C. J. S. Thompson

“ Thousands of people to-day are enchained in the slavery of the poison habit in one form or another, and very few are ever successful in wresting them selves free when once it has been contracted. The habit is formed in the most insidious manner. Often, in the first instance, some narcotic drug is recommended to relieve pain or induce sleep. In a short time the original dose fails to produce the desired effect, it has to be increased, and afterwards still further increased, until the victim finds he cannot do without it, and a terrible craving for the drug is created. ”

“ What are they but a sect of yesterday, who about the year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read them awry, having no concurrent light of their own? for their demi-god and camel-driver, Mahomed, impostor in science as in religion, had strictly forbidden them anatomy, even of the lower animals, the which he who severeth from medicine, tollit solem e mundo, as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in jeopardy a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. ”

“ Hardly two people experience the same effects from hashish. Upon some it has little action, while upon others, especially women, it exerts extraordinary power. While one person says he imagined his body endowed with such elasticity, that he fancied he could enter into a bottle and remain there at his ease, another fancied he had become the piston of a steam engine; under the influence of the drug the ear lends itself more to the illusion than any other sense. ”

“ And why?’ asked the old man, perfectly unmoved at this charge, and licking with the utmost delight a drop of the fluid which had escaped from the cork of the phial and was trickling down the side.
“‘Why, for that purpose you must kill the child.’
“‘Of course we must kill him; and the handsomer he is the better.’”
But in the end the old man falls a victim to his own infatuation, and at length dies incontinently without discovering the long-looked-for arcana. ”

“ Next day a hundred newspapers relate the fact, with the names of the victim and the murderer. The same evening the grocer or grocers, druggist or druggists, come and say, 'It was I who sold the arsenic to the gentleman accused'; and rather than not recognize the guilty purchaser, they will recognize twenty. Then the foolish criminal is taken, imprisoned, interrogated, confronted, confounded, condemned, and cut off by hemp or steel; or, if she be a woman of any consideration, they lock her up for life. ”

“ Senier, the philosopher, says: “Dig a sepulchre and bury the woman (mercury) with her man (gold) in horse-dung, the fire of the philosopher, until such time as they be conjoined”.
Bacon’s definition of alchemy was: “Alchymie is the art or science teaching how to make or generate a certain kind of medicine which is called the elixir. It teaches how to transmute all kinds of metals, one with another; and this by a proper medicine.” George Ripley, a monk, in 1476, thought that he had discovered the much-coveted stone in pure sulphur. ”

“ It is a curious fact that arsenic has been the favourite medium of female poisoners from very early times; and in two celebrated poisoning cases of later years, in both of which women were accused of murder by the administration of arsenic, the plea that the poison had been used by them for cosmetic purposes has been put forward to account for having it in their possession. The effect of arsenic on the skin is well known, and that it is frequently used, both internally and externally, to improve the skin, by women, is an undoubted fact. ”

“ PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. To obtain a clear conception of the great advance that has been made in medicine and pharmacy, it is necessary to look back through the vista of centuries at the Elizabethan apothecary. In doing so, we should note how the influence of superstition and charlatanry, with which the art of healing was surrounded and intermixed, has been gradually dispersed under the searching light of science. One can picture the apothecary’s shop in the days of “good Queen Bess”. ”

“ The ancient Greeks, like the Chinese of to-day, looked upon suicide, under certain conditions, as a noble act, for which poison was the usual medium. Their "death cup" was mainly composed of the juice or extract of a species of hemlock, called by them cicuta. The Chinese, from remote times, are supposed to have used gold as a poison, especially for suicidal purposes, and at the present day, when a high official or other individual puts an end to his life, it is always officially announced, "He has taken gold leaf"; a curious phrase, which probably has its origin in antiquity. ”

“ THE FATHERS OF MEDICINE. Though Æsculapius is said to have lived so near to the time of the Trojan war, yet the Greeks knew very little about him. The superstition of the time gave him a position among the gods, and as he was adored under the character of the genius of physic, it came at last to be doubted whether he was ever a mortal; consequently his priests were obliged for their own sakes to make themselves masters of all the physic that the master could teach, that they might be qualified to give advice to those who applied to them ”

“ The name aconite was derived from Akon, a city of Heraclea, and the plant, owing to its deadly nature, was supposed by the early Greeks to have originated from the foam of the dog Cerberus. Aconite was largely used as an arrow poison by the ancients, and also employed for that purpose by the Chinese and the wild hill tribes of India. It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to destroy life, and they believed they could cause death to take place at a certain time by regulating the dose of poison. ”

“ In later times amulets in civilised countries merged into the wearing of images of saints, or consecrated objects, and the use of scapularies by Roman Catholics at the present time. There is little doubt that the custom of wearing precious stones in rings, and the charms worn as pendants to watch chains, originated in the amulet and talisman. Who can say that the belief in such charms has even yet died out? How many people are there at the present day who do not carry about them some coin, token, or object, to which they would probably be ashamed to confess, they attach some mysterious virtue? ”

“ The criminal destruction of life by poison has been practised from ancient times. Very little was known of toxicology in those days, and even the symptoms often passed unrecognised or were attributed to natural causes, and the poisoners' fiendish work was frequently undiscovered and rendered easy. In the early Christian era, poisoning, indeed, became quite a profession, and convenient individuals could be hired with little difficulty to administer a deadly dose to an enemy or rival. ”

“ There are in this city, physicians, or such as call themselves so, who are yoked to the triumphal car of antimony—currus triumphalis antimonii. Truants from the school of Paracelsus, adorers of kermes, accidental curers who make the whole science of medicine consist in knowing how to prepare chymical drugs. What shall I tell you! Everything is turned topsy-turvey in their method. Bleeding at the foot, for example, hitherto so seldom practised, is now almost the only bleeding in use. Those purgatives which were formerly gentle and benign are now changed for emetics and kermes. ”

“ Nero's dinner shall transform Nero into the mildest of men before he has done digesting it, and the morning draught of Alexander the Great shall make Alexander run for his life at the first sight of the enemy the same afternoon. On my sacred word of honour it is lucky for Society that modern chemists are, by incomprehensible good fortune, the most harmless of mankind. The mass are worthy fathers of families, who keep shops. ”

“ One can thus picture the ancient physician [241] riding his steady jennet, clad in doublet and hose of red and blue, with cloak of sendall, a fine silk material, all lined with taffata. In telling the stars and casting horoscopes he would be learned, as astrology entered very largely into his practice, and brought many big fees. So learned a leech would doubtless have a large practice, and the apothecaries evidently vied with one another in preparing his prescriptions. The names of ancient philosophers with whom he was familiar is quite formidable, nearly all the old authors being enumerated. ”

“ There is little doubt that death might be caused by the mere mechanical effect of an insoluble powder of this kind, if it were possible to introduce it into the stomach in sufficient quantity, but powdered glass or sand would have the same effect as diamond dust, viz. in causing violent irritation of the stomach. Yet some of these old traditions have a substratum of fact.
The poisonous properties of the toad have long been regarded as fabulous, but recent investigation has proved that the skin of a species of toad secretes a poison, similar in action to digitalis. ”

“ Also that in practising and using my science towards the sick, I shall use only things necessary, so far as I am able, and as my spirit and good understanding shall give unto me, and that I shall cure the sick as speedily as I may without dilating or prolonging the malady, and that I shall not do anything against equity for hatred, anger, envy or malice to any person whatsoever. Moreover, that I shall minister no poison, neither counsel nor teach poison, nor the composing thereof to any. ”

“ One of the best remedies, and one which it is to be hoped will eventually come to pass is, that the Legislature should render poisons less easy of purchase, by restricting the sale of every drug or compound in the nature of a poison to the properly qualified chemist, who, by his training and special knowledge, is alone competent to sell these substances. Incalculable harm is done by habits such as we have alluded to, and it is better often to endure pain and torment, than to fly constantly to what in the end will only inflict worse punishment. ”

“ The hawkweed commonly seen in our fields was regarded by the Greeks as the emblem of quick-sightedness, believing that the hawk, a bird renowned for its bright eye and quick sight, sharpened its visual organs with the juice of this plant. Thus it became famed in early medical practice as a remedy for dimness of sight, and was employed to feed the hawks used in the old art of falconry.
In Scotland, a twig of the rowan tree or mountain ash is often sewed up in the cow’s tail, to protect the animal from witches and warlocks. ”