Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Part 1

CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

A. C. WOOTTON

VOL. I

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1910

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,

BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

Pharmacy, or the art of selecting, extracting, preparing, and compounding medicines from vegetable, animal, and mineral substances, is an acquirement which must have been almost as ancient as man himself on the earth. In experimenting with fruits, seeds, leaves, or roots with a view to the discovery of varieties of food, our remote ancestors would occasionally find some of these, which, though not tempting to the palate, possessed this or that property the value of which would soon come to be recognised. The tradition of these virtues would be handed down from generation to generation, and would ultimately become, by various means, the heritage of the conquering and civilising races. Of the hundreds of drugs yielded by the vegetable kingdom, collected from all parts of the world, and used as remedies, in some cases for thousands of years, I do not know of a single one which can surely be traced to any historic or scientific personage. It is possible in many instances to ascertain the exact or approximate date when a particular substance was introduced to our markets, and sometimes to name the physician, explorer, merchant, or conqueror to whom we are indebted for such an addition to our materia medica; but there is always a history or a tradition behind our acquaintance with the new medicine, going back to an undetermined past.

In modern dispensatories the ever increasing accumulation of chemical, botanical, histological, and therapeutic notes has tended to crowd out the historic paragraphs which brightened the older treatises. Perhaps this result is inevitable, but it is none the less to be regretted on account of both the student and the adept in the art of pharmacy. “I have always thought,” wrote Ferdinand Hoefer in the Introduction to his still valuable “History of Chemistry” (1842), “that the best method of popularising scientific studies, generally so little attractive, consists in presenting, as in a panorama, the different phases a science has passed through from its origin to its present condition.” No science nor, indeed, any single item of knowledge, can be properly appreciated apart from the records of its evolution; and it is as important to be acquainted with the errors and misleading theories which have prevailed in regard to it, as with the steps by which real progress has been made.

The history of drugs, investigations into their cultivation, their commerce, their constitution, and their therapeutic effects, have been dealt with by physicians and pharmacologists of the highest eminence in both past and recent times. In Flückiger and Hanbury’s “Pharmacographia” (Macmillan: 1874), earlier records were studied with the most scrupulous care, and valuable new information acquired by personal observation was presented. No other work of a similar character was so original, so accurate, or so attractive as this. A very important systematic study of drugs, profusely illustrated by reproductions of photographs showing particularly the methods whereby they are produced and brought to our markets, by Professor Tschirch of Berne, is now in course of publication by Tauchnitz of Leipsic. In these humble “Chronicles” it has been impossible to avoid entirely occasional visits to the domain so efficiently occupied by these great authorities; but as a rule the subjects they have made their own have been regarded as outside the scope of this volume.

But the art of the apothecary, of pharmacy, as we should now say, restricted to its narrowest signification, consists particularly of the manipulation of drugs, the conversion of the raw material into the manufactured product. The records of this art and mystery likewise go back to the remotest periods of human history. In the course of ages they become associated with magic, with theology, with alchemy, with crimes and conscious frauds, with the strangest fancies, and dogmas, and delusions, and with the severest science. Deities, kings, and quacks, philosophers, priests, and poisoners, dreamers, seers, and scientific chemists, have all helped to build the fabric of pharmacy, and it is some features of their work which are imperfectly sketched in these “Chronicles.”

My original intention when I began to collect the materials for this book was simply to trace back to their authors the formulas of the most popular of our medicines, and to recall those which have lost their reputation. I thought, and still think, that an explanation of the modification of processes and of the variation of the ingredients of compounds would be useful, but I have not accomplished this design. I have been tempted from it into various by-paths, and probably in them have often erred, and certainly have missed many objects of interest. I shall be grateful to any critic, better informed than myself, who will correct me where I have gone astray, or refer me to information which I ought to have given. I may not have the opportunity of utilising suggestions myself; but all that I receive will be carefully collated, and may assist some future writer.

A. C. WOOTTON.

4, SEYMOUR ROAD, FINCHLEY, LONDON, N.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

As the author unhappily died while his book was still in the printer’s hands, his friend, Mr. Peter MacEwan, editor of The Chemist and Druggist, has been good enough to revise the proofs for press.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MYTHS OF PHARMACY 1

II. PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS 34

III. PHARMACY IN THE BIBLE 46

Part 2

IV. THE PHARMACY OF HIPPOCRATES 77

V. FROM HIPPOCRATES TO GALEN 88

VI. ARAB PHARMACY 97

VII. FROM THE ARABS TO THE EUROPEANS 113

VIII. PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN 124

IX. MAGIC AND MEDICINE 157

X. DOGMAS AND DELUSIONS 174

XI. MASTERS IN PHARMACY 206

XII. ROYAL AND NOBLE PHARMACISTS 287

XIII. CHEMICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHARMACY 323

XIV. MEDICINES FROM THE METALS 376

ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

PAGE

Isis 3

Osiris 3

Apollo 7

Æsculapius 8

Arms of the Society of Apothecaries 10

Chiron the Centaur 15

Achillea Milfoil 16

Centaury 25

Phœnix 26

Unicorn 28

Dragon 31

The Dragon Tree 32

Papyrus Ebers 41

Hippocrates 85

Part 3

Interior of Mosque, Cordova 99

Avicenna 108

Nuremberg Pharmacy 120

Sir Theodore Mayerne 145

“Lohn” 163

George Ernest Stahl 176

Marquise de Sévigné 192

Sir Kenelm Digby 194

Galen 211

Raymond Lully 222

Basil Valentine 225

Paracelsus 247, 248, 249

Culpepper 252

Culpepper’s House 253

J. B. Van Helmont 258

Glauber 262

Karl Wilhelm Scheele 267

Scheele’s Pharmacy 269

École de Pharmacie, Paris 271

Vauquelin 272

Joseph Pelletier 275

Baron Liebig 283

Sir Humphry Davy 284

Dr. William Heberden 291

Sir Walter Raleigh 311

Berkeley 315

Dr. Nehemiah Grew 343

Joseph Black 357

Part 4

Johann Kunckel 362

Antimony cup 385

Dr. Thomas Sydenham 400

Thomas Willis, M.D. 401

Quicksilver bottles 408

ERRATA

VOL. I

Page 101. Tenth line from top, for Mesué read Mesuë. „ 211. Sixth line from bottom, reference should be: Vol. II., 63. „ 217. Eighth line from top, reference should be: Vol. II., 182. „ 224. Top line, reference should be: Vol. II., 37. „ 337. Second line from top, additional reference: Vol. II., 179. „ 419. Ninth line from top, for Panchymagogum read Panchymagogon.

CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

MYTHS OF PHARMACY

“Deorum immortalium inventioni consecrata est Ars Medica.”--CICERO, Tusculan. Quaest., Lib. 3.

The earliest medical practitioners of any sort and among all peoples would almost certainly be, as we should designate them, herbalists; women in many cases. How they came to acquire knowledge of the healing properties of herbs it is futile to discuss. Old writers often guess that they got hints by watching animals. Their own curiosity, suggesting experiments, would probably be a more fruitful source of their science, and from accidents, both happy and fatal, they would gradually acquire empiric learning.

Very soon these herb experts would begin to prepare their remedies so as to make them easier to take or apply, making infusions, decoctions, and ointments. Thus the Art of Pharmacy would be introduced.

The herbalists and pharmacists among primitive tribes would accumulate facts and experience, and finding that their skill and services had a market value which enabled them to live without so much hard work as their neighbours, they would naturally surround their knowledge with mystery, and keep it to themselves or in particular families. The profession of medicine being thus started, the inevitable theories of supernatural powers causing diseases would be encouraged, because these would promote the mystery already gathering round the practice of medicine, and from them would follow incantations, exorcisms, the association of priestcraft with the healing arts, and the superstitions, credulities, and impostures which have been its constant companions, and which are still too much in evidence.

THE INVENTORS OF MEDICINE

Medicine and Magic consequently became intimately associated, and useful facts, superstitious practices, and conscious and unconscious deceptions, became blended into a mosaic which formed a fixed and reverenced System of Medicine. Again the supernatural powers were called in and the credit of the revelation of this Art, that is its total fabric, was attributed either to a divine being who had brought it from above, or to some gifted and inspired creature, who in consequence had been admitted into the family of the deities.

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