Chapter XIV: Medicines From the Metals 376 (9)

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

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

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

A PHARMACEUTICAL PANTHEON.

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

(From photo sold at School.)
]

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

(Origin unknown.)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XII

ROYAL AND NOBLE PHARMACISTS.

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

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

CLASSICAL LEGENDS.

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

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

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

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

MITHRIDATIUM.

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

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

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

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

(From a mezzotint in the British Museum.) ]

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

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

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

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

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

A PHARMACEUTICAL POPE.

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

HENRY VIII (OF ENGLAND)

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND

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

THE QUEEN OF HUNGARY’S WATER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ROYAL TOUCH.--THE KING’S EVIL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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