Part 19

(From a mezzotint, “after Raeburn,” in the British Museum.)]

It does not appear that the Gregory of powder fame ever published any special recommendation of his compound. He wrote a “Conspectus Medicinæ Theoreticæ” (1788) but the formula for his powder does not appear in that book. Annexed is a facsimile of one of Dr. Gregory’s prescriptions for his powder. He gave this prescription very frequently, but occasionally varied the proportion of the ingredients.

HIERA PICRA.

A medicine with this familiar name can be bought in any chemist’s shop in Europe or America to-day, just as it could in Damascus a thousand, or in Rome and Alexandria two thousand years ago. Probably it is the oldest pharmaceutical compound still in existence. Through all the centuries the hiera picra known to the public has been a preparation of aloes. The adjuncts have varied but aloes has always been the essential ingredient, with one celebrated exception.

The origin of this medicine is variously stated by medical historians. The common theory is that it first acquired fame as a remedy employed in one or other of the Æsculapian Temples. This may have been the case, but there is no evidence in support of the suggestion. It is possible that the name may have suggested the notion, and the drug vendors of Rome would certainly not discourage the fancy.

Before the time of Julius Cæsar there were no physicians in Rome. Greek practitioners of the minor arts of medicine, such as bath-keepers, corn-cutters, tooth-drawers, and herbalists crowded into the great city as it became rich, and opened shops which were known as “medicinas,” and it is likely that most of these brought with them a more or less famous “hiera,” claiming that it had been compounded from a genuine Temple formula.

Leclerc, an excellent authority on all matters concerning ancient medicine, attributes the first Hiera to Themison of Laodicea, who practised in Rome about 50 B.C., and who is reputed to have been the first physician to make use of leeches. The Hiera of Themison was composed of 100 drachms of aloes, with 1 oz. each of mastic, saffron, Indian nard, carpobalsamum, and asarum.

The Hiera of Galen, which was modified from that of Archigenes, was originally in the following form:--

Socotrine aloes, 100; cinnamon, spikenard, xylobalsamum, mastic, asarum, and saffron, of each 6; honey to make an electuary. In the P.L. this was ordered to be kept in the form of species, and was principally used to make a tincture which was called tinctura sacra. In the 1721 edition the mastic and the spikenard were omitted, cardamom seeds being substituted for the latter, and some cochineal was added with a view to colouring the tincture. In 1746 hiera picra became simply a mixture of aloes and canella, and as such it was retained in the following edition (1788), but under the title of Pulv. Aloeticus, which in the Index is given as “olim Hiera Picra.” This was the latest reference to Hiera Picra as such in the London Pharmacopœia. The P.L. of 1788 gave also a Pulv. Aloeticus c. Guaiaco, which consisted of 1½ oz. of Socotrine aloes, 1 oz. of powdered guaiacum, and ½ oz. of aromatic powder (afterwards called Pulv. Cinnamomi Co., and compounded of cinnamon, cardamoms, ginger, and long pepper). The canella mixture did not appear again, but that with guaiacum was repeated in all the subsequent London Pharmacopœias including the last in 1851, but was dropped from the British Pharmacopœias.

Pil. Rufi, our Myrrh and Aloes pill, was originally a Hiera invented by Rufus of Ephesus, who lived in the reign of the Emperor Trajan. The Hiera was made into pills by the Arabs, and were for a long time known as Pilulæ Pestilentiales, which was the name Avicenna gave them. In the early Edinburgh Pharmacopœias they were called Pilulæ Communes.

Scribonius Largus, physician to the Emperor Tiberius, relates (A.D. 52) that one of these noted hieras, the Hiera Pachii, was much sought after, and that large sums had been offered for the formula. When Pachius died at Antioch the Emperor had his library searched, and the true recipe for the famous medicine was there found in a book which Pachius had prepared and had dedicated to the Emperor. Tiberius handed the formula to Scribonius with instructions for its publication. The formula given by Scribonius, which it will be noted contained no aloes, was as follows:--Colocynth, agaric, germander, white horehound, Arabian stœches (a sort of lavender), of each ℥x; opoponax, sagapenum, parsley seeds, round birthwort root, white pepper, of each ℥v; spikenard, cinnamon, myrrh, and saffron, of each ℥iv; despumated honey, 3 lb. 3 oz. 5 drachms, to make an electuary.

It is not necessary to describe the other hieras devised by later authorities, but it may be noted that the Hiera Tralliani compounded by Alexander of Tralles (about 550 A.D.) contained scammony, and that he advises concerning it that the quantity of scammony shall not be increased, as it appears some were inclined to do, not knowing that thereby they make it useless. For he says it is not the intention that the medicine should be carried immediately through the system. It should be detained in the body and conveyed to the remote parts so as to correct the various humours, open the passages, remove the obstructions of the nerves, and make way for the motion of the spirits. This was the formula given in the P.L. 1721 under the name of Hiera Diacolocynthidis, but our present-day hiera picra has descended from the Hiera Simplex of Galen. The old dispensatories up to the eighteenth century give a liberal choice of Hieras, among which were the Hiera Simplex Galeni cum Agarice, Hiera Logadii, Hiera Antiochi, Hiera Archigenes, Hiera Tralliani, Hiera Rufi, Hiera Justi, Hiera Constantini, and others. Originally these were all electuaries made with honey. It became the practice, however, to keep them in the form of “species,” and ultimately electuaries went out of fashion altogether.

LAUDANUM.

Paracelsus probably invented the name of laudanum, and seems to have called several medicines by that term. In one place he expressly states that his laudanum was made from gold leaf and unperforated pearls; in other places he seems to mean red precipitate, and undoubtedly opium or a compound of it was sometimes intended. Crollius gives a formula for a pill mass, which he designates the laudanum of Paracelsus, which contained one-fourth of its weight of opium, to which were added henbane juice, mummy, salts of pearls and corals, the bone of the heart of a stag, bezoar stone, amber, musk, unicorn, and some species, with a few drops of many of the essential oils. The Anodynum Specificum of Paracelsus was a product obtained by first digesting opium, 4, in a mixture of orange and lemon juices, 180, with distilled frogs’ sperm water, to which cinnamon, 4, cloves, 45, ambergris, 4, and saffron, 45, were added. This mixture was digested for a month, and after pressing and straining, coral, magistery of pearl, and quintessence of gold, of each 2, were added, together with the salt extracted from the marc.

The laudanum of the early London Pharmacopœias was a pill mass made as follows:--Thebaic opium extracted by spirit of wine, ℥i.; saffron, similarly extracted, ℥iss; castorum, ℥i; combined with ℥ss. of species of diambræ made into a tincture with spirit of wine; to these might be added, ex-gratia, ambergris and musk, of each 6 gr., and oil of nutmeg 10 drops. Evaporate the moisture and leave the mass.

One would think that the name laudanum was an echo of laudandum, and that has been the usual opinion. But Professor Skeat is confident that it is a variation of ladanum, which, he says, was a stomachic cordial made and named from gum labdanum, which had been in medical use for centuries. This, of course, is possible, but it must be remembered that Paracelsus was untrammelled by any etymological rules in his invented words, and that the one unlikely thing for him to do would have been to adopt with a slight modification the name of a remedy then in use, if, indeed, a preparation of labdanum was at that time popular, or even known at all in Germany in his time. Adam of Bodenstein, son of the theologian Carolstadt, who wrote both for and against Luther’s doctrines, wrote a treatise in which he professed to explain all the mysterious terms used by Paracelsus. Laudanum, he says, is from a laude, and was a quintessence of mercury and not an opiate.

Sydenham’s Laudanum is the preparation of opium which attained the highest popularity. It has always been the principal liquid preparation of the drug in continental practice, and formulas for it more or less corresponding with the original are in all the principal Pharmacopœias except the British. It was omitted from the P.L. in 1746, or rather a very similar preparation named Tinctura Thebaiaca was substituted for it. Sydenham’s formula, which was given incidentally in his description of the dysentery of 1669–72, prescribed strained opium, 2 oz., saffron 1 oz., cinnamon and cloves of each 1 drachm, and Canary wine, 1 pint.

“I do not think this preparation has more virtue than the solid laudanum of the shops,” he wrote; “but I prefer it before that for its more commodious form, and by reason of the greater certainty of the dose, for it may be dropped into wine or any distilled water, or into any other liquor.”

This passage is quoted from Pechey’s translation of Sydenham’s works. The allusion to “the solid laudanum of the shops” confirms the opinion that Sydenham’s was the first liquid preparation generally designated laudanum. Among the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum is included what is described as “The Commonplace Book of an Apothecary at Great Dunmow,” which contains several more or less similar recipes for laudanum. The book is dated 1644–5. The most elaborate formula is headed “Laudanum Josephi Michælis,” and lengthy directions for making this are given. The ingredients were opium, extract of henbane, species diambræ (a compound of most of the known spices), pearls, coral, amber, musk, mummy, cloves, and oil of cloves. Some of these were to be extracted with spirit of wine, and the spirituous extracts were to be distilled. Ultimately the whole was to be set aside to ferment for three months. The dose was stated to be 4 or 5 grains at bedtime.

Rousseau’s laudanum, which also became famous among opium preparations, differed from others in being a fermented compound. It was made by dissolving 12 oz. of honey in 3 lb. of warm water, and setting the mixture in a warm place. When it began to ferment, 4 oz. of opium mixed with 12 oz. of water were added, and the fermentation was allowed to continue at a moderate temperature for a month. After straining, the liquid was evaporated to 10 oz., and 4½ oz. of alcohol were added.

Rousseau was a Capuchin monk and was destined for mission work in Asia. Sent from Rome to Paris to study medicine so that he might be better fitted for his life’s work, he carried a letter of introduction to Colbert, the first minister of Louis XIV. Rooms were provided for him in the Louvre, and there before long he set up a laboratory and began to prepare and sell medicines. The Capucin of the Louvre became the fashionable quack, and Louis ordered the Faculty of Medicine to confer on him a degree. The life was so agreeable that, when orders came from Rome that he was to proceed on his mission, Rousseau refused, and, having transferred his allegiance to the order of Cluny, he continued his medical practice in Paris. Falling ill he refused medical aid, treated himself with his own compounds, and died. After his death his brother published his “Remédes et Secréts Eprouvés” (1697).

Black Drop was the name of a celebrated proprietary medicine very popular from the first half of the eighteenth, until the early part of the nineteenth century. Its inventor was one Edward Runstall of Bishop Auckland in the county of Durham, but it also came to be known as the Lancaster or the Quaker’s Black Drop. A formula for it was found by a Dr. Armstrong among the papers of a relative of the proprietor, and was published in a treatise on fevers in the early part of the nineteenth century. The recipe was as follows:--Opium, ½ lb.; good verjuice (the juice of the wild crab), 4 pints; nutmegs, 1½ oz.; saffron, ½ oz. Boil to a proper consistence, set in a warm place, add two spoonfuls of yeast, set in a warm place for six or eight weeks, then in the open air until it becomes of the consistence of syrup. Decant, filter, and bottle, putting a little sugar into each bottle.

This preparation was three times the strength of laudanum. The acetum opii of the Edinburgh and Dublin Pharmacopœias was intended as a substitute, but closer approximations to the original formula were given in the Hamburg Codex of 1845 and in the U.S. Pharmacopœia of 1851. The growing favour with which morphine was regarded gradually destroyed the popularity of the Black Drop.

TINCTURA LAVANDULÆ COMPOSITA

has much fallen from its earlier glories. In the P.L., 1721, it was made with French brandy and twenty-seven other ingredients, including besides lavender, sage, rosemary, betony, borage, lilies of the valley, cowslips, balm, orange flowers, bay berries, cinnamon, mace, nutmegs, cardamoms, cubebs, aloes wood, ambergris, saffron, musk roses, and a few other less familiar flowers or cordials. The preparation was known as Palsy Drops, but I am not sure whether the official compound acquired this title, or whether it was an imitation of a tincture previously known as such.

LENITIVE ELECTUARY.

The formula prescribed in the first London Pharmacopœia was as follows:--Raisins (stoned), polypody of the oak, Eastern senna, of each 2 oz.; herb mercury, 1½ handful; jujubes and sebestens, of each 20; maidenhair, violets, and cleaned barley, of each 1 handful; prunes (stoned), tamarinds, of each 6 drachms; liquorice, ½ oz.

These drugs were to be boiled in 10 lb. of water to one-third of its volume, and to the strained liquor were to be added pulp of cassia fistula, tamarinds, prunes, sugar of violets, of each 6 oz.; sugar, 2 lb.; and at last 1½ oz. of powdered senna was to be incorporated to each pound of the electuary.