Part 24

How widespread has been the belief in the power of amulets and charms may be gathered from a few instances of such superstitions among famous persons. Lord Bacon was convinced that warts could be cured by rubbing lard on them and transferring the lard to a post. The warts would die when the lard dried. Robert Boyle attributed the cure of a hæmorrhage to wearing some moss from a dead man’s skull. The father of Sir Christopher Wren relates that Lord Burghley, the Lord Treasurer of England in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, kept off the gout by always wearing a blue ribbon studded with a particular kind of snail shells round his leg. Whenever he left it off the pain returned violently. Burton in the “Anatomy of Melancholy” (1621) says St. John’s Wort gathered on a Friday in the horn of Jupiter, when it comes to his effectual operation (that is about full moon in July), hung about the neck will mightily help melancholy and drive away fantastical spirits.

Pepys writing on May 28, 1667, says, “My wife went down with Jane and W. Hewer to Woolwich in order to get a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May Dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing to wash her face with; and I am content with it.” But Mrs. Turner ought to have explained to Mrs. Pepys that to preserve beauty it was necessary to collect the May Dew on the first of the month.

Catherine de Medici wore a piece of an infant’s skin as a charm, and Lord Bryon presented an amulet of this nature to Prince Metternich. Pascal died with some undecipherable inscription sewn into his clothes. Charles V always wore a sachet of dried silkworms to protect him from vertigo. The Emperor Augustus wore a piece of the skin of a sea calf to keep the lightning from injuring him, and the Emperor Tiberius wore laurel round his neck for the same reason when a thunderstorm seemed to be approaching. Thyreus reports that in 1568 the Prince of Orange condemned a Spaniard to be shot, but that the soldiers could not hit him. They undressed him and found he was wearing an amulet bearing certain mysterious figures. They took this from him, and then killed him without further difficulty. The famous German physician, Frederick Hoffman, tells seriously of a gouty subject he knew who could tell when an attack was approaching by a stone in a ring which he wore changing colour.

DOGMAS AND DELUSIONS.

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heap’d o’er her head; Philosophy that lean’d on Heav’n before Shrinks to her Second Cause and is no more. Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense. See Mystery to Mathematics fly; In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. POPE--“The Dunciad” (641-648).

ELEMENTS AND PHLOGISTON.

The ancient idea that earth, air, fire, and water were the elements of Nature was held by chemists in the 18th century. Empedocles appears to have been the author of this theory, which was adopted by Aristotle. Some speculative philosophers, however, taught that all of these were derived from one original first principle; some held that this was water, some earth, some fire, and others air. Paracelsus, who does not seem to have objected to this idea, contributed another fantastic one to accompany it. According to him everything was composed of sulphur, salt, and mercury; but he did not mean by these the material sulphur, salt, and mercury as we know them, but some sort of refined essence of these. These three essentials came to be tabulated thus:--

SALT. SULPHUR. MERCURY. Unpleasant and bitter. Sweet. Acid. Body. Soul. Spirit. Matter. Form. Idea. Patient. Agent. Informant or movent. Art. Nature. Intelligence. Sense. Judgment. Intellect. Material. Spiritual. Glorious.

This is taken from Beguin, who explains that the mercury, sulphur, and salt of this classification are not those “mixt and concrete bodies such as are vulgarly sold by merchants. Mercury, which combines the elements of air and water, Sulphur represents Fire, and Salt, Earth.” “But the said principles, to speak properly, are neither bodies; because they are plainly spiritual, by reason of the influx of celestial seeds, with which they are impregnated: nor spirits, because corporeal, but they participate of either nature; and have been insignized by Phylosophers with various names, or at the least unto them they have alluded these.”

Instances of the combination of these principles are given. If you burn green woods, you first have a wateriness, mercury; then there goes forth an oleaginous substance easily inflammable, sulphur; lastly, a dry and terrestrial substance remains, salt. Milk contains a sulphurous buttery substance; mercurial, whey; saline, cheese. Eggs: white, mercury, yolk, sulphur, shell, salt. Antimony regulus, mercury, red sulphur conceiving flame; a salt which is vomitive.

Born at Anspach, 1660; died at Berlin, 1734. Stahl was the originator of the “phlogiston theory” which generally prevailed in chemistry until Lavoisier disproved it in the last quarter of the 18th century. ]

Nowhere do you get these principles pure. Mercury (the metal) contains both sulphur and salt; so with the others.

Becker, the predecessor of Stahl, was not quite satisfied with the orthodox opinion, and improved upon it by limiting the elements to water and earth; but he recognised three earths, vitrifiable, inflammable, and mercurial. The last yielded the metals. Stahl was inclined to go back to the four elements again, but he had his doubts about their really elementary character. He, however, concentrated his attention on fire, out of which he evolved his well-known phlogiston theory. This substance, if it was a substance, was conceived as floating about all through the atmosphere, but only revealing itself by its effects when it came into contact with material bodies. There was some doubt whether it possessed the attribute of weight at all; but its properties were supposed to be quiescent when it became united with a substance which thereby became phlogisticated. It needed to be excited in some special way before it could be brought again into activity. When combined it was in a passive condition.

The amusing features of the phlogiston theory only developed when it came to be realised that when the phlogiston was driven out of a body, as in the case of the calcination of a metal, the calx remaining was heavier than the metal with the phlogiston had been. The first explanation of this phenomenon was that phlogiston not only possessed no heaviness, but was actually endowed with a faculty of lightness. This hypothesis was, however, a little too far-fetched for even the seventeenth century. Boerhaave thereupon discovered that as the phlogiston escaped it attacked the vessel in which the metal was calcined, and combined some of that with the metal. This notion would not stand experiment, but Baume’s explanation of what happened was singularly ingenious. He insisted that phlogiston was appreciably ponderable. But, he said, when it is absorbed into a metal or other substance it does not combine with that substance, but is constantly in motion in the interstices of the molecules. So that as a bird in a cage does not add to the weight of the cage so long as it is flying about, no more does phlogiston add to the weight of the metal in which it is similarly flying about. But when the calcination takes place the dead phlogiston, as it may be called, does actually combine with the metal, and thus the increase of weight is accounted for.

HUMOURS AND DEGREES.

The doctrine of the “humours,” or humoral pathology, as it is generally termed, is usually traced to Hippocrates. It is set forth in his book on the Nature of Man, which Galen regarded as a genuine treatise of the Physician of Cos, but which other critics have supposed to have been written by one or more of his disciples or successors. At any rate, it is believed to represent his views. Plato elaborated the theory, and Galen gave it dogmatic form.

The human body was composed not exactly of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, but of the essences of these elements. The fluid parts, the blood, the phlegm, the bile, and the black bile, were the four humours. There were also three kinds of spirits, natural, vital, and animal, which put the humours in motion.

The blood was the humour which nourished the various parts of the body, and was the source of animal heat. The bile kept the passages of the body open, and served to promote the digestion of the food. The phlegm kept the nerves, the muscles, the cartilages, the tongue, and other organs supple, thus facilitating their movements. The black bile (the melancholy, Hippocrates termed it) was a link between the other humours and sustained them. The proportion of these humours occasioned the temperaments, and it is hardly necessary to remark that this fancy still prevails in our language; the sanguine, the bilious, the phlegmatic, and the atrabilious or melancholy natures being familiar descriptions to this day.

The humours had different characters. The blood was naturally hot and humid, the phlegm cold and humid, the bile hot and dry, and the black bile cold and dry. Alterations of the humours would cause diseased conditions; distempers was the appropriate term. There might be a too abundant provision of one or more of the humours. A plethora of blood would cause drowsiness, difficulty of breathing, fatty degeneration. A plethora of either of the other humours would have the effect of causing corruption of the blood; plethora of bile, for example, would result in a jaundiced condition, bad breath, a bitter taste in the mouth, and other familiar symptoms. Hæmorrhoids, leprosy, and cancer might result from a plethora of the melancholic humour; colds, catarrhs, rheumatisms were occasioned by a superabundance of the phlegm.

It must not be supposed that Galen or any other authority pretended that the humours were the sole causes of disease. Ancient pathology was a most complicated structure which cannot be even outlined here. The theory of the humours is only indicated in order to show how these explained the action of drugs. To these were attributed hot, humid, cold, and dry qualities to a larger or less extent. Galen classifies them in four degrees--that is to say, a drug might be hot, humid, cold, or dry in the first, second, third, or fourth degree. Consequently the physician had to estimate first which humour was predominant, and in what degree, and then he had to select the drug which would counteract the disproportionate heat, cold, humidity, or dryness. Of course he had his manuals to guide him. Thus Culpepper tells us that horehound, for example, is “hot in the second degree, and dry in the third”; herb Trinity, or pansies, on the other hand, “are cold and moist, both herbs and flowers”; and so forth. Medicines which applied to the skin would raise a blister, mustard, for example, are hot in the fourth degree; those which provoke sweat abundantly, and thus “cut tough and compacted humours” (Culpepper) are hot in the third degree. Opium was cold in the fourth degree, and therefore should only be given alone to mitigate violent pain. In ordinary cases it is wise to moderate the coldness of the opium by combining something of the first degree of cold or heat with it.

An amusing illustration of the reverence which this doctrine of the temperatures inspired is furnished by Sprengel in the second volume of his History of Medicine. Dealing with the Arab period, he tells us that Jacob-Ebn-Izhak-Alkhendi, one of the most celebrated authors of his nation, who lived in the ninth century, and cultivated mathematics, philosophy, and astrology as well as medicine, wrote a book on the subject before us, extending Galen’s theory to compound medicines, explaining their action in accordance with the principles of harmony in music. The degrees he explains progress in geometric ratio, so that the fourth degree counts as 16 compared with unity. He sets out his proposition thus: x = b^{n-1}a; a being the first, b the last, x the exponent, and n the number of the terms. Sprengel has pity on those of us who are not familiar with mathematical manipulations, and gives an example to make the formula clear.

Medicament. Weight. Hot. Cold. Humid. Dry. Cardamoms ʒi 1 ½ ½ 1 Sugar ʒii 2 1 1 2 Indigo ʒi ½ 1 ½ 1 Myrobalans ʒii 1 2 1 2 --- ----- ----- --- --- ʒvi 4½ 4½ 3 6

This preparation therefore forms a mixture exactly balanced in hot and cold properties, but twice as dry as it is humid; the mixture is therefore dry in the first degree. If the total had shown twelve of the dry to three of the humid qualities, it would have been dry in the second degree. When it is remembered that in addition to these calculations the physician had to realise that drugs adapted for one part of the body might be of no use for another, it will be perceived that the art of prescribing was a serious business under the sway of the old dogmas.

THE ROSICRUCIANS.

It has never been pretended, so far as I am aware, that the Rosicrucian mystics of the middle ages did anything for the advancement of pharmacy. They are only mentioned here because they claimed the power of curing disease, and also because it happens that the fiction which created the legends concerning them was almost contemporaneous with the not unsimilar one (if the latter be a fiction) which made a historical figure of Basil Valentine. Between 1614 and 1616 three works were published professing to reveal the history of the brethren of the Rosy Cross. The first was known as Fama Fraternitatis, the second was the Confessio Fraternitatis, and the third and most important was the “Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz.” The treatises are written in a mystic jargon, and have been interpreted as alchemical or religious parables, though vast numbers of learned men adopted the records as statements of facts. It was asserted that Christian Rosencreutz, a German, born in 1378, had travelled in the East, and from the wise men of Arabia and other countries had learnt the secrets of their knowledge, religious, necromantic, and alchemical. On his return to Germany he and seven other persons formed this fraternity, which was to be kept secret for a hundred years. The brethren, it is suggested, communicated to each other their discoveries and the knowledge which had been transmitted to them to communicate with each other. They were to treat the sick poor free, were to wear no distinctive dress, but they used the letters C.R. They knew how to make gold, but this was not of much value to them, for they did not seek wealth. They were to meet once a year, and each one appointed his own successor, but there were to be no tombstones or other memorials. Christian Rosencreutz himself is reported to have died at the age of 106, and long afterwards his skeleton was found in a house, a wall having been built over him. Their chief business being to heal the sick poor, they must have known much about medicine, but the books do not reveal anything of any use. They acquired their knowledge, not by study, but by the direct illumination of God. The theories--such as they were--were Paracelsian, and the fraternity, though mystic, was Protestant.

The most curious feature of the story is that the almost obviously fictitious character of the documents which announced it should have been so widely believed. Very soon after their publication German students were fiercely disputing concerning the authenticity of the revelations, and the controversy continued for two hundred years. Much learned investigation into the origin of the first treatises has been made, and the most usual conclusion has been that they were written by a German theologian, Johann Valentin Andreas, of Württemberg, b. 1586, d. 1654. He is said to have declared before his death that he wrote the alleged history expressly as a work of fiction.

THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

was at least intelligible. It associated itself, too, with the pious utterances so frequent among the mediæval teachers and practitioners of medicine. The theory was that the Creator in providing herbs for the service of man had stamped on them, at least in many instances, an indication of their special remedial value. The adoption of ginseng root by the Chinese as a remedy for impotence, and of mandrake by the Hebrews and Greeks in the treatment of sterility, those roots often resembling the male form, have been often cited as evidence of the antiquity of the general dogma.... But isolated instances of that kind are very far from proving the existence of systematic belief. Hippocrates states that diseases are sometimes cured by the use of “like” remedies; but he was not the founder of homœopathy.