Part 34

NAMES AND SYMBOLS

“Every trade and handicraft, every art, every science, is constantly changing its materials, its processes, and its products; and its technical dialect is modified accordingly, while so much of the results of this change as affects or interests the general public finds its way into the familiar speech of everybody.” (W. DWIGHT WHITNEY:--“Language and its Study.” 1876.)

The technological vocabulary of pharmacy is very voluminous, and has been recruited from all languages. Many of the names of vegetable drugs literally household words in English, have been transferred direct from savage tongues. Guaiacum, ipecacuanha, and jalap may be cited as examples. Other names of drugs cover histories which well repay investigation.

Take, for example, the word hyoscyamus and its English equivalent henbane (which I select because it does not happen to be alluded to elsewhere in this work). The obvious and usual explanation of these names is that hyoscyamus is the Greek genitive hyos, of a hog, and kyamos, a bean, and in fact the name of hog’s bean is applied to it in several languages. Henbane, too, is supposed to be self-explanatory. But there is good reason to believe that neither of these interpretations is correct. Dioscorides, who calls the plant hyoscyamos, also mentions that its almost obsolete name was dioskyamos; and henbane is well known to be a corruption of henne-bell. The obsolete name is obviously more likely to convey the original meaning than its corruption, and therefore hyoscyamos is more likely to have meant the bean of the gods than the bean of the pigs. Possibly its name was traceable to the idea that the delirium which the drug produced was the condition induced in human beings when the gods communicated with them, or that some priests used it to produce that condition in which messages presumably from the higher powers could be transmitted. Henbane, again, is not satisfactorily accounted for by its surface meaning. There is no evidence that hens ever eat the herb or the seeds. But the Saxon name henne-bell suggests some sort of a musical instrument, and it is a curious fact that in mediæval Latin henbane was sometimes known as Symphoniaca Herba; the Symphoniaca being a rod with a number of little bells on it. This description might be appropriately applied to the plant, and we have only to suppose a Saxon term “hengebelle” to clear up the mystery.

I am indebted for the foregoing notes to three very suggestive articles in The Chemist and Druggist of October and November, 1877, and February, 1878, by Mr. W. G. Piper.

Next we come to the fanciful and poetic names of metals and their salts, and of all sorts of chemical compounds, invented by the alchemists. They gave the names of aquila alba, mercurius dulcis, panchymagogum minerale, manna metallorum, draco mitigatus, and others to calomel; regulus, or the little king, to antimony (gold being king); lunar caustic, ethiops martial, and salts of Saturn; vitriol, tartar, pompholix, and scores of others, not selected without judgment, but intended rather to mystify the public than to instruct them.

Chemical nomenclature of the present day has gone to the opposite extreme. The ingenious laboratory devisers of synthetic products have developed a nomenclature which it is impossible to use. It explains itself to the initiated, but even for intercommunication between chemists, pharmacists, and physicians words like tetrahydroparamethyloxyquinoline or calcium betanaphthol-alphamonosulphonate insist on being simplified if the substances they describe come into medicinal use; and to do them justice it must be admitted that the inventors of the products are always ready to meet this requirement with a more or less expressive title which can be protected as a trade mark. This forces other manufacturers to devise other distinct names for the same article, so that among the new chemicals which have become popular within the past thirty years there are sometimes a dozen designations for the same substance.

A PHARMACEUTICAL VOCABULARY.

The subjoined list of technical terms is limited to the names of pharmaceutical processes, products, and apparatus; and only (as a rule, with some exceptions) of such as are not dealt with in other sections. Many of the terms are obsolete, but are to be met with in old treatises. Occasionally rather more than a bare definition has been thought desirable.

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Acetabulum. Originally a vessel used by the Romans for holding vinegar at the table. Then a liquid measure about 2½ oz.

Acetum Philosophicum. Vinegar made from honey.

Acopon. A stimulating or anodyne liniment, almost of the consistence of an ointment. If acopa contained aromatics they were called myracopa.

Adept. An alchemist who “had attained.”

Adust. A dried up condition of the humours.

Aggregatives. Pills devised by Mesué which were intended to purge all the humours.

Alabaster. A special kind of carbonate or sulphate of lime used by the ancients for ointment containers which were sometimes called alabastra. The name is supposed to have been derived from a town in Egypt.

Album Rhasis. White lead ointment, which Rhazes was believed to have introduced.

Alembic. The Arabic name for a still. It was adapted by the Arabs from the Greek ambix, a vase, to which was prefixed the particle al. The word became corrupted in English to Limbeck.

Alembroth. Sal Alembroth was the double chloride of mercury and ammonium. Also called the salt of wisdom. The word has not been traced, but has been supposed to be a Chaldaic term meaning the key of art.

Alexipharmic (in Greek alexipharmakon). A remedy against poison.

Alexiteria. Remedies against the bites of venomous animals.

Alhandal. The Arabic name for colocynth which was applied to certain lozenges or tablets of that drug.

Alkahest. The universal solvent, or menstruum. The word has an Arabic appearance, but cannot be traced to that language. It is believed to have been one of Paracelsus’s many etymological inventions. The derivation has been guessed to have been from the German al-geist, all spirit, Paracelsus said it was a liquid to cure all kinds of engorgements. Van Helmont’s Alkahest was capable of restoring to their first life all the bodies of nature. Glauber’s Alkahest was nitrate potash which had been detonated on live coals. It was carbonate of potash.

Alkali, in Arabic al-qaly. Qaly meant to fry, and the technical term was applied to the ashes of plants after frying or roasting.

Alkekengi. The Winter Cherry, formerly in much esteem as a remedy in kidney and urinary complaints.

Alkool. This name was given to powders of the finest tenuity. It was also applied to spirit of wine rectified to the utmost extent. Boerhaave employed the term to indicate the purest inflammable principle.

Aloedarium. A purgative medicine with aloes as the principal ingredient.