account of the aloes grown there. It is said that Alexander left a colony of Ionians on the island in order to ensure a sufficient supply of the drug. Undoubtedly there were Greek Christians there in Mohammedan times and it is probable that the Arabs invented the Alexandrian origin of them.

The fame of aloes was well maintained by the Arabian physicians, and the old Greek and Roman formulas for aloetic compounds were passed on to the Middle Ages by Mesué of Damascus, together with some new ones. It was one of the drugs recommended to Alfred the Great by the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

In 1622 Mindererus published a treatise on a special compound of aloes which he had devised. Raymond Minderer was the most famous physician of his time. He lived at Augsburg, and was the appointed medical adviser to the Duke of Bavaria and the great house of the Fuggers, the Rothschilds of the period. Minderer’s book was entitled “Aloedarium,” and it described in loving detail each of the nine ingredients of what is supposed to have been the lineal ancestor of our modern compound rhubarb pill. The components were:—

Aloes 3 ounces, Marum (herb mastic), and Saffron, of each 3 scruples, Agaric, Costus, and Myrrh, of each 3 half-drachms, Ammoniacum, 3 drachms, Rhubarb, 3 two-drachms (ʒvi), and Lign Aloes, 3 half-scruples. These drugs were each separately macerated in appropriate liquids, the aloes in rose water, the myrrh in rue vinegar, and so forth. Mindererus recommended these pills not so much as a purgative, but as a general tonic, especially useful to strong, fair, well-fed persons.

Following Minderer’s book, and indeed slavishly copying it, came a treatise by Dr. William Marcquis of Antwerp, entitled “Aloe Morbifuga.” The only notable feature of this work is that its author is clear about the importance of that part of the aloes which is soluble in water as the constituent of the drug in which the purgative properties reside. He was, in fact, the originator of our aqueous extract of aloes.

Castor Oil.

The supposed identity of the Palma Christi tree, from the seeds of which castor oil is obtained, with the Hebrew “kikaion” is mentioned in the note on Jonah’s “gourd” in the section “Pharmacy in the Bible.” It is not doubtful that the plant was the same as the “kiki” of Herodotus, and the “kiki” or “kroton” of Dioscorides. Avicenna quotes a reference to the seeds from Dioscorides, from which, he says, is pressed the oil of kiki “which is the oil of Alkeroa.” Other Arab authors use the term “al-keroa” for the Greek “kiki.” A frequent Latin name for the Palma Christi was “kikinum,” or “cicinum.”

The earliest allusion to the oil is found in Herodotus (“Hist. Euterpe,” sec. 94), where we read “The inhabitants of the marshy grounds in Egypt make use of an oil which they term the ‘kiki,’ expressed from the Sillicyprian plant. In Greece this plant springs spontaneously without any cultivation; but the Egyptians sow it on the banks of the river and the canals; it there produces fruit in great abundance, but of a very strong odour. When gathered they obtain from it, either by friction or pressure, an unctuous liquid which diffuses an offensive smell, but for burning it is equal in quality to the oil of olives.”

From this and other references it is clear that the Egyptians held the Palma Christi plant in high esteem, and this would hardly have been the case if it was only used for the extraction of an inferior burning oil. As is stated in another section, Ebers guesses that an aperient medicine made from the fruit of the kesebt tree may have meant the ricinus seeds. The seeds of the Palma Christi, too, have been frequently found in sarcophagi; evidence that they had acquired a high reputation of some kind.

Hippocrates apparently tried to reduce the acridity of the seeds so as to make them more useful as purgatives. Dioscorides alludes to their purgative properties, but only contemplates the external employment of the oil in medicine. Pliny, however, is more explicit. Chapter xli., of Book 23 begins with the sentence: “Oleum cicinum bibitur ad purgationes ventris cum pari calidæ mensura.” The whole passage is of interest. The following is the translation of it given in Bohn’s “Classical Library” (Dr. Bostock): “Castor oil taken with an equal quantity of warm water acts as a purgative upon the bowels. It is said, too, that as a purgative it acts particularly upon the regions of the diaphragm (precordia). It is useful for diseases of the joints, all kinds of indurations, affections of the uterus and ears, and for burns, employed with the ashes of the murex; it heals itch, scabs, and inflammations of the fundament. It improves the complexion also, and by its fertilising tendencies promotes the growth of the hair. The cicus or seed from which this oil is made no animal will touch, and from these grape-like seeds wicks are made which burn with a peculiar brilliancy. The light, however, that is produced by the oil is very dim, in consequence of its extreme thickness. The leaves are applied topically with vinegar for erysipelas. Fresh gathered they are used by themselves for diseases of the mamillæ and defluxions. A decoction of them in wine with polenta and saffron is good for inflammations of various kinds. Boiled by themselves and applied to the face for three successive days they improve the complexion.”

In Egypt and Rome, therefore, Ricinus was evidently esteemed; and though as a medicine they dropped largely out of use, it is clear from old English physic books that a traditional reputation was always associated with both the seeds and the oil. Gerard, in his “Herbal,” and Piso, in an account of the natural history of the West Indies, both recommend them, the former in broth, the latter in the form of a tincture made with brandy for colic and constipation. Gerard states that the Palma Christi “of America” grew in his garden (in Holborn) and in many other gardens likewise. The seeds, however, came to be regarded as dangerous, and were clearly but little used in orthodox medicine. Quincy (1724) refers to them as “hardly ever met with in practice, unless amongst empirics and persons of no credit.”

In 1764, however, Dr. Peter Canvane, of Bath, who had practised for seven years in the West Indies, published a treatise entitled “A Dissertation on the Oleum Palmæ Christi, sive Oleum Ricini, or (as it is commonly call’d) Castor Oil,” in which he warmly recommended the oil as a gentle purgative, particularly in cases of “dry belly ache.” His advocacy soon took effect, for in the second edition of his treatise published in 1769, he says it had become officinal, by which he meant was sold in the shops, “at Apothecaries Hall and several other shops in London and Bath.” Dr. Odier, of Geneva, who visited England in 1776, became then acquainted with the medicine, and subsequently brought it to the notice of Continental physicians. It was admitted into the London Pharmacopœia in 1788.

The name “Ricinus” was in Latin the name of the parasite known as the dog-tick, Ixodes ricinus, and was transferred to the Palma Christi seeds because of their resemblance to the insect. In Greek the same insect was called the kroton, and Theophrastus and Dioscorides describe the Palma Christi seeds as kroton seeds. Curiously the name kroton has been applied in America to the cockroach, not from any association with ticks, but from a belief that the insects came from the Croton River when the water from that source was brought to New York in 1842. The name of castor oil is supposed to have been given to the oil in consequence of a mistaken idea in the Western Indies that the plant which yielded the seeds was Agnus Castus. There was, however, a castor oil and compound castor oil in medicinal use in England and other countries until the eighteenth century. The simple oil was made by digesting castorum in oil and boiling it with wine until the latter had all evaporated. The compound oil contained besides a number of aromatic gums and spices. Possibly the taste of the oil from the Palma Christi seeds recalled that from the old oil of castor, and the name may thus have been transferred.

Cinchona.

It is not possible to determine from the legends and reports collected by the many competent naturalists who visited Peru in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the special object of investigating the history of the cinchona trees whether it was known or used as a medicine by the natives before its virtues were ascertained by Europeans.

Peru was discovered in 1513, and became subject to Spain about the middle of the sixteenth century. But Hanbury points out that no reference to the bark as a febrifuge has been found earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was reported by La Condamine, and others who acquired their knowledge on the spot, that the Indians had long used the bark as a dye. The Countess Ana of Chinchon, wife of the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, was cured of a fever by the bark in 1638, but there is evidence that its medicinal value had been experienced by some of the conquering race before that date. One story is that when the Countess was ill and all the usual remedies had been found ineffective, the Corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan Lopez Canizares, who had himself been cured by the bark of a similar illness, brought some of the remedy from Loxa to Lima and staked his reputation on its infallibility. After her cure the Countess became an enthusiastic advocate of the medicine, administering it with uniform success to her dependents and others in Lima, and on her return to Spain in 1640, exerting herself to make it known there.

Another story is to the effect that a native maid in the employment of the Countess had made known the virtues of the bark to the Viceroy out of affection for her mistress, though until then the Indians had concealed the secret from their cruel rulers. The most likely account is that the bark had become known as a valuable medicine to the Jesuit missionaries who had been in the country for fully fifty years when the Countess of Chinchon was cured.

Le Condamine stated, in 1738, that the Indians had a legend that they had become acquainted with the properties of the bark in consequence of an earthquake in the neighbourhood of Loxa which had caused a number of the trees surrounding a lake near the city to be thrown into the water. An Indian violently ill with a fever and consumed with thirst had drunk water from this lake and had been rapidly cured. Another tradition was that the pumas of the country had been observed to eat the bark when they were ill, and that the Indians had learned its value from this circumstance.

The Count and Countess of Chinchon returned to Spain, as has been said, in 1640. They went to live on their estate at Chinchon Castle, about forty miles from Madrid, and their physician, Juan del Vego, followed them and resided at Seville. Vego brought with him a considerable quantity of the bark from Peru, and sold it at 100 reals per pound. Sprengel queries whether the real of Plata or the real of Vellon is to be understood; the latter was worth about 2d., the Plata or silver real being worth about 8d. It is not at all certain that Vego’s bark was the first importation of the medicine into Spain. A Spanish physician named Villerobel, quoted by Badus in 1663 in a work on the Peruvian bark, states that a quantity was received in 1632, but was not tried until 1639 (a year after the cure of the Countess, it will be noted). The patient was an ecclesiastic of Alcala de Henarez, near Madrid. However this may be, Vego’s reports and the experiments with his bark excited lively interest all through Spain, and from then began a controversy almost as bitter as that between the Galenists and Paracelsists. There were a large number of practitioners who could not bring themselves to believe in any medicine which Galen had not described. It was also alleged by some contemporary writers that a prompt cure of intermittent fevers was not by any means desired by a large number of medical men and apothecaries, who consequently allied themselves in opposition to this very effective bark. This statement is no doubt due to the usual uncharitableness of controversy; but it is possible that the adversaries of the new remedy might at least cling to their old prejudices with not less firmness when these and their interests ran on parallel lines.

Fevers were at that time regarded as caused by some morbific principle in the humours which occasioned effervescence, and which it was essential first of all to expel. The patient was, therefore, treated with evacuants and debilitating medicines while the fever continued, and the vital spirits were afterwards restored by a course of cordials and bitters, such as wormwood, chamomile flowers, mace, carduus benedictus, angelica, and valerian. The opponents of the bark insisted that if it palliated the fever it “fixed the humour” and ensured a relapse or some other more dangerous disease. In 1652 Leopold William, Archduke of Austria, and Governor of the Low Countries, who had interested himself in popularising the bark, fell ill with a quaternian fever. He took bark and recovered. A relapse occurred, but the complaint again yielded to the remedy. Some time after he had another attack. This time, perhaps influenced by the views already quoted, he refused to take bark and died. This event was regarded, illogically enough, as evidence of the dangerous character of the medicine.

Meanwhile, the Jesuits had been busy propagating the new remedy and proving its virtues. The provincial father brought a large supply to Rome, and explained the method of using it to a congress of Jesuits then assembled in that city. The fathers administered it all over Europe, giving it gratuitously to the poor and to their own order, but charging its weight in gold to the rich. It is said that they endeavoured to keep it as a secret medicine, and would only supply it in powder so that it might be more difficult to identify. The Procurator-General of the order, Father (afterwards Cardinal) de Lugo, making a journey to Paris in 1649, found the king, Louis XIV, himself suffering at the time from an intermittent fever. He recommended to him the use of the bark, and Louis took it and quickly recovered. The powder of the Cardinal, the Powder of the Fathers, the Jesuits’ Powder, by which names among others it was known, consequently came into strong demand. But these titles were largely responsible for the reaction which almost drove cinchona out of practice. Protestant fears and prejudices were added to the orthodox opposition of the Galenists, and besides, many practitioners administered the bark ignorantly, in too small or too large doses, while the high prices at which it was sold led to fraudulent substitution, which more than anything else discredited the bark as a medicine. Sprengel quotes complaints from the Cardinal de Lugo, the apothecary of the College of Medicine at Rome, and Vincent Protospatario, a physician at Naples, who alleged that the Spanish merchants were sending into Italy instead of the true Peruvian bark various other astringent barks devoid of any aromatic taste, but flavoured up to the necessary bitterness by aloes.

Although Sydenham in England, and a number of eminent physicians on the Continent, studied the proper methods of administration and the suitable doses of bark, it fell to a practitioner whose methods went a long way to justify charges of charlatanry firmly to establish cinchona in professional and popular favour.

Robert Talbor was assistant with an apothecary at Cambridge named Dear. It has been ascertained that in 1663 he had been entered as a sizar at St. John’s College for five years, but there is no indication that he took a degree. In his writings he states that he was largely indebted to a member of the University of the name of Nott for suggestions relative to the administration of bark. The next heard of him is that he was practising in Essex. This was about 1671. He wrote a book in 1672, which he called “Pyretologia,” a rational account of the cause and cure of agues. In this he refers to his own secret remedy, which, he says, consists of four ingredients, two indigenous and two exotic. He mentions Peruvian bark and intimates that it is an excellent remedy, but one that should be employed with prudence, as in the hands of inexperienced doctors it might occasion serious evils. He does not say that it was contained in his specific.

Talbor moved to London and set up his sign next door to Gray’s Inn Gate, in Holborn. His treatment brought him into fame, the climax of which was that having cured the daughter of Lady Mordaunt he was sent for when Charles II was ill with an ague and cured him. He was knighted, appointed a royal physician with a salary of £100 a year, and the king caused a letter to be written to the College of Physicians asking them not to interfere with his practice in London.

Talbor next figures in Paris, and there leaped into eminence. For French convenience he assumed the name of Talbot, an English name with which they were historically familiar. He soon became a favourite in high circles. Mme. de Sévigné refers to him several times in her letters of 1679. In one she says, “Nothing is talked of here but the Englishman and his cures.” In November, 1780, the Dauphin was dangerously ill with a fever. Talbor had plenty of friends at court who wanted him to be sent for. Mme. de Sévigné is again the chronicler. She writes:—“The Englishman has promised on his head to cure monseigneur in four days.” If he fails she believes he will be thrown out of the window. She further states that the King (Louis XIV) insisted on seeing Talbor prepare his wine; and when she reports the fulfilment of his promise and the cure of the Dauphin she notes with malicious glee the discomfiture of the king’s head physician, Antoine d’Aquin.

D’Aquin wrote bitterly against Talbor, insisted that his treatment of the Dauphin and of other persons had been founded on a mistaken diagnosis, and that in the Dauphin’s case he had made a bilious fever into a dangerous disorder. Another critic suggested that his remedy given to the Duke of Rochefoucauld in an arthritic asthma had had fatal consequences.

Louis agreed to buy Talbor’s formula, but nothing was published until after the death of the latter. Two thousand guineas and an annual pension of £100 were granted to the English doctor, and he was made a Chevalier. Shortly afterwards he went to Spain and cured the queen of that country of a fever. Then he returned to London and died in 1781, at the early age of forty.

His official formula, published after his death, directed 6 drachms of rose leaves to be infused in 6 ounces of water with 2 ounces of lemon juice for four hours. A strong infusion of cinchona was added to the above, together with some juice of persil or ache. He also made alcoholic tinctures and wines of cinchona. The French doctors were sure that he was in the habit of adding some opium to his speciality. If he did he invented a valuable combination.

Another contemporary writer, John Jones, gives the following as Talbor’s process. He digested finely-powdered bark in juice of persil and decoction of anise separately. The mixture was placed in an earthen vessel, and having been stirred frequently he added red wine and macerated for a week. He also made a tincture of cinchona by adding 8 ounces of alcohol to 2 ounces of powdered bark.

From a handbill in a collection of quack advertisements in the British Museum Library, dated “1675, &c.,” it appears that Dr. Charles Goodal, who gave his address “at the Coach and Horses, near Physician’s Colledge, Warwick Lane,” offers “for the public good a very superior sort of Jesuit’s Bark, ready powdered, and papered into doses” at 4s. per ounce, or in quantity £3 per lb., and as evidence that this is a reasonable price he refers to Mr. Thain, druggist, of Newgate Street, to whom he had paid 9s. per lb. for a considerable quantity. Possibly it was Mr. Thain who was advertising.

Tinct. Cinchonæ Co.

The official formula for this tincture is slightly modified from that devised by John Huxham, M.D., and published in his Essay on Fevers, 1755. It first appeared in the P.L. 1788 as a College preparation.

John Huxham was born as Totnes in 1692, and was the son of a butcher. He studied medicine under Boerhaave at Leyden, but graduated M.D. at Rheims. Then he returned to England and after a time settled at Plymouth. He was a Nonconformist, and at first depended on the dissenting portion of the population for his practice, but it did not expand as fast as he wished and it is alleged that he was not above some of the tricks satirised by novelists; as, for example, being called out of chapel, riding at full speed through the streets, walking about with a gold-headed cane, wearing a red coat and followed by a footman who carried his gloves. He, however, acquired a considerable reputation both locally and nationally; was elected F.R.S. in 1739, and was awarded the Copley medal in 1755 for a treatise on antimony in which he strongly recommended an Essentia or Vinum Antimonii made by infusing 1 oz. of glass of antimony in 24 oz. of sound Madeira wine for 10 or 12 days, then decanting and filtering. He advised doses of 30 to 80 drops of this in tea, wine, beer, or other liquid, as an alterant, attenuant, and diaphoretic. The treatise though verbose does not seem to have had any special merit.

His Essay on Fevers was much more important and has been highly esteemed by competent critics. He also wrote a valuable note on scurvy in seamen, recommending a more abundant supply of vegetables on voyages, and was the first to describe the malignant ulcerous sore throat now called diphtheria.

Huxham’s formula for Tinct. Cinchonæ Co. as given by himself was as follows:

Cort. Peruv. opt. pulv. ℥ ii, Flav. Aurant. Hispan. ℥ iss, Rad. serpent. Virgin. ℥ iii, Croci Anglic. ℈ iv, Coccinel. ℈ ii, Sp. Vini Gallici, (Brandy), ℥ xx. F. Infusio clausa per dies aliquot (tres saltern quatuerve) deinde coletur. The dose was ʒ i to ℥ ss every 4, 6, or 8 hours with 10, 15, or 20 drops of elixir of vitriol in diluted wine. Huxham says of this tincture “it tends to strengthen the Solids, to prevent the further Dissolution and Corruption of the blood and in the event to restore its Crassis.” He has previously stated that it is a very useful remedy “not only in slow, nervous fevers, but also in the putrid, pestilential, and petechial, especially in the Decline.” But he adds, “if the patient is costive or hath a tense and humid abdomen, I always premise a dose of rhubarb, manna, or the like.”

According to Dr. Paris, Huxham believed in complicated prescribing. “There are several prescriptions of Huxham extant,” we read in “Pharmacologia,” “which contain more than four hundred ingredients.”

Cinchona or Chinchona.

Sir Clements Markham, whose services in introducing cinchona culture into India and Ceylon are well known, has earnestly insisted on the adoption of the name chinchona instead of cinchona in justice to the lady after whom the generic title was chosen. In a Memoir of the Lady Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon, Sir Clements Markham somewhat extravagantly exalts that “illustrious and beautiful lady,” whom he describes as “one of the most noble benefactors of the human race.” She may have been an excellent woman, but her advocate does not furnish sufficient evidence of her virtues to justify such lavish praise. The Countess was cured of a fever by the bark, and on her return to Spain she distributed the remedy to such of her vassals as needed it. Perhaps her physician, who brought a quantity of the bark home with him and sold it, did more to make it generally known than she did by her gifts.

Still there is no doubt that Linnæus intended by the name he gave to the genus to perpetuate her memory; and it is likewise true that her name was Chinchon and not Cinchon. The latter term, Sir Clements says, means a broad girdle or a policeman’s belt, and makes the intended honour ridiculous. His opinion was that Linnæus had erred in ignorance, having been misled by several French writers. Daniel Hanbury, however, who contested some of Markham’s assertions, gave good reasons for believing that Linnæus had adopted the term cinchona deliberately for the sake of euphony. Anyway he shows that Mutis, the disciple of Linnæus, who sent him the plant from which he wrote his description, while at first writing of chinchona soon followed the spelling of the master and continued to do so.

The name cinchona and derivatives from it are too well established to be dislodged now for a sentimental reason, even if it were not that the adopted name is undoubtedly easier to pronounce than the more strictly correct one would be.

Cultivation of Cinchona in the East.

Many botanists and travellers remarked upon the reckless manner in which the natives of Peru collected the bark. They felled the trees and stripped them of bark without planting new ones to take the place of those destroyed. Humboldt says that 25,000 trees were thus destroyed in a single year.

The first attempt to transport any plants to Europe was made by La Condamine in 1743. He had obtained some young plants and was conveying them down the Amazon River to Cayenne, intending to transport them to the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. At the mouth of the river a wave swept over his little vessel and washed away his whole collection. Joseph de Jussieu, who had accompanied La Condamine on his expedition, and remained in the country after him for fifteen years, was robbed of his collection at Buenos Ayres, and lost his reason as a consequence of his misfortune.

Royle in 1839 strongly advocated the introduction of cinchona into India, and suggested the Nilgiri Hills as a suitable position for the experiment. His suggestions were taken into consideration by the Government, but no immediate steps were taken. The Dutch Government first moved in the matter, sending a botanist named Hasskarl to South America in 1852. Their object was to establish cinchona gardens in Java. All through the fifties they were carrying on their experiments, but with very slow success. The English Government were meanwhile instructing their Consuls in South America to obtain seeds, but it was not until 1859 that the collection was seriously undertaken for India. In that year Mr. (now Sir) Clements Markham was commissioned to go to South America to collect seeds of the best species. Markham has told the full story of his mission in his work on “Peruvian Bark,” and has incidentally in that narrative exposed the parsimony of the authorities in their treatment of those associated in the important and profitable enterprise successfully carried through after some years of hard and often perilous labour. His principal coadjutor, Dr. Spruce, whose health was utterly ruined by his efforts, was paid a salary of £30 a month while the work lasted, and a special grant of £27 for an exhaustive report which he prepared. A pension of £50 a year was given him by the British Government for his botanical services, and after thirteen years of persistent importunity, the Indian Government granted him another £50 a year. Mr. Pritchett, who collected plants and seeds in the forests of Huanuco, was paid his salary and nothing more. To Mr. Cross, who assisted Dr. Spruce in the collection of the red bark, two grants of £300 each were made. Mr. Weir, “a most conscientious, active, and skilful worker, and, so far as his own labours were concerned, completely successful,” crippled and disabled for life, got nothing from the Government, though the Horticultural Society collected some funds which yielded £27 a year.

The monumental instance of official ingratitude was, however, manifested in the case of Charles Ledger, to whom, more than to any other man, the world is indebted for cheap quinine, and out of whose adventurous services the Dutch nation have made millions in their Java dependency. Between the years 1841 and 1858 Ledger was travelling in South America in the employment of the New South Wales Government buying alpacas. He had a faithful servant, Manuel Manami, who had often told him how jealously the natives, especially those of Bolivia, guarded the knowledge of their best seeds. Manami had himself been a cascarillero or bark cutter. On Ledger’s return to Australia in 1858 he found that Holland and England were eagerly seeking to plant cinchona in their Eastern possessions. The mission of Hasskarl had been practically a failure. He had not been able to enter Bolivia, and the species he brought to Java were comparatively valueless. Ledger was in South America when Markham went there on his official journey. He endeavoured to open communication with the British Government’s envoy but failed. He, however, pressed his faithful Manami to secure some of the precious “rojo” (Cinchona Calisaya, var. Ledgeriana) seeds from Bolivia. Manami fulfilled this service, somewhat reluctantly, sent the seeds to his master, but was himself thrown into prison, beaten, and died soon after in consequence of the cruel treatment he underwent.

Ledger sent the seeds to his brother in England authorising him to dispose of them as he best could. They were at first offered to the British Government, but as Markham was then in India superintending the planting of the seeds he had brought from Peru, the offer was not entertained. Half of them were sold to a Ceylon planter, and the rest were taken, after some discussion, by the Dutch Government for about £33, with a promise of a further payment if the plants flourished. A year later on a report that 20,000 plants had been raised from these seeds the Dutch Government paid Ledger a further £100 and got from him a letter expressing his satisfaction. That was in 1866.

For many years Ledger was lost sight of, and it was stated in several books that he was dead. In 1895, however, a letter from him was published in The Chemist and Druggist, of London, dated from Goulburne, N.S.W. He wrote simply in reference to a paper which had been printed in that journal referring to the admixture of some white flowers with coca as imported. The addition of the “inga flowers,” Mr. Ledger explained, was made by the natives in the belief that they kept the coca leaves fresh and green. Later it was found that Mr. Ledger was living in comparative poverty in consequence of the failure of Australian banks and the slump in land values. Efforts were made to induce the Dutch Government to make some compensation to the man who had done them such grand service, but at first a blank refusal was returned. In May, 1807, however, on his seventy-ninth birthday, Mr. Ledger received the announcement from Amsterdam that an annuity of £100 would be conferred upon him. He lived nine years after this.

The Ledger cinchona had also been introduced into India, and as it was found to be yielding such rich bark Mr. Markham appealed in 1880 to the Indian Government to grant Mr. Ledger at least the sum of £200 to compensate him for the expenses he had been put to, which far exceeded what he was paid for the seeds. “The reply, after four months’ delay, was a curt refusal,” wrote Mr. Markham to The Chemist and Druggist, in April, 1895.

Mr. Ledger, who was born in Bucklersbury, London, on May 4, 1818, wrote a very pleasant and modest autobiographical sketch of his varied experiences for The Chemist and Druggist, which was published in that journal of July 27, 1895.

Cubebs

have had a rather chequered medical history. The Arab physicians used them apparently for the same medicinal purposes, that is, for checking urethral discharges, as they are generally prescribed for by our own physicians; but in the middle ages we hear of them as a popular but costly condiment. Curious particulars of this use of cubebs are given in “Pharmacographia.” They were an ingredient in the P.L. formulas for Mithridate and Theriaca, probably as a stimulant. Then they seem to have dropped out of use. They were omitted from the P.L. 1809. Their re-introduction into medical practice is due to an article by Dr. Crawfurd in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 1818, but it appears that the knowledge of the anti-blennorrhagic properties of cubebs came from an English officer in Java, whose Hindoo servant had recommended to him the use of them as a medicine. The employment of cubebs in hoarseness and bronchial complaints was popularised by some American Troches, a proprietary medicine, but this use of the medicine was familiar a hundred and fifty years ago. In James’s Dispensatory it is stated that cubebs are “recommended in hoarseness and loss of voice, especially when the tonsils are stuffed and obstructed.”

Digitalis.

Foxglove, the common and ancient name of this handsome plant, is believed to be a corruption of a still older name, Foxes’ glew, or Foxes’ music, in allusion to an instrument consisting of a series of bells hanging from one support. The Norwegian name of the plant is Rev-bjelda, fox-bells. A pretty fancy, but one which is not supported by evidence, is that the original name was folks’ glew, or fairy bells. In Scotland the flower is called bloody fingers, and sometimes dead men’s bells; in France, gants de notre Dame, and doigts de la Vierge. The German popular name is finger-hut, finger hood or thimble, and the Latin term, digitalis, coined by Fuchs of Tubingen about 1550, was intended to be the equivalent of that designation.

The medical history of the foxglove is somewhat varied. It appears to have been used as an ingredient in external applications by old herbalists, principally for scrofulous complaints. Gerard, Parkinson, and Salmon, who wrote in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, extol its virtues and mention also its employment internally for the falling sickness or epilepsy. Parkinson quotes an Italian saying concerning it that it is a salve for all sores. It found a place in the London Pharmacopœia of 1650 and in several subsequent issues.

But foxglove was always a medicine with a popular rather than a professional reputation until Dr. William Withering, of Birmingham, published “An Account of the Foxglove, and some of its Medical Uses,” in 1785. Withering was a scientific pioneer of European fame, an intimate associate of Priestley, Watt, and Boulton, a painstaking botanist in whose honour a genus of the Solanaceæ was named Witheringia, and a mineralogist whose name is similarly commemorated by the name Witherite, given to barium carbonate.

In Dr. Withering’s “Account of the Fox-glove,” he narrated that ten years previously his opinion had been asked about a family recipe for the cure of dropsy which had long been the secret of an old woman in Shropshire, and which he was told had cured cases after regular treatment had failed. The medicine was composed of some twenty different herbs, but it was not difficult, he says, for one conversant with such matters to perceive that foxglove was the active ingredient.

Dr. Withering details his experience as well as that of others with the drug in some hundreds of cases. He noted its action on the heart and as a diuretic. He had also ascertained that it was prescribed in family recipes in Yorkshire. An article in Parkinson’s “Herbal,” written he believed by Mr. Saunders, “an apothecary of great reputation at Worcester,” declared it to be of great value in consumptive cases. It had been admitted into the Edinburgh Pharmacopœia 1783, but many practitioners were giving it in such dangerous doses that he feared its reputation would not last long.

Dr. Withering died in 1799 at the age of fifty-eight. A foxglove is carved on his monument in Edgbaston Old Church.

Guaiacum

Came into fame in Europe in the early years of syphilis. The story told about it (perhaps it was only a clever advertisement, though it is related without any question by Leclerc) was that a certain Spaniard named Gonsalvo Ferrand having taken the disease and finding no cure for it resolved to go into the countries from which the infection had come, confident that he would there find the remedy which the natives themselves employed. He went to St. Domingo, discovered that the wood there called Huaiacon was regarded as a specific, took it himself, and was cured. This was in 1508. Whatever may be the truth of this history it seems that Ferrand was subsequently a seller of guaiacum wood (according to Freind), at seven gold crowns per pound (say 35s.), and accumulated a great fortune. Enormous popularity accrued to guaiacum by the book which Ulrich von Hutten, the German poet and reformer, wrote on the “Morbus Gallicus” in 1519. Therein he narrated his own experience; what he had suffered from this disease; how he had undergone salivation with mercury eleven times to no purpose; and how at last he had been cured completely in thirty days by a course of treatment by guaiacum. This early treatment as it was developed in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries deserves to be recorded. First a decoction was made by boiling 1 lb. of the wood raspings in 8 or 10 pints of water down to 5 or 6 pints. After straining this off another weaker decoction was made from the same wood. The syphilitic patient was prepared for his course of treatment by a few days’ spare diet, and by a few aperient doses. Then he went to bed in a well-warmed room, and early every morning took half a pint of the first decoction warm. He was then covered with blankets and allowed to sweat for two or three hours. After being dried he was given a few biscuits with some almonds and raisins. The process was repeated in the latter part of the day, and so on for fifteen days, only enough food being given to prevent the patient from fainting. In the middle of the month a day or two’s interval was granted, and during that time the bowels were evacuated by an enema. Then the treatment was renewed as before, but a rather more liberal diet was permitted. All the time the second decoction was taken for drink as freely as the patient could be induced to swallow it. Gradually the usual habits of eating and drinking were resumed.

It is not surprising to learn that the treatment just described was soon accused of so reducing the strength of many patients that they never recovered from it, and it was being abandoned when Boerhaave revived it for a time as a remedy in syphilitic cases.

Ipecacuanha.

Although several earlier allusions to ipecacuanha have been found, the first being in an account of Brazil by a Portuguese friar given in Purchas’s “Pilgrimes” (1625), where the medicine is named Igpecaya and is described as a remedy for the bloody flux, its effective introduction to European medicine was in the year 1686, when Louis XIV bought from Jean Adrien Helvetius the secret of a medicine with which he had performed a number of remarkable cures of diarrhœa and dysentery.

Helvetius, whose original name was Schweitzer, was the son of a Dutch quack, and had gone to Paris to try to sell his father’s compounds there. Apparently he had also enrolled himself as a student of medicine, for he is reported to have accompanied a physician of note at the period, named Afforty, in his attendance on a merchant variously called Grenier and Garnier. The merchant, having recovered from his illness, wished to present to Afforty a parcel of a new drug which he had received from Brazil. Afforty was not tempted by the offer, but his companion was more open to be influenced by something new. He experimented with the medicine and found it of remarkable efficacy in dysentery. Thereupon he placarded the corners of the streets with his announcements of a new remedy but without stating what the drug was. Colbert, having heard of the success of Helvetius, mentioned the remedy to Louis XIV when the dauphin was ill with dysentery, and the young Dutch quack was sent for. With the consent of the court physician, D’Aquin, Helvetius treated the Dauphin and cured him. As a result the king authorised D’Aquin and his confessor, the Père de la Chaise, to negotiate with Helvetius for the publication of his secret, which he sold for a thousand louis d’or, for a share in which the merchant Garnier unsuccessfully sued. This was the beginning of a successful career which was continued by his son and his grandson. The last became France’s fashionable poet and philosopher in the generation before the Revolution. The discoverer of ipecacuanha was appointed Inspector General of the Hospitals of Flanders, and became physician to the Duke of Orleans.

It appears from a treatise which Helvetius wrote that at first ipecacuanha was given in doses of two drachms, sometimes in decoctions and sometimes in enemas. Hans Sloane in England and Leibnitz in Germany wrote warmly in favour of the new remedy, but it was not till thirty years after it had been introduced that the dose was popularly reduced to some four to ten grains. Dover’s lucky combination of ipecacuanha with opium had a great effect in ensuring its permanent adoption.

Kousso.

Although Bruce, the African traveller and others had described the tree which bears the kousso flowers in Abyssinia (Hagena Abyssinica) and had noted that the natives used these as worm medicine, the first knowledge of them actually made use of came through a French physician named Brayer residing in Constantinople about the year 1820. Brayer was one day in a café where was a waiter extremely emaciated and who suffered cruel pains from tapeworm. An old Armenian came into the café and told this waiter that he possessed a remedy which his son had brought from Abyssinia, and which he was sure would cure him. Brayer ascertained the successful result of the experiment and subsequently tested the remedy himself on other patients with similar results. He sent some of the flowers to the German botanist Kunth, to whom they were new, and who named the tree Brayera anthelmintica. Still it does not appear that much notice was taken of the reports until about the year 1850, when a Frenchman offered the flowers in London for 35s. per ounce. The fancy price attracted attention to the remedy, which proved effectual.

Opium.

The ancients recognised two kinds of opium. The superior kind was called opion, and was the juice which exuded from the poppy head while it was growing; and the second quality, which was named meconion, was an extract made from the crushed heads and leaves of the poppy.

It is doubtful whether Hippocrates was acquainted with the juice of the poppy at all. He refers to mecon but he attributes to it a purgative as well as a narcotic power; it is therefore probable that he alludes to some other plant. In any case, he made but very little use of poppy or opium if he used either. Theophrastus certainly knew opium, and Dioscorides distinguishes opion and meconion as explained above. Dioscorides also gives the receipt for the famous Dia-kodion (made from the poppy head), the original of our syrup of poppies. His process was to macerate 120 poppy heads for two days in three sextarii (a sextarius was nearly equal to our Imperial pint) of rain-water. This was boiled, strained, mixed with honey, and boiled down to a suitable consistence.

Probably the shopkeepers and travelling quacks made more use of opium in Rome than the regular physicians. Galen expressly says that he never used the drug except in very urgent cases; but he enthusiastically commends several confections such as theriaca which owed their efficiency to opium more than to any other ingredient. Indeed it may be said that the fame of those compounds was due to opium, and that by them the medicinal employment of the drug was maintained during many centuries.

We know that Paracelsus owed much of his success to the bold way in which he administered opium to his patients; evidence that his contemporaries did not use it to any great extent. His followers were as enthusiastic as himself over the virtues of opium, and before long the most serious practitioners were advocating it, and devising formulas for its suitable administration. Platerus of Basle about 1600 strongly recommended it, and Sylvius (de la Boe) a Dutch physician said that without opium he would not practise. Van Helmont about 1640 used opium so frequently that he was called the Doctor Opiatus. Sydenham about 1680 says, “Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.” Many other eminent physicians might be cited to the same effect, and some who took an opposite view. Stahl, for instance, wrote a treatise entitled De Imposturis Opii. Hoffmann considered that the use of opium was greatly abused, and he believed his ether would fulfil its purpose in almost all cases.

Quassia

was sent to Linnæus from Surinam in 1763 by C. D. Dallberg, one of his pupils, with the statement that it formed the basis of a secret remedy employed there by a negro slave in endemic malignant fevers. The negro’s name was reported as Quassi, and from this Linnæus invented the name of quassia. This bitter wood was obtained from a shrub growing in Dutch Guiana, but for the English market it was subsequently superseded by the wood of a large tree growing in Jamaica, belonging to the same genus. The earlier product is, however, still used in France and Germany. Ritman, who was in Surinam in 1756, said he had met with the old negro, Quassi, there, and reported that he was almost worshipped by some, while others suspected him of magic. Ritman, however, found him a simple old man skilled in old women’s medicines.

Sarsaparilla.

Sarsaparilla was introduced to Europe early in the sixteenth century, and soon leaped into fame. The great Emperor Charles V, was cured of gout by it, or fancied he was, and this gave it an enormous advertisement. It appeared afterwards that it was really China root, another smilax, that was given to the Emperor, but it was called sarsaparilla, and the western medicine got the glory. Sarsaparilla was vaunted as a cure for syphilis, but physicians were not long in discovering that it was much more effectual whenever it was combined with mercurials. Its advocates insisted that it was a wonderful sudorific, and for many years a “sweating cure” was practised in Denmark and Sweden with apparent success. As a matter of fact sarsaparilla has no sudorific properties whatever; but it was given in long draughts, other more effective medicines were associated with it, and vigorous exercise and heavy blankets were adjuncts of the cure. It is not surprising that a sudorific result ensued.

Other confusions have distinguished the history of this so-called remedy. The species which Linnæus selected as the medicinal sarsaparilla and which he named Smilax sarsaparilla, happens to be about the only one of some two hundred species which has never been employed in medicine at all. It is only found in North America and not further south than Virginia. Jamaica sarsaparilla has the reputation of being the best, and that comes from Central America. The sarsaparilla which actually grows in Jamaica is not valued in European markets. The origin of the name of sarsaparilla is not agreed upon. Some authorities attribute it to sarsa—red, and parilla—a little vine. Littré derives it from zarza—a bramble, and Parilla—a hypothetical Spaniard who helped to introduce it. The native Indians call it salsa, and the French follow this origin and call it salsepareille.

Stramonium

may have been known to the ancients as a poison. Dioscorides included it among the henbanes, and Avicenna is supposed to have described it under the name of the Methel nut. Some species of Datura were frequently used in Eastern countries by thieves and sorcerers to induce delirium and subsequent coma, and the herb had the worst of reputations when Störck, of Vienna, experimented with it first on himself about 1765. In consequence of its action on the brain he gave it in cases of mania and epilepsy, and he and some practitioners who followed him claimed to have administered it in such diseases with much success. Its action as an asthma remedy was, however, a popular Indian tradition which was made known to Europeans through a General Gent about 1802. It had been recommended to him by a native, and he found so much relief from it that he introduced it to Dr. Anderson who was practising at Madras. It was stated that General Gent used it so freely and so frequently that it caused his death.