Chapter XIV: Medicines From the Metals 376 (5)

John Mirfield also wrote his “Breviarium Bartholomei” in the latter part of the fourteenth century. Dr. Norman Moore in his “History of the Study of Medicine” has freely quoted from this old work, and gives several facsimile pages from some of the earliest manuscript copies of it. Dr. Moore regards the Breviarium with special interest as it is the first book on medicine in any way connected with his hospital, the oldest in London. Mirfield, relating some of the cures performed by his master, mentions that a woman came to him having lost her speech. The master rubbed her palate with some “theodoricon emperisticon” and with a little “diacostorium.” She soon recovered. An apothecary brought a youth to the hospital with a carbuncle on his face, and his throat and neck swollen beyond belief. The master said the youth must go home to die. “Is there then no remedy?” asked the apothecary. The physician replied, “I believe most truly that if thou wert to give tyriacum in a large dose, there would be a chance that he might live.” The apothecary gave two doses of ʒij. each, which caused a profuse perspiration, and in due course the youth recovered. He advises smelling and swallowing musk, aloes wood, storax, calamita, and amber to prevent infection in cold weather, and in warm weather sandal wood, roses, camphor, acetositas citri, sour milk, and vinegar, taking syrup of vinegar in the morning and syrup of violets at midday. For gout he prescribes an ointment the principal constituent of which is goose grease. The preparation of this remedy is explained metrically. The verses begin thus:--

Anser sumatur, Veteranus qui videatur,
Post deplumetur, Intralibus evacuetur.

Rheumatism was to be treated with olive oil, and the pharmacist is directed to warm it while he repeats the Psalm “Quare fremerunt gentes” as far as “Postula a me et dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam,” then the Gloria and two prayers. This recitation was to be repeated seven times. There were no clocks available at that time, and this therefore was the method of prescribing the length of an operation. Dr. Moore says he finds this direction would cover about a quarter of an hour.

Medical treatises in verse were frequent and popular in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are several in the British Museum. A curious specimen is preserved in the Royal Library at Stockholm, and it is reproduced in readable English in “Archeologia,” Vol. XXX, with notes by the translator, Mr. George Stephens, and by Dr. Pettigrew. They both believe it was written in the fourteenth century. It consists of 1485 lines. Of these it will suffice to give the first four, and one specimen of its sections. It begins thus:--

In foure parties of amā
Be gynneth ye sekenesse yt yie han
In heed, in wombe, or i ye splene
Or i bleddyr, yese iiij I mene.

The following is entitled in the margin “Hed werk.”

Amedicyn I hawe i Myde
For hedwerk to telle as I fynde
To taken eysyl pulyole ryale
And camamyle to sethe wt all;
And wt ye jous anoyte yi nosthryll well
A make aplaister of ye toyerdel;
And do it in a good grete clowte
And wynde yi heed yer wt abowte;
As soon as it be leyde yeron
All yi hedwerk xal away gon.

Two other specimens of these early poetical recipes from other authors may be quoted:--

ffor defhed of ye hed.
For defhed of hed & for dullerynge
I fynde wrete dyuers thynge
Take oporcyon (a portion) of boiys vryne
And mege it wt honey good & fyne
And i ye ere late it caste
Ye herynge schal amede in haste.

ffor to slepe well
Qwo so may not slepe wel
Take egrimonye afayre del
And ley it vnder his heed on nyth
And it schall hym do slepe aryth
For of his slepe schal he not wakyn
Tyll it be fro vnder his heed takyn.

THE EARLY ENGLISH DRUG TRADE.

The development of pharmacy as a separate organisation was later in England than on the Continent, and was very gradual. In the Norman period the retail trade in drugs and spices and most other commodities was in the hands of the mercers. These were, in fact, general shopkeepers, deriving their designation from merx, merchandise. They attended fairs and markets, and in the few large towns had permanent booths. Under the Plantagenets a part of the south side of “Chepe” roughly extending from where is now Bow Church to Friday Street was occupied by their stores, and was known as the Mercery. Behind these booths were the meadows of Crownsild, sloping down to what it may be hoped was then the silvery Thames. Probably sheep and cattle fed on the pastures which Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street have since usurped.

But English traders were beginning to feel their feet, and other guilds were pushing forward. The Easterlings (East Germans from the Baltic coasts and the Hanse towns) brought goods from the East and placed them on the English market, and the Pepperers and Spicers distributed them to the public. The Easterlings, it may be mentioned, have left us the word sterling to commemorate their sojourn among us. The Mercers meanwhile were getting above the shop. They were becoming merchant adventurers, and had no desire to contest the trade in small things with the Pepperers of Sopers’ Lane, or the Spicers of Chepe. Their other small wares fell into the hands of the Haberdashers.

There is evidence of a guild of Pepperers in London as early as 1180. As a company they appear to have been ruined by the demands of Edward III for subsidies for his French and Scottish campaigns. From their ashes, including those of the Spicerers, arose the Grocers, the sellers “en gros.” They are heard of in the fourteenth century, and were apparently incorporated by letters patent from Edward III in 1345, but their first known charter was granted by Henry VI in 1429, while in 1453 that King conferred on them the charge of the King’s beam, by which all imported merchandise was weighed, a charge of 1d. per 20 lbs. being authorised for the service. In 1457 they were given the exclusive power of garbling (cleansing and separating) drugs, spices, and other imported merchandise, and they also had the duty of examining the drugs and medicinal wares sold by the apothecaries. The law requiring certain drugs to be officially “garbled” before they could be sold was repealed by an Act passed in the sixth year of Queen Anne’s reign.

The earliest record of the exercise of their authority over apothecaries is found in 1456, when the minutes of the Company show that they imposed a fine on John Ashfield “for making untrue powder of ginger, cinnamon, and saunders.” Other similar items appear from time to time. In 1612 Mr. Lownes, apothecary to Prince Charles, complained to the Company that Michael Easen, a grocer-apothecary, “had supplied him with divers defective apothecaries’ wares,” and the offender was committed to the Poultry Comptoir.

BUCKLERSBURY.

Bucklersbury was the centre and headquarters of the London drug trade, at least from the Tudor to the Hanoverian periods. Shakespeare in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” makes Falstaff refer to “the lisping hawthorn buds that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in sample time.” Stow (1598) says of this thoroughfare that “This whole street on both sides throughout is possessed of grocers and apothecaries.” Ben Jonson calls it “Apothecarie Street.” This dramatist in “Westward Ho!” makes Mrs. Tenderhook say “Go into Bucklersbury and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it.” Later in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, Ben Jonson says of one of his books, objecting to vulgar advertising methods,

If without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there ’twill well.

In Charles II’s reign Mouffet speaks of Bucklersbury being replete with physic, drugs, and spicery, and says it was so perfumed at the time of the plague with the pounding of spices, melting of gums, and making of perfumes, that it escaped that great plague. A quotation from Pennant in Cassell’s “Old and New London” shows that in the reign of William III Bucklersbury was the resort of ladies of fashion to purchase teas, furs, and other Indian goods; and the king is said to have been angry with the queen for visiting these shops, which appear from some lines of Prior to have been sometimes perverted to places of intrigue.

The street acquired its name from a family called the Bokerells or Buckerells, who lived there in the thirteenth century. Stow gives a different account. He states that there was a tower in the street named Carnet’s Tower, and that a grocery named Buckle who had acquired it was assisting in pulling it down, intending to erect a goodly frame of timber in its place, when a part fell on him, which so sore bruised him that it shortened his life.

A CHEMIST’S ADVERTISEMENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

A London chemist’s advertisement (about 1680-1690) runs thus:--

“Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, chemist in London, Southampton Street, Covent Garden, continues faithfully to prepare all sorts of remedies, chemical and galenical. He hopes that his friends will continue their favours. Good cordials can be procured at his establishment, as well as Royal English drops, and other articles such as Powders of Kent, Zell, and Contrajerva, Cordial red powder, Gaskoins powder, with and without bezoar, English smelling salts, true Glauber’s salt, Epsom salt, and volatile salt of ammonia, stronger than the former. Human skull and hartshorn, essence of Ambergris, volatile essence of lavender, musk and citron, essence of viper, essence for the hair, vulnerary balsam, commendeur, balsam for apoplexy, red spirit of purgative cochliaria, spirit of white cochliaria, and others. Honey water, lavender water of two kinds, Queen of Hungary water, orange flower water, arquebusade.

“For the information of the curious, he is the only one in London who makes inflammable phosphorus, which can be preserved in water. Phosphorus of Bolognian stone, flowers of phosphorus, black phosphorus, and that made with acid oil, and other varieties. All unadulterated. Every description of good drugs he sells, wholesale and retail.

“Solid phosphorus, wholesale, 50s. an ounce, and retail, £3 sterling, the ounce.”

THE ENGLISH APOTHECARIES.

Although the Grocers were the recognised drug dealers of this country, apothecaries who were associated in their Guild were also recognised. Some authorities name Richard Fitznigel as apothecary to Henry II before he was made Bishop of London. But this evidence cannot be trusted. The first definite allusion to an apothecary in England occurs in 1345, when Edward III granted a pension of sixpence a day for life to Coursus de Gangeland, an apothecary of London, in recognition of his services in attending on the king during his illness in Scotland. The record of this grant is found in Rymer’s “Foedera,” which was not published until 1704, but Rymer was historiographer royal, appointed by William III, and his work was a compilation from official archives. An earlier mention of an apothecary is found in the Scottish Exchequer Rolls wherein it appears that on the death of Robert the Bruce, in 1329, payments were made to John the Apothecary, presumably for materials for embalming the king’s body. Dr. J. Mason Good, who wrote a “History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the Profession of the Apothecary,” in 1795, mentions, on the authority of Regner, that J. de Falcand de Luca publicly vended medicines in London in 1357, while Freind (“History of Medicine,” 1725) states that Pierre de Montpellier was appointed Apothecary to Edward III in 1360.

It is clear, therefore, that the apothecary was a familiar professional personage in England five hundred years ago. Conclusive evidence of his practice is given by Chaucer, who, in the Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales” (written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century), describing a “Doctour of Phisike” says--

Ful reddy hadde he his apothecaries
To send him dragges and his lettuaries
For eche of hem made other for to Winne.

The satirical suggestion of the mutual obligations of physicians and apothecaries has been familiar for all these centuries.

It seems certain that in Henry VIII’s reign the apothecaries were doing a considerable amount of medical practice, besides selling drugs. The Act of 1511 incorporating the College of Physicians and giving them the exclusive right to practise physic in London and for seven miles round, was largely used, if not intended, against apothecaries. In 1542, however, an Act was passed which rather modified the severe restrictions of the original statute, and under the new law apothecaries became more aggressive. In Mary’s reign the Physicians again got the legislative advantage, and there is a record in the archives of the College of Physicians (preserved by Dr. Goodall, who wrote “A History of the Proceedings of the College against Empiricks,” in 1684) stating that in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the President and Censors of the College summoned the Wardens of the Grocers’ Company and all the apothecaries of London and the suburbs to appear before them, “and enjoyned them that when they made a dispensation of medicine they should expose their several ingredients (of which they were composed) to open view in their shops for six or eight days that so the physicians passing by might judge of the goodness of them, and prevent their buying or selling any corrupt or decayed medicines.” The grocers and apothecaries do not appear to have raised any objection to this decree. Whether they obeyed it or not is not stated.

INCORPORATION OF THE APOTHECARIES.

The first Charter of Incorporation was granted to the apothecaries by James I in 1606, but this did not separate them from their old foes, the grocers. They continued their efforts, however, and with the aid of friends at Court they obtained a new Charter in 1617, which gave them an entirely independent existence as a City Guild under the title of the Society of the Apothecaries. This is the only London guild which has from its incorporation to the present time admitted only actual apothecaries to its fraternity.

Another peculiarity claimed by one of the Company’s historians (Dr. J. Corfe: “The Apothecary”) is that the Guild of Apothecaries is the only City Company which is called a Society. He believes that this may be attributed to the supposed fact that the corporation was modelled on a similar association founded at Naples in 1540 under the name of Societa Scientifica.

The original painting by Rubens, of which the above is a copy,
was in the collection of Dr. Mead, and was sold in 1754 for
£115. It passed into the possession of the Earl of Bessborough
and the Marquis of Lansdowne, and then through the hands of
some dealers, and in 1848 was bought by the Royal College of
Physicians for £33 12_s._
]

Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the King’s first physician, and Gideon de Laune, pharmacien or apothecary to the Queen, Anne of Denmark, were the supporters of the apothecaries in rescuing them from the control of the grocers. Both of these men deserve honourable mention in the chronicles of British pharmacy. It happens that both were of foreign origin and of the Protestant faith, two of that eminent crowd of immigrants of high principle and distinguished ability who served England so well in the seventeenth century when they found themselves “not wanted” in France.

Mayerne was a Swiss by birth, but a Frenchman by education and adoption, and had been physician to Henri IV. But he incurred the bitter animosity of the Paris Faculty, led by the fanatic Gui Patin, partly on account of his religious heresy, and partly because he prescribed chemical medicines. By a unanimous vote the Paris College of Physicians resolved in 1603 that he must not be met by any of its members in consultation. He continued, however, to practise in Paris until an English peer whom he had treated took him to London and introduced him to James I, who made him physician to the Queen. Mayerne, however, soon returned to Paris, but in 1611 he settled in London on the invitation of the King, who made him his first physician. He had a great deal to do with the compilation of the first London Pharmacopœia, and is reputed to have introduced calomel and black wash into medical practice. Subsequently he was appointed physician to Charles I and Queen Henriette, but after the execution of the King he retired into private life, and though nominally physician to Charles II he never practised at that Court. He died at Chelsea in 1665.

Gideon de Laune was also a man of considerable influence. Dr. Corfe regards him as almost the founder of the Society of Apothecaries, but Mr. Barrett, who recently wrote a history of that Society, suggests that he could not have been so much thought of by his contemporaries, as he was only elected to the Mastership some years after the Charter had been granted, and then only after a contest. At any rate the apothecaries must have largely owed the Charter to his influence. He lived in Blackfriars and called himself a “Pharmacopœius,” but we also read of him as an importer of drugs, and it is probable that he traded as a merchant. That he was a man of position is evident from the fact that on one occasion he fetched the Queen, Anne of Denmark, from Norway.

Gideon de Laune was born at Rheims in 1565, and was brought to England as a boy by his father, who was a Protestant pastor. A Nonconformist writer of the same surname who got into trouble in the reigns of Charles II and James II, and was befriended by De Foe, referring to Gideon as a relative, says of him that when he died at the age of 97 he had near as many thousands of pounds as he had years; that he had thirty-seven children by one wife; and that his funeral was attended by sixty grandchildren. It has been ascertained, however, that his children only numbered seventeen, and that he died at the age of 94; so that the later De Laune who wrote in 1681 cannot be implicitly relied upon when figures are concerned. Another thing he tells us of Gideon is that “his famous pill is in great request to this day notwithstanding the swarms of pretenders to pill-making.”

The Grocers’ Company warmly resented the secession of the apothecaries who had been their subordinate partners so long, but their formal petition of complaint called forth a cruel snub from the King. Grocers were but merchants, said James, the business of the apothecaries was a mystery; “Wherefore I think it fitting they should be a corporation of themselves.” The grocers, however, got some of their own back a few years later when James demanded a subsidy from the city for the relief of the Palatinate. The grocers and the apothecaries were assessed at £500 between them. Towards this the apothecaries, pleading poverty, offered £20. The grocers ridiculed this offer, and having paid £300 as their share, left their old associates to find the other £200, which they had to do somehow.

About the same time the new corporation vigorously opposed an application for a Charter made by the distillers of London. The grocers supported the distillers, and the apothecaries failed in their opposition. Sir Theodore Mayerne told them that their monopoly of distillation was only intended to extend to the distillation of medicinal spirits and waters. Mr. Barrett quotes from the old records another curious instance of the contest for monopolies which was characteristic of the period. In 1620, one John Woolf Rumbler having obtained from the King a concession of the sole right of making “mercuric sublimate,” applied to the Court of Apothecaries that he might enjoy the same without their contradiction. This “upon advised consideration,” the Court refused to grant. It is not stated whether the will of the King or that of the apothecaries prevailed in the end.

The story of the jealousies which arose between the physicians and the apothecaries is a long and tedious one; innumerable pamphlets were written on both sides of the controversy, and the dispute figures in English literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pope very neatly expressed the views of the physicians in the familiar verse in the “Essay on Criticism” in which, comparing the old critics of Greece who “fanned the poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire,” with those of his own day who

Against the poets their own arms they turned
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learn’d,

illustrated the position by introducing the

Modern pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors’ bills to play the doctors’ part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.

This was written in 1709.

The apothecaries strengthened their position as medical practitioners in the public esteem by remaining at their posts during the Great Plague in London in 1665 when most of the physicians fled from the stricken city. Between this date and the end of the seventeenth century the quarrel between the two sections of the profession constantly grew in bitterness. Some of the allegations of extortion made against the apothecaries are almost incredible. In Dr. Goodall’s “Historical Account of the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians against Empiricks and Unlicensed Practisers” (1684), it is reported that George Buller who gave the college some trouble in 1633 had charged 30_s._ each for 25 pills; £37 10_s._ for the boxful. Three were given to a Mrs. Style for a sore leg, and she died the same night. A Dr. Tenant prosecuted by the college in James I’s reign “was so impudent and unconscionable in the rating of his medicines that he charged £6 for one pill and the same for an apozeme.”

Dr. R. Pitt, F.R.S., in “Crafts and Frauds of Physic Exposed,” 1703 (a book written expressly to defend the establishment of dispensaries by the Physicians), states that apothecaries had been known to make £150 out of a single case, and that in a recent instance (which had apparently come before the law courts) the apothecary had made £320. In every bill of £100 Dr. Pitt says the charges were £90 more than the shop prices for the medicine.

In Jacob Bell’s “Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain” an apothecary’s bill for medicines for one day, supplied to a Mr. Dalby of Ludgate Hill, is quoted from a pamphlet called “The Wisdom of the Nation is Foolishness.” It is as follows:

An Emulsion, 4_s._ 6_d._ A Mucilage, 3_s._ 4_d._ Gelly of
Hartshorn, 4_s._ Plaster to dress Blister, 1_s._ An Emollient
Glister, 2_s._ 6_d._ An ivory pipe, armed 1_s._ A Cordial
Bolus, 2_s._ 6_d._ The same again, 2_s._ 6_d._ A cordial
draught, 2_s._ 4_d._ The same again, 2_s._ 4_d._ Another
bolus, 2_s._ 6_d._ Another draught, 2_s._ 4_d._ A glass of
cordial spirits, 3_s._ 6_d._ Blistering plaster to the arm,
5_s._ The same to the wrists, 5_s._ Two boluses again, 5_s._
Two draughts again, 4_s._ 8_d._ Another emulsion, 4_s._ 6_d._
Another pearl julep, 4_s._ 6_d._

Mr. Dalby’s bill for five days came to £17 2_s._ 10_d._, and this was declared to be not an isolated case but illustrative of the practice of apothecaries when attending patients of the higher classes.

CONTEST BETWEEN THE PHYSICIANS AND APOTHECARIES.

In 1687 the College of Physicians adopted a resolution binding all Fellows, Candidates, and Licentiates of the College to give advice gratis to their neighbouring sick poor when desired within the city of London or seven miles round. But in view of the gross extortions of the apothecaries it was asked, What was the use of the physicians’ charity if the cost of compounding the medicines was to be prohibitory? The apothecaries, of course, denied that the examples of their charges which were quoted were at all general, and probably they were not. It was not to the interest of the apothecaries to destroy free prescribing. Indeed a proposal was made to the physicians on behalf of a numerous body of London apothecaries to accept a tariff for medicines dispensed for the poor to be fixed by the physicians themselves.

The relations of the two bodies had become, however, so strained that arrangement was no longer possible. The apothecaries had in fact obtained the upper hand. They treated many cases themselves, and calling in the physician was largely within their discretion. At this time (about 1700) the ordinary fee paid to a physician was 10_s._ University graduates expected more, but they too, in the majority of cases, were only too glad to take the half sovereign, and it was alleged that they would sometimes pay the apothecary who called them a percentage off this.

Such was the condition of affairs when in 1696 an influential section of the physicians, fifty-three of them, associated themselves in the establishment of Dispensaries, where medicines should be compounded and supplied to the poor at cost price. The fifty-three subscribed ten pounds each, and Dispensaries were opened at the College premises in Warwick Lane, in St. Martin’s Lane, and St. Peter’s Alley, Cornhill.

Needless to say, the war now waxed fiercer than ever. The physicians were divided among themselves, and the anti-dispensarians refused to meet the dispensarians in consultation. The apothecaries naturally recommended the anti-dispensarians to their patients, and consequently it was only the independent ones who could afford to maintain the struggle. Scurrilous pamphlets were written on both sides, and one long poem, Garth’s Dispensary, which was less venomous than most of the literature on the subject, but which as a poem had no merits which could justify the reputation it attained, complicated the struggle from the physicians’ point of view. Johnson says that in addition to its intrinsic merit it “co-operated with passions and prejudices then prevalent.” His sympathies are indicated by his remark that “it was on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority.” One line in the book (the last in the passage quoted below) has attained currency in the English language. Expressing satirically the complaints of the apothecaries, Garth says:

Our manufactures now the doctors sell,
And their intrinsic value meanly tell;
Nay, they discover too (their spite is such)
That health, than crowns more valued, costs not much;
Whilst we must shape our conduct by these rules,
To cheat as tradesmen or to fail as fools.

THE APOTHECARIES WIN.

Notwithstanding the sympathy of Dr. Johnson, Pope, and many other famous contemporaries, the quarrel ended in the comparative triumph of the apothecaries.

The physicians, though reluctant to enforce what they believed to be their statutory powers, were goaded into law, and at last brought an action against a London apothecary named William Rose, who they alleged had infringed the Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. Rose had attended a butcher in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields named Seale, and had administered “proper medicines” to him. He had no licence from the Faculty, and in his treatment of Seale had not acted under the direction of any physician. He had neither taken nor demanded any fee for his advice.

Those were the facts found by the jury who first heard the case. The College claimed a penalty of five pounds per month for the period during which Rose had thus practised. The Charter granted to the physicians in the tenth year of Henry VIII, and confirmed by an Act of Parliament passed in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of that reign, contained a clause forbidding any person not admitted by the College to practise the faculty of medicine in London or within seven miles thereof under a penalty of one hundred solidi for every month during which he should thus infringe the law.

The jury having found the facts already quoted, referred to the Court of Queen’s Bench the legal question whether the acts performed constituted the practice of medicine within the meaning of the Act. The case was argued three times in the Court of Queen’s Bench--(so it is stated in the report of the proceedings in the House of Lords),--and ultimately the judges decided unanimously in favour of the contention of the College. Thereupon, on behalf of Rose a writ of error was moved for in the House of Lords demanding a reversal of the judgment. The counsel who argued the appeal were S. Dodd for Rose, and F. Brown for the College. The case was heard on the 15th of March, 1703.

In support of the appeal it was argued that if the judgment were allowed to stand it would ruin not only Rose but all other apothecaries. That the Act was a very old one, and that the constant usage and practice ought to be taken into account. That if this judgment were right the apothecary would not dare to sell a few lozenges or a little electuary to any person asking for a remedy for a cold, or in other common cases where a medicine had a known and certain effect. That to give a monopoly in the treatment of disease to physicians would have most mischievous consequences; both rich and poor would be seriously taxed, and in the case of sudden accidents or illnesses in the night when apothecaries were so frequently sent for, the danger of not permitting them to supply the necessary medicine might often be most serious.

To these contentions the counsel for the College replied that by several orders physicians had bound themselves to attend the poor free, either at their own offices, or, if sent for, at the patient’s house. That out of consideration for the poor they had gone further by establishing Dispensaries where the medicines they prescribed could be obtained at not more than one-third of the price which the apothecaries had been in the habit of charging. That in sudden emergencies an apothecary or anyone else was justified in doing his best to relieve his neighbours, but that in London, at least, a skilled physician was as available as an apothecary, and that this emergency argument ought not to be used to permit apothecaries to undertake all sorts of serious diseases at their leisure. That there was nothing to prevent apothecaries selling whatever medicines they were asked for, but that to permit them to treat cases however slight involved both danger and expense, because a mistake made at the beginning of a distemper might lead to a long illness, and in any case the apothecary would charge for much more medicine than was necessary.

After hearing the arguments “it was ordered and adjudged that the judgment given in the Court of Queen’s Bench be reversed.”

THE APOTHECARIES AND THE CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS.

From this period the apothecaries became recognised medical practitioners, the Society granted medical diplomas, and a hundred years later (1815) they obtained an Act which gave them powers against other persons similar to those which the physicians thought they possessed against them. Persons not qualified by them were forbidden to “act or practise as apothecaries” under a penalty of £20; and the courts have held that to practise as an apothecary is to judge of internal disease by symptoms, and to supply medicine to cure that disease. The chemists and druggists who had largely succeeded to the old business of the apothecaries opposed this provision, and the apothecaries, to buy off their opposition, offered to insert a clause in their Act which would allow all persons who should at that time or thereafter carry on that business to do so “as fully and amply to all intents and purposes as they might have done in case this Act had not been made.” The chemists were not content with this provision, and drafted another which defined their business as consisting in the “buying, preparing, compounding, dispensing and vending drugs, and medicinal compounds, wholesale and retail.” The apothecaries accepted this alteration, and subsequently obtained penalties from chemists who had prescribed remedies for customers. Such prescribing would have been legal if the druggists had accepted the provision proposed by the apothecaries; but they had limited themselves out of it. In the actions which the Society of Apothecaries have brought against chemists the apothecaries have often reproduced with scrupulous fidelity the arguments used against themselves by the physicians in Rose’s case.

The Dispensaries established by the physicians were not long maintained, but apparently they provided the material of the modern chemist and druggist. “We have reason to believe,” writes Jacob Bell in his Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain, “that the Assistants employed and instructed by the Physicians at these institutions became dispensing chemists on their own account; and that some of the apothecaries who found their craft in danger followed the example, from which source we may date the origin of the chemists and druggists.”

In the course of the eighteenth century chemists and druggists had to a large extent replaced apothecaries as keepers of shops where medicines were sold and dispensed, and even when the businesses were owned by apothecaries, they usually styled themselves chemists and druggists. In the year 1841 an attempt was made to get a Bill through Parliament which would have made it penal to recommend any medicine for the sake of gain. The Bill was introduced by a Mr. Hawes, and the chemists and druggists of London opposed it with such vigour that it was ultimately withdrawn. In order to be prepared against future attacks the victorious chemists and druggists then formed the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, which was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1842. An Act protecting the title of pharmaceutical chemist was passed in 1852, and in 1868 another Act, requiring all future chemists and druggists to pass examinations and be registered, and restricting to them the sale of poisons, became law.

IX

MAGIC AND MEDICINE

“Amulets and things to be borne about I find prescribed, taxed
by some, approved by others. Look for them in Mizaldus, Porta,
Albertus, etc. A ring made with the hoof of an ass’s right
forefoot, carried about, etc. I say, with Renodeus, they are
not altogether to be rejected. Piony doth help epilepsies.
Pretious stones most diseases. A wolf’s dung carried about
helps the cholick. A spider an ague, etc. Such medicines are
to be exploded that consist of words, characters, spells,
and charms, which can do no good at all, but out of a strong
conceit, as Pomponatious proves, or the devil’s policy, that
is the first founder and teacher of them.”
BURTON: “Anatomy of Melancholy.”

Charms, enchantments, amulets, incantations, talismans, phylacteries, and all the armoury of witchcraft and magic have been intimately mixed up with pharmacy and medicine in all countries and in all ages. The degradation of the Greek term pharmakeia from its original meaning of the art of preparing medicine to sorcery and poisoning is evidence of the prevalence of debasing superstitions in the practice of medicine among the cultivated Greeks. Hermes the Egyptian, Zoroaster the Persian, and Solomon the Hebrew were famous among the early practitioners and teachers of magic. These names served to conjure with. Those who bore them were probably wise men above the average who were above such tricks as were attributed to them. But it suited the purpose or the business of those who made their living out of the superstitions of the people to pretend to trace their practices to universally revered heroes of a dim past.

Not that the whole of the magical rites associated with the art of healing were based on conscious fraud. The beliefs of savage or untutored races in demons which cause diseases is natural, it may almost be said reasonable. What more natural when they see one of their tribe seized with an epileptic fit than to assume the presence of an invisible foe? Or if a contagious plague or small-pox or fever attacks their village, is it not an inevitable conclusion that angry spirits have attacked the tribe, perhaps for some unknown offence? From such a basis the idea of sacrifice to the avenging fiend follows obviously. In some parts of China if a person accidentally kicks a stone and soon afterwards falls ill the relatives go to that stone and offer fruit, wine, or other treasures, and it may be that the patient recovers. In that case the efficacy of the treatment is demonstrated, and only those who do not desire to believe will question it; if the patient should die the proof is not less conclusive of the demon’s malignity.

In some primitive peoples, among the New Zealand natives, for example, it is believed that a separate demon exists for each distinct disease; one for ague, one for epilepsy, one for toothache, and so forth. This too, seems reasonable. Each of those demons has something which will please or frighten him. So amulets, talismans, charms come into use. The North American Indians, however, generally attribute all disease to one evil spirit only. Consequently, their treatment of all complaints is the same.

EGYPTIAN, JEWISH, AND ARABIC MAGIC.

The Egyptians, according to Celsus, believed that there were thirty-six demons or divinities in the air, to each of whom was attributed a separate part or organ of the human body. In the event of disease affecting one of these parts the priest-physician invoked the demon, calling him by his name, and requiring him in a special form of words to cure the afflicted part.

Solomon was credited among many Eastern people with having discovered many of the secrets of controlling diseases by magical processes. According to Josephus he composed and bequeathed to posterity a book of these magical secrets. Hezekiah is said to have suppressed this work because it was leading the people to pray to other powers than Jehovah. But some of the secrets of Solomon were handed down in certain families by tradition. Josephus relates that a certain Jew named Eleazor drew a demon from the nose of a possessed person in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian and a number of Roman officers, by the aid of a magic ring and a form of invocation. In order to prove that the demon thus expelled had a real separate existence, he ordered it to upset a vessel of water which stood on the floor. This was done. Books professing to give Solomon’s secrets were not uncommon among Christians as well as Jews. Goethe alluded to such a treatise in “Faust” in the line

Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.

Throughout their history the Jewish people have studied and practised magic as a means of healing. According to the Book of Enoch the daughters of men were instructed in “incantations, exorcisms, and the cutting of roots” by the sons of God who came to earth and associated with them. The Greeks and Romans always held Jewish sorcery in the highest esteem, and the Arabs accepted their teaching with implicit confidence. The Talmud is full of magical formulas, and the Kaballah, a mystic theosophy which combined Israelitish traditions with Alexandrian philosophy, and began to be known about the tenth century, was unquestionably the foundation of the sophistry of Paracelsus and his followers.

In the Middle Ages, and in some communities until quite recent times, belief in the occult powers of Jews, which they had themselves inculcated, was firm and universal, and became the reason, or at least the excuse, for much of the persecution they had to suffer. For the punishment of sorcery and witchcraft was not based on a belief that fraud had been practised, but resulted from a conviction of the terrible truth of the claims which had been put forward.

The Jews of Western Europe have lost or abandoned many of the traditional practices which have been associated with their popular medicines from time immemorial. But in the East, especially in Turkey and Syria, quaint prayers and antiquated materia medica are still associated as they were in the days of the Babylonian captivity. Dogs’ livers, earthworms, hares’ feet, live ants, human bones, doves’ dung, wolves’ entrails, and powdered mummy still rank high as remedies, while for patients who can afford it such precious products as dew from Mount Carmel are prescribed. Invocations, prayers, and superstitious practices form the stock in trade of the “Gabbetes,” generally elderly persons who attend on the sick. They have a multitude of infallible cures in their repertoires. Powdered, freshly roasted earthworms in wine, or live grasshoppers in water, are given by them for biliousness. For bronchial complaints they write some Hebrew letters on a new plate, wash it off with wine, add three grains of a citron which has been used at the Tabernacle festival, and give this as a draught. Dogs’ excrements made up with honey form a poultice for sore eyes, mummy or human bones ground up with honey is a precious tonic, and wolves’ liver is a cure for fits. But the administration of these remedies must be accompanied by the necessary invocation, generally to the names of patriarchs, angels, or prophets, but often mere gibberish, such as “Adar, gar, vedar, gar,” which is the formula for use with a toothache remedy.

The phylacteries still worn by modern Jews at certain parts of their services, now perhaps by most of them only in accordance with inveterate custom, have been in all ages esteemed by them as protecting them against evil and demoniac influences. They are leathern receptacles, which they bind on their left arms and on their foreheads in literal obedience to the Mosaic instructions in the passages transcribed, and contained in the cases, from Exodus c. 13, v. 1-10, and c. 13, v. 11-16, Deuteronomy c. 6, v. 4-9, and c. 9, v. 13-21. To a modern reader these passages appear to protest against superstitions and heathenish beliefs and practices, but the rabbis and scribes taught that these and the mesuza, the similar passages affixed to the doorposts, would avert physical and spiritual dangers, and they invented minute instructions for the preparation of the inscriptions. A scribe, for example, who had commenced to write one of the passages, was not to allow himself to be interrupted by any human distraction, not even if the king asked him a question.

All the eastern nations trusted largely to amulets of various kinds for the prevention and treatment of disease. Galen quotes from Nechepsus, an Egyptian king, who lived about 630 B.C., who wrote that a green jasper cut in the form of a dragon surrounded by rays, applied externally would cure indigestion and strengthen the stomach. Among the books attributed to Hermes was one entitled “The Thirty-six Herbs Sacred to Horoscopes.” Of this book Galen says it is only a waste of time to read it. The title, however, as Leclerc has pointed out, rather curiously confirms the statement attributed to Celsus which is found in Origen’s treatise, “Contra Celsum,” to which allusion has already been made.

Amulets are still in general use in the East. Bertherand in “Medicine of the Arabs” says the uneducated Arab of to-day when he has anything the matter with him goes to his priest and pays him a fee for which the priest gives him a little paper about two inches square on which certain phrases are written. This is put up in a leathern case, and worn as near the affected part as is possible. The richer Arab women wear silver cases with texts from the Koran in them. But it is essential that the paper must have been written on a Friday, a little before sunset, and with ink in which myrrh and saffron have been dissolved.

In the Third Report of the Wellcome Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (London: Baillière, Tindall, & Cox, 1908), Dr. R. G. Anderson writes an interesting chapter on the medical superstitions of the people of Kordofan, and gives a number of illustrations of amulets and written charms actually in use by the Arabs of that country. “To the native,” says Dr. Anderson, “no process is too absurd for belief, and often, within his limits, no price too high to accomplish a cure.” Most of them wear talismans of some kind. Some of them spend a great part of their scanty earnings on charms to cure some chronic disease, stone in the bladder, for example. The son of the late Mahdi presented to Dr. Anderson a charm which his father wore round the arm above the elbow, designed against evil spirits and the evil eye. It consisted of a square case containing a written charm, and a bag filled with a preparation of roots. The charms worn by the natives generally consist of quotations from the Koran, often repeated many times and with signs of the great prophets interspersed. The principal of these signs are the following:--

The annexed illustration has been kindly lent by Mr. Wellcome (on behalf of the Gordon Memorial College) from the Report mentioned above. It represents a “Lohn,” or writing board on which Koranic phrases or mystic inscriptions have been written by Fikis (holy men). When the writing is dry it is washed off and the fluid is taken internally or applied externally.

THE ABRACADABRA MYSTERY.

Abracadabra was the most famous of the ancient charms or talismans employed in medicine. Its mystic meaning has been the subject of much ingenious investigation, but even its derivation has not been agreed upon. The first mention of the term is found in the poem “De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima,” by Quintus Serenus Samonicus. Samonicus was a noted physician in Rome in the second and third centuries. He was a favourite with the Emperor Severus, and accompanied him in his expedition to Britain A.D. 208. Severus died at York in A.D. 211, and in the following year his son Caracalla had his brother Geta, and 20,000 other people supposed to be favourable to Geta’s claims, assassinated. Among the victims was Serenus Samonicus. The poem, which is the only existing work of Serenus, consists of 1,115 hexameter lines which illustrate the medical practice and superstitions of the period when it was written. The lines in which the word “Abracadabra,” and the way to employ it are introduced are these:--

Inscribis chartae, quod dicitur Abracadabra,
Saepius: et subter repetas, sed detrahe summae,
Et magis atque magis desint elementa figuris
Singula, quae semper rapies et coetera figes,
Donec in angustam redigatur litera conum.
His lino nexis collum redimire memento.

In a paper on Serenus Samonicus by Dr. Barnes of Carlisle, contributed to the _St. Louis Medical Review_, the following translation of the above passage is given. A semitertian fever of a particular character is the disease under discussion.

“Write several times on a piece of paper the word ‘Abracadabra,’ and repeat the word in the lines below, but take away letters from the complete word and let the letters fall away one at a time in each succeeding line. Take these away ever, but keep the rest until the writing is reduced to a narrow cone. Remember to tie these papers with flax and bind them round the neck.”

The charm was written in several ways all in conformity with the instructions. Dr. Barnes gives these specimens:

A B R A C A D A B R A a b r a c a d a b r a
A B R A C A D A B R a b r a c a d a b r
A B R A C A D A B a b r a c a d a b
A B R A C A D A a b r a c a d a
A B R A C A D a b r a c a d
A B R A C A a b r a c a ABRACADABRA
A B R A C a b r a c BRACADABR
A B R A a b r a RACADAB
A B R a b r ACADA
A B a b CAD
A a A

After wearing the charm for nine days it had to be thrown over the shoulder into a stream running eastwards. In cases which resisted this talisman Serenus recommended the application of lion’s fat, or yellow coral with green emeralds tied to the skin of a cat and worn round the neck.

Serenus Samonicus is believed to have been a disciple of a notorious Christian heretic named Basilides, who lived in the early part of the second century, and was himself the founder of a sect branching out of the gnostics. Basilides had added to their beliefs some fanciful notions based on the teachings of Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyre, especially in regard to names and numbers. To him is attributed the invention of the mystic word “abraxas,” which in Greek numeration represents the total 365, thus:--a--1, b--2, r--100, a--1, x--60, a--1, s--200. This word is supposed to have been a numeric representation of the Persian sungod, or if it was invented by Basilides, more likely indicated the 365 emanations of the infinite Deity. It has been generally supposed that abracadabra was derived from abraxas.

There are, however, other interpretations. Littré associates it with the Hebrew words, Ab, Ruach, Dabar; Father, Holy Ghost, Word. Dr. King, an authority on the curious gnostic gems well-known to antiquarians, regards this explanation as purely fanciful and suggests that Abracadabra is a modification of the term Ablathanabla, a word frequently met with on the gems alluded to, and meaning Our Father, Thou art Our Father. Others hold that Ablathanabla is a corruption of Abracadabra. An ingenious correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ thinks that a more likely Hebrew origin of the term than the one favoured by Littré would be Abrai seda brai, which would signify Out, bad spirit, out. It is agreed that the word should be pronounced Abrasadabra. Another likely origin, suggested by Colonel C. R. Conder in “The Rise of Man” (1908), p. 314, is Abrak-ha-dabra, a Hebrew phrase meaning “I bless the deed.” The triangular form of the charm was no doubt significant of the Trinity in Unity.

GREEK AND ROMAN MAGIC.

Pythagoras taught that holding dill in the left hand would prevent epilepsy. Serapion of Alexandria (B.C. 278) prescribed for epilepsy the warty excrescences on the forelegs of animals, camel’s brain and gall, rennet of seal, dung of crocodile, blood of turtle, and other animal products. Pliny alludes to a tradition, that a root of autumnal nettle would cure a tertian fever, provided that when it is dug the patient’s name and his parent’s names are pronounced aloud; that the longest tooth of a black dog worn as an amulet would cure quartan fever; that the snout and tips of the ears of a mouse, the animal itself to run free, wrapped in a rose coloured patch, also worn as an amulet, would similarly cure the same disease; the right eye of a living lizard wrapped in a piece of goat’s skin; and a herb picked from the head of a statue and tied up with red thread, are other specimens of the amulets popular in his time. But Pliny appears to doubt if all these treatments can be trusted. He mentions one, that is that the heart of a hen placed on a woman’s left breast while she is asleep will make her tell all her secrets, and this he characterizes as a portentous lie. Mr. Cockayne quoting this, remarks dryly, “Perhaps he had tried it.” Alexander of Tralles recommends a number of amulets, some of which he mentions he has proved. Thus for colic he names the dung of a wolf with some bits of bone in it in a closed tube worn on the right arm or thigh; an octagonal iron ring on which are engraved the words “Flee, flee, ho, ho, Bile, the lark was searching” good for bilious disorders; for gout, gather henbane when the moon is in Aquarius or Pisces before sunset with the thumb and third finger of the left hand, saying at the time an invocation inviting the holy herb to come to the house of blank and cure M. or N.; with a lot more.

The Greeks named the Furies Eumenides, good people, evidently with the idea of propitiating them. For a similar reason fairies were known as good folk by our ancestors.

ENGLISH FOLK-LORE SUPERSTITIONS.

It would be as tedious as it would be useless to relate at any length the multitude of silly superstitions which make up the medicinal folk-lore of this and other countries. Methods of curing warts, toothache, ague, worms, and other common complaints are familiar to everyone. The idea that toothache is caused by tiny worms which can be expelled by henbane, is very ancient and still exists. A process from one of the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms converted into modern English by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne may be quoted as a sample:--

“For tooth worms take acorn meal and henbane seed and wax, of all equally much, mingle them together, work into a wax candle and burn it, let it reek into the mouth, put a black cloth under, and the worms will fall on it.”

Marcellus, a late Latin medical author whose work was translated into Saxon, gave a simpler remedy. It was to say “Argidam, Margidum, Sturdigum,” thrice, then spit into a frog’s mouth and set him free, requesting him at the same time to carry off the toothache.