Part 32

Hellebore was an important medicine with Paracelsus. The white, he said, was suitable for persons under 50, the black for persons over 50. Physicians ought to understand that Nature provides different medicines for old and for young persons, for men and for women. The ancient physicians, although they did not know how to get the essence of the hellebore, had discovered its value for old persons. They found that people who took it after 50 became younger and more vigorous. Their method was to gather the hellebore when the moon was in one of the signs of conservation, to dry it in an east wind, to powder it and mix with it its own weight of sugar. The dose of this powder was as much as could be taken up with three fingers night and morning. The vaunted essence was simply a spirituous tincture. It was more effective if mistletoe, pellitory and peony seeds were combined with it. It was a great remedy for epilepsy, gout, palsy and dropsy. In the first it not merely purges out the humours, but drives away the epileptic body itself. The root must be gathered in the waning of the moon, when it is in the sign Libra, and on a Friday.

Paracelsus made balsam from herbs by digesting them in their own moisture until they putrefied, and then distilling the putrefied material. He obtained a number of essential oils and used them freely as quintessences. He defines quintessences thus:--Every substance is a compound of various elements, among which there is one which dominates the others, and impresses its own character on the compound. This dominating element, disengaged, is the quintessence. This term he obtained from Aristotle.

His oil of eggs was obtained by boiling the eggs very hard, then powdering them, and distilling until an oil rose to the surface. This he recommended against scalds and burns. Oil of aniseed he prescribed in colds to be put in the nostrils and applied to the temples on going to bed. Oil of tartar rectified in a sand-bath until it acquires a golden colour will cure ulcers and stone. Coral would quicken fancy, but drive away vain visions, spectres, and melancholy. Oil of a man’s excrements, twice distilled, is good to apply in fistulas, and also in baldness. Oil of a man’s skull which had never been buried got by distillation was given in 3 grain doses for epilepsy.

He had abundant faith in animal remedies. His “Confectio Anti-Epileptica,” formulated by his interpreter, Oswald Crollius, is as follows:--First get three human skulls from men who have died a violent death and have not been buried. Dry in the air and coarsely crush. Then place in a retort and apply a gradually increasing heat. The liquor that passed over was to be distilled three times over the same fæces. Eight ounces of this liquor were to be slowly distilled with 3 drachms each of species of diamusk, castorum, and anacardine honey. To the distilled liquor 4 scruples of liquor of pearls and one scruple of oil of vitriol were to be added. Of the resulting medicine one teaspoonful was to be taken in the morning, fasting, by epileptic subjects, for nine days consecutively.

An Arcanum Corallinum of Paracelsus which was included in some of the earlier London Pharmacopœias, was simply red precipitate prepared in a special manner. The Committee of the College of Physicians which sat in 1745 to revise that work rejected this product with the remark that an arcanum was not a secret known only to some adept, but was simply a medicine which produces its effect by some hidden property. (This might be said of many medicines now as well as then.) They recognised, however, that “Paracelsus, whose supercilious ignorance merits our scorn and indignation,” did use the term in the sense of a secret remedy.

The Pharmacy of Paracelsus is so frequently referred to in other sections of this book that it is not necessary to deal with it here at greater length. It is evident, however, that some of the formulas he devised, some of the names he coined, and some of the theories he advanced have entered into our daily practice; and even the dogmas now obsolete which are sometimes quoted to show how superior is our knowledge to his, served to quicken thought and speculation.

PORTRAITS OF PARACELSUS.

The portraits of Paracelsus to be found in old books, as well as some celebrated paintings, are curiously various as likenesses. The oldest and by far the most frequent representation of him on title pages of his works is more or less similar to the portrait marked A, p. 247. This particular drawing was copied from one in the print room of the British Museum. Portrait B is copied from a painting attributed to Rubens which was for a long time in the Duke of Marlborough’s collection at Blenheim. It was sold publicly in 1886 in London for £125 and is now in the “Collection Kums” at Antwerp. There is a similar painting, believed to be a copy of this one, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

In the year 1875, at an exhibition of historical paintings held at Nancy (France), a painting “attributed to Albert Dürer,” and bearing his name in a cartouche, was exhibited and described as “Portrait presumé de Paracelse.” It was not a copy but was unmistakably the same person as the one shown in the painting of Rubens. It came from a private collection and was sold to a local dealer for 2,000 francs, and afterwards disposed of to an unknown stranger for 3,000 francs. It has not been traced since. Dürer died in 1528 (thirteen years before the date of the death of Paracelsus). There is no mention of this likeness in any of his letters. It may have been the work of one of his pupils.

The third portrait (C) which is unlike either of the others professes to have been painted from life (“Tintoretto ad vivum pinxit”) by Jacope Robusti, more commonly known as Tintoretto. The original has not been found, and the earliest print from it was a copper-plate engraving in a collection issued by Bitiskius of Geneva in 1658. The picture here given is a reduced copy of that engraving from a phototype made by Messrs. Angerer and Göschl, of Vienna, and published in a valuable work by the late Dr. Carl Aberle in 1890 entitled “Grabdenkmal, Schadel, und Abbildungen des Theophrastus Paracelsus.” The publisher of that book, Mr. Heinrich Dieter, has kindly permitted me to use this picture.

Tintoretto scarcely left Venice all his life, and it has been supposed that he may have become acquainted with Paracelsus when the latter was, as he said he was, an army surgeon in the Venetian army in the years 1521-1525. Dr. Aberle points out that if Tintoretto was born in 1518, as is generally supposed, the painting from life was impossible; even if he was born in 1512, as has also been asserted, it was unlikely. Moreover, the gentle-looking person represented, whose amiable “bedside manner” is obviously depicted in the portrait, could not possibly have been the untamable Paracelsus if any reliance can be placed on the art of physiognomy.

NICHOLAS CULPEPPER.

This well-known writer, whose “Herbal” has been familiar to many past generations as a family medicine book, deserves a place among our Masters in Pharmacy for the freedom, and occasional acuteness with which he criticised the first and second editions of the London Pharmacopœia. One specimen of his sarcastic style must suffice. The official formula for Mel Helleboratum was to infuse 3 lbs. of white hellebore in 14 lbs. of water for three days; then boil it to half its bulk; strain; add 3 lbs. of honey and boil to the consistence of honey. This is Culpepper’s comment (in his “Physicians’ Library”):--

“What a monstrum horrendum, horrible, terrible recipe have we got here:--A pound of white hellebore boiled in 14 lbs. of water to seven. I would ask the College whether the hellebore will not lose its virtue in the twentieth part of this infusion and decoction (for it must be infused, forsooth, three days to a minute) if a man may make so bold as to tell them the truth. A Taylor’s Goose being boiled that time would make a decoction near as strong as the hellebore, but this they will not believe. Well, then, be it so. Imagine the hellebore still remaining in its vigour after being so long tired out with a tedious boiling (for less boiling would boil an ox), what should the medicine do? Purge melancholy, say they. But from whom? From men or beasts? The devil would not take it unless it were poured down his throat with a horn. I will not say they intended to kill men, cum privilegio; that’s too gross. I charitably judge them. Either the virtue of the hellebore will fly away in such a martyrdom, or else it will remain in the decoction. If it evaporate away, then is the medicine good for nothing; if it remain in it is enough to spoil the strongest man living. (1.) Because it is too strong. (2.) Because it is not corrected in the least. And because they have not corrected that, I take leave to correct them.”

(From an old book of his.) ]

This passage is not selected as a favourable specimen of Culpepper’s pharmaceutical skill, but as a sample of the manner in which he often rates “the College.” His own opinions are open to quite as severe criticism. A large part of his lore is astrological; and he is very confident about the doctrine of signatures. But he knew herbs well, and his general advice is sound.

Perhaps many of those who have studied his works have formed the idea that he was a bent old man with a long grey beard, who busied himself with the collection of simples. He was, in fact, a soldier, and died at the early age of 38. His portraits and the descriptions of him by his astrological friends represent him as a smart, brisk young Londoner, fluent in speech and animated in gesture, gay in company, but with frequent fits of melancholy, an extraordinarily good conceit of himself, and plenty of reason for it.

(From an old book of his.)]

Culpepper lived in the stirring times of the Civil War, and fought on one side or the other, it is not certain which. Most likely, judging from the frequent pious expressions in his works, he was a Parliamentarian. He was severely wounded in the chest in one of the battles, but it is not known in which. It is probable that it was this wound which caused the lung disease from which he died.

Such information as we have of Culpepper’s career is gathered from his own works, and from some brutal attacks on him in certain public prints. He describes himself on the title-pages of some of his big books as “M.D.,” but there is no evidence that he ever graduated. He lived, at least during his married life, at Red Lion Street, Spitalfields, and there he carried on his medical practice. Probably it was a large one, for he evidently understood the art of advertising himself. He claims to have been the only doctor in London at the time who gave advice gratis to the poor, and his frequent comments on the cost of the pharmacopœia preparations suggest that the majority of his patients were not of the fashionable class.

Nicholas Culpepper was apprenticed to an apothecary in Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and at the same time a certain Marchmont Nedham was a solicitor’s clerk in Jewry Street. Nedham became the most notorious journalist in England, and founded and edited in turn the Mercurius Britannicus, an anti-royalist paper, the Mercurius Pragmaticus, violently anti-Commonwealth, and the Mercurius Politicus, subsidised by Cromwell’s government, and supervised by Mr. John Milton. This publication, amalgamated with the Public Intelligencer, its principal rival, has descended to us as the London Gazette. Probably Nedham and Culpepper were friends in their early days, and they may have been comrades in arms when the war broke out. But evidently they became fierce enemies later. In Mercurius Pragmaticus Nedham, pretending to review Culpepper’s translation of the official Dispensatory, takes the opportunity of pouring on him a tirade of scurrilous abuse. The translation, he says, “is filthily done,” which was certainly not true. This is the only piece of criticism in the article. The rest deals with the author personally. Nedham informs his readers that Culpepper was the son of a Surrey parson, “one of those who deceive men in matters belonging to their most precious souls.” That meant that he was a Nonconformist. Nicholas himself, according to Nedham, had been an Independent, a Brownist, an Anabaptist, a Seeker, and a Manifestationist, but had ultimately become an Atheist. During his apprenticeship “he ran away from his master upon his lewd debauchery”; afterwards he became a compositor, then a “figure-flinger,” and lived about Moorfields on cozenage. After making vile insinuations about his wife, Nedham states that by two years’ drunken labour Culpepper had “gallimawfred the Apothecaries’ Book into nonsense”; that he wore an old black coat lined with plush which his stationer (publisher) had got for him in Long Lane to hide his knavery, having been till then a most despicable ragged fellow; “looks as if he had been stued in a tanpit; a frowzy headed coxcomb.” He was aiming to “monopolise to himself all the knavery and cozenage that ever an apothecary’s shop was capable of.”

Culpepper’s works answer this spiteful caricature, for at any rate he must have been a man of considerable attainments, and of immense industry. That his writings acquired no little popularity is best proved by the fact that after his death it was good business to forge others somewhat resembling them and pass them off as his.

TURQUET DE MAYERNE.

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, Baron Aulbone of France, was born at Geneva in 1573, of a Calvinistic family and studied for the medical profession first at Heidelberg and afterwards at Montpellier. Moving to Paris he acquired popularity as a lecturer on anatomy to surgeons, and on pharmacy to apothecaries. His inclination towards chemical remedies brought him to the notice of Rivierus, the first physician to Henri IV, and he was appointed one of the king’s physicians. But his medical heterodoxy offended the faculty, and his Protestantism raised enemies for him at court. The king, who valued Turquet, did his best to persuade him to conform to the Church of Rome as he himself had done, and to moderate the rancour of his professional foes. But he was unsuccessful in both efforts. Still Henri tried to keep him, ignoring his heresies, and perhaps rather sympathising with them. But the queen, Marie de Medici, insisted on Turquet’s dismissal, and the Faculty of Paris was no whit behind the queen in intolerance. Coupling him with a quack named Pierre Pena, a foreigner then practising medicine illicitly at Paris, they issued a decree forbidding all physicians who acknowledged their control to consult with De Turquer, and exhorting practitioners of all nations to avoid him and all similar pests, and to persevere in the doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen.

Turquet de Mayerne came to England evidently with a high reputation, for he was soon appointed first physician to the king (James I) and queen, and held the same position under Charles I and Charles II. He seems to have kept in retirement during the Commonwealth, though in 1628 it appears from his manuscript records (“Ephemerides Anglicæ,” he called them) that he was consulted by a “Mons. Cromwell” whom he describes as “Valde melancholicus.” He died at Chelsea in 1655 at the age of 82. It was in England that he used the name of Mayerne.

De Mayerne exercised a considerable influence on English pharmacy. The Society of Apothecaries owed to him their separate incorporation, and the first London Pharmacopœia was compiled and authorised probably to some extent at his instigation. He certainly wrote the preface to it. Paris quotes him as prescribing among absurd and disgusting remedies “the secundines of a woman in her first labour of a male child, the bowels of a mole cut open alive, and the mummy made of the lungs of a man who had died a violent death.” But such remedies were common to all practitioners in England and France at the time. The principal ingredient in a gout powder which he composed was the raspings of an unburied human skull. He devised an ointment for hypochondria which was called the Balsam of Bats. It contained adders, bats, sucking whelps, earthworms, hog’s grease, marrow of a stag, and the thigh bone of an ox. On the other hand, Mayerne is credited with the introduction of calomel and black wash into medical practice.

VAN HELMONT.

Jean Baptiste Van Helmont, born at Brussels in 1577, and died at Vilvorde near that city in 1644, was an erratic genius whose writings and experiments sometimes astonish us by their lucidity and insight, and again baffle us by their mysticism and puerility.