Part 39

Poison is the same word as “potion.” Both originally meant a draught.

Polychrest. A medicine of many virtues,

Pomatum. Originally an ointment made from the pulp of apples, lard and rose water, and used as an application for beautifying the face.

Populeum. An ointment made from the buds of the black poplar. It was prescribed by Nicolas of Salermo as a narcotic and resolvent application.

Poultice, from the Latin “puls (pult-)” through the Italian “polta,” meaning pap, pottage, pulse. “Poltos” was the Greek term for pottage. The intrinsic purport of the word was something beaten. The Latin “pulsare,” to beat, represents the idea, and it is found in our word “pulse,” which indicates the heart-beats, and also in such words as impulse, compulsory, and the like. In old medical books, “poultice” is generally spelt “pultesse” or “pultass,” and this form was retained until the eighteenth century. In the first quarto of “Romeo and Juliet” (Act II., Sc. 5) the Nurse asks Juliet, “Is this the poultesse for my aking boanes?”

Propomata were drinks made of wine and honey in the proportion of four to one according to Galen.

Psilothrum. A depilatory.

Salamanders’ Blood. The red vapours of nitrous acid.

Salia. Salt was a term very vaguely applied in old chemistry. Anything soluble and possessing a marked taste was called a salt. Thus grew the practice of describing substances as salia acida, salia alkalina, and salia salsa. Sal fixum was a salt not affected by heat.

Scutum. See Ecusson.

Sinapisms were a form of poultices or cataplasms used by the Romans as counter irritants. They were generally made with crushed mustard, sometimes with cantharides and crumb of bread, and often with dried figs wetted and reduced to a pulp.

Smegma was an application to the skin composed of some active remedy such as verdigris, alum, sulphur, pepper, hellebore, or stavesacre.

Sparadrap. An adhesive plaster on linen or paper.

Suffumenta or Suffumigia. Gums, aromatics, or other substances burned and inhaled to fortify the brain.

Supplantalia. Remedies applied to the soles of the feet, believed to attract the vicious humours. Live pigeons cut in two, and other animals were sometimes thus applied.

Suppositories are at least as old as Hippocrates, who called them Prosdita or Balanoi. Suppository is from the Latin sub-ponere, and is stated by modern etymologists to mean to place under; but older writers say the meaning was to substitute. That is, the suppository was employed instead of an enema.

Syrup. An Arabic introduction. The Arabic word is Sharab or Shurab, and our words sherbet and shrub as well as syrup are derived from it.

Tisanes, formerly Ptisans, are mentioned as favourite forms of administering the simpler kinds of remedies by Celsus. The word was derived from “ptissein,” to crush, and was applied first to barley water, made from crushed barley. In French pharmacy Tisanes, mostly infusions of herbs, are still very familiar. Celsus uses the term “sorbitio” for gruel. Apozems were stronger than Tisanes.

Troches, from the Greek trochiscos, a cone. Medicines in a hard form. Subsequently called in Latin, pastilli, and in English, lozenges. They were first made in the shape of cones. Trochisci plumbi were compounds of white lead, camphor, gum, etc., like oat grains, invented by Rhazes for application to the eyes. Named also trochisci Rhasis, and Arab soap.

APOTHECARIES’ WEIGHTS AND MEASURES SIGNS.

It is not possible to ascertain with certainty the origin of the familiar signs ℈, ʒ, ℥, used in formulas and prescriptions to represent the scruple, drachm, and ounce respectively. A few guesses may be quoted, but actual historic evidence is not available.

Dr. C. Rice, New York, an accomplished scholar and pharmaceutical authority, supposed that the scruple sign was a slightly modified form of the Greek gamma, γ, the first letter of “gramma,” the nearest Greek equivalent weight, and the original of the modern gramme. The same author associated the ounce sign with the Greek x, ξ, which was certainly used in ancient times, often with a tiny ° against it, thus, ξ°, to represent the “oxybaphon,” or vinegar vessel, which became a fluid measure equal to about 15 fluid drachms. There is some evidence that the same sign was used for the later Greek (or Sicilian) ungia, Latin uncia, the original of our ounce. The oxybaphon, it may be added, was translated into Latin “acetabulum,” which was also a vinegar vessel and a measure.

It has been guessed that the scruple sign may have been a slurred Greek ς, written thus, [symbol] (see Dr. Wall’s “Prescription,” published at St. Louis, 1888). Apuleius, who wrote in the second century, gives [symbol] as a sign for an obolus which was equal to about 14 grains. That symbol could easily have drifted into our ℈. Hermann Schelenz (“Geschichte der Pharmacie,” 1904, page 153) makes up a table of medicinal weights and measures from Celsus, Pliny, and Galen, and quotes the following signs as being then used: ~, sextans or obolus; ℈, gramma or scruple = about 20 grains; <, drachme or Holea = 3 scruples; γο, oungia or uncia = ounce; λι, libra = pound.

The drachm sign in Dr. Wall’s opinion is a reminiscence of an Egyptian symbol for half, somewhat similar to our figure 3, ʒ. He supposes that the Greeks adopted this sign to represent the half of the Egyptian medicinal weight unit, which according to the best authorities was equivalent to a double drachm. In a treatise by Ebers on the Weights and Measures of the Ebers Papyrus, he estimates the weight unit at 6·064 grammes (say 103 grains). He explains, however, that the name of the weight is nowhere given in the Papyrus. I cannot say whether there is any evidence of the transfer of the Egyptian weights to Greek pharmacy, but the usual course of the travels of such characters was from the Egyptian hieratic or demotic writing to the Coptic, and thence to the Arabic. It appears certain, however, that the Arabic “dirhem” was adopted from the Greek “drachma.”

The sign [symbol], which frequently occurs in the Ebers Papyrus, might quite easily and almost inevitably come to be written something like our ʒ; but Ebers values it at two-thirds of a litre, where it is named as a fluid measure. He deduces this from the hypothesis that the [symbol] is the hieratic equivalent of the hieroglyphic [symbol], dnat, or tenat.

Scribonius Largus, in the first century, and Apuleius in the second, both give Ζ as the Greek sign for a drachm in medical formulas. The former says this was equivalent to the Roman denarius, or one eighty-fourth of a pound.

A writer in the Lancet of August 18, 1906, very confidently attributed these signs to the abbreviations made by the copyists of ancient manuscripts in the Middle Ages. One of the old abbreviation marks is still familiar in the z, which appears in “oz.” and “viz.” The z was formerly a ʒ, which was largely used to indicate that the word had been abbreviated; in the cases quoted from onza and videlicet. Palæontologists say that the ʒ was itself a modification of the mark “;” which was a common contraction at the end of words ending in bus or que. Thus, for instance, omnibus and quaque would be written omni; and qua;. It is alleged that in writing; without removing the pen from the paper, something like ʒ will result. This is interesting, but it does not explain how the abbreviation came to signify drachm.

The Lancet writer further stated that the ℥ was a slurred form of writing oz., and that the scruple sign was a ligature representing the letters sr.