Part 16

(Etching by Stradanus, 1570.)

Reproduced (by permission) from “The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II.” by H. Carrington Bolton, Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Co., Milwaukee, U.S.A.]

IPECACUANHA.

Although several earlier allusions to ipecacuanha have been found, the first being in an account of Brazil by a Portuguese friar given in Purchas’s “Pilgrimes” (1625), where the medicine is named Igpecaya and is described as a remedy for the bloody flux, its effective introduction to European medicine was in the year 1686, when Louis XIV bought from Jean Adrien Helvetius the secret of a medicine with which he had performed a number of remarkable cures of diarrhœa and dysentery.

Helvetius, whose original name was Schweitzer, was the son of a Dutch quack, and had gone to Paris to try to sell his father’s compounds there. Apparently he had also enrolled himself as a student of medicine, for he is reported to have accompanied a physician of note at the period, named Afforty, in his attendance on a merchant variously called Grenier and Garnier. The merchant, having recovered from his illness, wished to present to Afforty a parcel of a new drug which he had received from Brazil. Afforty was not tempted by the offer, but his companion was more open to be influenced by something new. He experimented with the medicine and found it of remarkable efficacy in dysentery. Thereupon he placarded the corners of the streets with his announcements of a new remedy but without stating what the drug was. Colbert, having heard of the success of Helvetius, mentioned the remedy to Louis XIV when the dauphin was ill with dysentery, and the young Dutch quack was sent for. With the consent of the court physician, D’Aquin, Helvetius treated the Dauphin and cured him. As a result the king authorised D’Aquin and his confessor, the Père de la Chaise, to negotiate with Helvetius for the publication of his secret, which he sold for a thousand louis d’or, for a share in which the merchant Garnier unsuccessfully sued. This was the beginning of a successful career which was continued by his son and his grandson. The last became France’s fashionable poet and philosopher in the generation before the Revolution. The discoverer of ipecacuanha was appointed Inspector General of the Hospitals of Flanders, and became physician to the Duke of Orleans.

It appears from a treatise which Helvetius wrote that at first ipecacuanha was given in doses of two drachms, sometimes in decoctions and sometimes in enemas. Hans Sloane in England and Leibnitz in Germany wrote warmly in favour of the new remedy, but it was not till thirty years after it had been introduced that the dose was popularly reduced to some four to ten grains. Dover’s lucky combination of ipecacuanha with opium had a great effect in ensuring its permanent adoption.

KOUSSO.

Although Bruce, the African traveller and others had described the tree which bears the kousso flowers in Abyssinia (Hagena Abyssinica) and had noted that the natives used these as worm medicine, the first knowledge of them actually made use of came through a French physician named Brayer residing in Constantinople about the year 1820. Brayer was one day in a café where was a waiter extremely emaciated and who suffered cruel pains from tapeworm. An old Armenian came into the café and told this waiter that he possessed a remedy which his son had brought from Abyssinia, and which he was sure would cure him. Brayer ascertained the successful result of the experiment and subsequently tested the remedy himself on other patients with similar results. He sent some of the flowers to the German botanist Kunth, to whom they were new, and who named the tree Brayera anthelmintica. Still it does not appear that much notice was taken of the reports until about the year 1850, when a Frenchman offered the flowers in London for 35s. per ounce. The fancy price attracted attention to the remedy, which proved effectual.

OPIUM.

The ancients recognised two kinds of opium. The superior kind was called opion, and was the juice which exuded from the poppy head while it was growing; and the second quality, which was named meconion, was an extract made from the crushed heads and leaves of the poppy.

It is doubtful whether Hippocrates was acquainted with the juice of the poppy at all. He refers to mecon but he attributes to it a purgative as well as a narcotic power; it is therefore probable that he alludes to some other plant. In any case, he made but very little use of poppy or opium if he used either. Theophrastus certainly knew opium, and Dioscorides distinguishes opion and meconion as explained above. Dioscorides also gives the receipt for the famous Dia-kodion (made from the poppy head), the original of our syrup of poppies. His process was to macerate 120 poppy heads for two days in three sextarii (a sextarius was nearly equal to our Imperial pint) of rain-water. This was boiled, strained, mixed with honey, and boiled down to a suitable consistence.

Probably the shopkeepers and travelling quacks made more use of opium in Rome than the regular physicians. Galen expressly says that he never used the drug except in very urgent cases; but he enthusiastically commends several confections such as theriaca which owed their efficiency to opium more than to any other ingredient. Indeed it may be said that the fame of those compounds was due to opium, and that by them the medicinal employment of the drug was maintained during many centuries.

We know that Paracelsus owed much of his success to the bold way in which he administered opium to his patients; evidence that his contemporaries did not use it to any great extent. His followers were as enthusiastic as himself over the virtues of opium, and before long the most serious practitioners were advocating it, and devising formulas for its suitable administration. Platerus of Basle about 1600 strongly recommended it, and Sylvius (de la Boe) a Dutch physician said that without opium he would not practise. Van Helmont about 1640 used opium so frequently that he was called the Doctor Opiatus. Sydenham about 1680 says, “Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.” Many other eminent physicians might be cited to the same effect, and some who took an opposite view. Stahl, for instance, wrote a treatise entitled De Imposturis Opii. Hoffmann considered that the use of opium was greatly abused, and he believed his ether would fulfil its purpose in almost all cases.

QUASSIA

was sent to Linnæus from Surinam in 1763 by C. D. Dallberg, one of his pupils, with the statement that it formed the basis of a secret remedy employed there by a negro slave in endemic malignant fevers. The negro’s name was reported as Quassi, and from this Linnæus invented the name of quassia. This bitter wood was obtained from a shrub growing in Dutch Guiana, but for the English market it was subsequently superseded by the wood of a large tree growing in Jamaica, belonging to the same genus. The earlier product is, however, still used in France and Germany. Ritman, who was in Surinam in 1756, said he had met with the old negro, Quassi, there, and reported that he was almost worshipped by some, while others suspected him of magic. Ritman, however, found him a simple old man skilled in old women’s medicines.

SARSAPARILLA.

Sarsaparilla was introduced to Europe early in the sixteenth century, and soon leaped into fame. The great Emperor Charles V, was cured of gout by it, or fancied he was, and this gave it an enormous advertisement. It appeared afterwards that it was really China root, another smilax, that was given to the Emperor, but it was called sarsaparilla, and the western medicine got the glory. Sarsaparilla was vaunted as a cure for syphilis, but physicians were not long in discovering that it was much more effectual whenever it was combined with mercurials. Its advocates insisted that it was a wonderful sudorific, and for many years a “sweating cure” was practised in Denmark and Sweden with apparent success. As a matter of fact sarsaparilla has no sudorific properties whatever; but it was given in long draughts, other more effective medicines were associated with it, and vigorous exercise and heavy blankets were adjuncts of the cure. It is not surprising that a sudorific result ensued.

Other confusions have distinguished the history of this so-called remedy. The species which Linnæus selected as the medicinal sarsaparilla and which he named Smilax sarsaparilla, happens to be about the only one of some two hundred species which has never been employed in medicine at all. It is only found in North America and not further south than Virginia. Jamaica sarsaparilla has the reputation of being the best, and that comes from Central America. The sarsaparilla which actually grows in Jamaica is not valued in European markets. The origin of the name of sarsaparilla is not agreed upon. Some authorities attribute it to sarsa--red, and parilla--a little vine. Littré derives it from zarza--a bramble, and Parilla--a hypothetical Spaniard who helped to introduce it. The native Indians call it salsa, and the French follow this origin and call it salsepareille.

STRAMONIUM

may have been known to the ancients as a poison. Dioscorides included it among the henbanes, and Avicenna is supposed to have described it under the name of the Methel nut. Some species of Datura were frequently used in Eastern countries by thieves and sorcerers to induce delirium and subsequent coma, and the herb had the worst of reputations when Störck, of Vienna, experimented with it first on himself about 1765. In consequence of its action on the brain he gave it in cases of mania and epilepsy, and he and some practitioners who followed him claimed to have administered it in such diseases with much success. Its action as an asthma remedy was, however, a popular Indian tradition which was made known to Europeans through a General Gent about 1802. It had been recommended to him by a native, and he found so much relief from it that he introduced it to Dr. Anderson who was practising at Madras. It was stated that General Gent used it so freely and so frequently that it caused his death.

FAMILIAR MEDICINES AND SOME NOTES OF THEIR HISTORIES.

Morbi, non eloquentia sed remediis, curantur. CELSUS: De Re Medica.

BLACK DRAUGHT.

Laxative or cathartic potions have been prescribed in all modern pharmacopœias, most of them being preparations of senna. The original one was devised by Mannagetta, an Italian physician at the court of the Emperor Rudolph II, about 1600. His prescription became popular under the title of Aqua, or Potio Laxativa Viennensis, and was popularly known all over Germany as “Wiener Trank.” The formula was 1 oz. of senna, 6 drachms of currants, 2 drachms of coriander seeds, and 2½ drachms of cream of tartar. These ingredients were packed in a bag and suspended in hot water for a night. In the morning the liquor was strained after the bag had been pressed, and 5 oz. of manna and 3 drachms of cream of tartar added. The dose was 3 to 4 oz. In the London Pharmacopœia the alkaline salt of tartar was at first prescribed with the senna, but later the acid tartrate of potash was preferred. In the Edinburgh Pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century a formula for “Infusi Sennæ Unciæ Quatuor” was included, while the London Pharmacopœias of the same period provided an alkaline infusion, and an “Infusum Sennæ Limoniatum,” containing lemon peel and lemon juice with the object of making the draught less nauseous.

The modern combination of sulphate of magnesia with an infusion or tincture of senna, and sometimes with manna, sometimes with ammonia, and always with some aromatic ingredient, began to be used about the beginning of the nineteenth century. The earliest mention of the term “black draught” that I have met with is in Paris’s “Pharmacologia,” 1824. It was dropped out from later editions. The mixture was called “black dose” in Brande’s “Materia Medica and Pharmacy,” 1839. The phrases “black draught” and “blue pills” were not given as synonyms in the Pharmacopœia until 1885. They are essentially English. Dorvault gives a formula (practically the Mist. Sennæ Co.) entitled “Potion Noire Anglaise,” and Hager has “Pilulæ Hydrargyrosæ seu pilulæ ceruleæ Anglorum.”

BLAUD’S PILLS.

These pills are probably taken in larger numbers than any other pills sold in Great Britain. If in proper condition they present iron in the form of the protocarbonate, either formed in the pills, or perhaps partially or entirely in the stomach. They are similar to Griffiths’ pills, which were the popular Mist. Ferri Co. in pilular form. Dr. J. Blaud, a French provincial practitioner, in an article published in the Revue Medicale, in 1831, entitled “Memoires sur les Maladies Chlorotiques,” gave the following formula:--

“Gummi Arabici, 5 grammes; solve calore baln. vapor in aquæ distillatæ, 30·5; syrupi simplicis 15 grammes; ferri sulfuric. sicci, 30; quibus caute mixtis adde kalii carbonici, 30; et inter agitatione ope spatula ferreæ in balneo vaporis evaporando ad massam pilularum redige; e qua forma pilulas 120; obducantur argento foliato.”