Part 35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XII

ROYAL AND NOBLE PHARMACISTS.

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

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

CLASSICAL LEGENDS.

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

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

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

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

MITHRIDATIUM.

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

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

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

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