A. C. Wootton

“ The material part of man, the living body, is the Mumia. This is managed by the Archæus, which rules over everybody; it is the vital principle. It provides the internal balsam which heals wounds or diseases, and controls the action of the various organs.
His theories of mercury, sulphur, and salt, as the constituents of all things, seem at first likely to lead to something conceivable if not credible. But before we grasp the idea we are switched off into the spiritual world again. It is the sidereal mercury, sulphur, and salt, spirit, soul, and body, to which he is alluding. ”

“ Whatever may have been the case with other arts and sciences, it does not appear that much progress was made in medicine in Egypt during the thousands of years of its history which have been more or less minutely traced. The discovery of remedies by various deities, by Isis especially, or the indication of compounds invented for the relief of the sufferings of the Sun-god Ra, before he retired to his heavenly rest, is the burden of all the documents on which our knowledge of Egyptian pharmacy is founded. ”

“ Germany was big enough to teach him. Passionately eager to wrest from Nature all her secrets, gifted with extraordinary powers of observation and imagination, with unbounded confidence in himself, and bold even to recklessness as an experimenter, this was a man who could not be suppressed. Armed with his new and powerful drugs, and not afraid to administer them, cures were inevitable; other consequences also, in all probability.
When, therefore, Paracelsus arrived at Basel, in the year 1525, in the thirty-second year of his age, his fame had preceded him. ”

“ After recounting many other wonderful things he had done for humanity, the poet makes him say, “One of the greatest subtilties I have invented is that when any one falls ill, and can find no relief; can neither eat nor drink, and knows not with what to anoint himself; when for want of the necessary remedies he must perish; then I showed to men how to prepare healing medicine which should cure all maladies.” ”

“ Greek and Latin works of philosophy and science were translated, but the licentious and blasphemous mythology of the classical poets was abhorred by this serious nation, and no Arabic versions of Olympian fables were ever made. Astronomy, mathematics, metaphysics, and the arts of agriculture, of horticulture, of architecture, of war, and of commerce, were advanced to an extent which this century does not realise, while amid all this progress the study of chemistry, medicine, and pharmacy was pursued with particular eagerness. ”

“ Dr. Heberden’s criticism of the composition is as effective now as when he wrote, but it should be remembered that in his day there was a Theriacal party in medicine; to us the comments seem obvious. He points out that in the formula as it then appeared in the Pharmacopœia no regard was had to the known virtues of the simples, nor to the rules of artful composition. There was no foundation for the wonderful stories told concerning it, and the utmost that could then be said of it was that it was a diaphoretic, “which is commonly the virtue of a medicine which has none.” ”

“ Valentine concludes his “Triumphal Chariot” by thus apostrophising contemporary practitioners:—“Ah, you poor miserable people, physicians without experience, pretended teachers who write long prescriptions on large sheets of paper; you apothecaries with your vast marmites, as large as may be seen in the kitchens of great lords where they feed hundreds of people; all you so very blind, rub your eyes and refresh your sight that you may be cured of your blindness.” ”

“ What more natural when they see one of their tribe seized with an epileptic fit than to assume the presence of an invisible foe? Or if a contagious plague or small-pox or fever attacks their village, is it not an inevitable conclusion that angry spirits have attacked the tribe, perhaps for some unknown offence? From such a basis the idea of sacrifice to the avenging fiend follows obviously. In some parts of China if a person accidentally kicks a stone and soon afterwards falls ill the relatives go to that stone and offer fruit, wine, or other treasures, and it may be that the patient recovers. ”

“ The blood was the humour which nourished the various parts of the body, and was the source of animal heat. The bile kept the passages of the body open, and served to promote the digestion of the food. The phlegm kept the nerves, the muscles, the cartilages, the tongue, and other organs supple, thus facilitating their movements. The black bile (the melancholy, Hippocrates termed it) was a link between the other humours and sustained them. The proportion of these humours occasioned the temperaments, and it is hardly necessary to remark that this fancy still prevails in our language ”

“ I would ask the College whether the hellebore will not lose its virtue in the twentieth part of this infusion and decoction (for it must be infused, forsooth, three days to a minute) if a man may make so bold as to tell them the truth. A Taylor’s Goose being boiled that time would make a decoction near as strong as the hellebore, but this they will not believe. Well, then, be it so. Imagine the hellebore still remaining in its vigour after being so long tired out with a tedious boiling (for less boiling would boil an ox) , what should the medicine do? ”

“ Pharmacy, or the art of selecting, extracting, preparing, and compounding medicines from vegetable, animal, and mineral substances, is an acquirement which must have been almost as ancient as man himself on the earth. ”

“ Medicine is mine, what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know,
And am the great physician called below.
The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are thus described in Burke’s “Encyclopædia of Heraldry,” 1851:
“In shield, Apollo, the inventor of physic, with his head radiant, holding in his left hand a bow, and in his right a serpent. About the shield a helm, thereupon a mantle, and for the crest, upon a wreath of their colours, [10] a rhinoceros, supported by two unicorns, armed and ungulated. ”

“ The mystic views of Paracelsus, or those attributed to him, are curious rather than useful. He seemed to have had as much capacity for belief as he had disbelief in other philosophers’ speculations. He believed in gnomes in the interior of the earth, undines in the seas, sylphs in the air, and salamanders in fire. These were the Elementals, beings composed of soul-substance, but not necessarily influencing our lives. The Elementals know only the mysteries of the particular element in which they live. There is life in all matter. Every mineral, vegetable, and animal has its astral body. ”

“ The grinders are the teeth; those who look out through the windows is an allusion to the sight. The doors shall be shut in the streets, and the sound of the grinding is low, means that the mouth will scarcely open for speaking, and that eating must be slow and quiet. The old man must rise at the voice of the bird, for he cannot sleep. There is no more singing, and reading and study are no longer pleasures. ”

“ But do exhort all physicians which practise Physick in any nations or places whatsoever that they will drive the said Turquet and such like monsters of men and opinions out of their company and coasts; and that they will constantly continue in the doctrine of Hippocrates and Galen. Moreover, they forbid all men that are of the Society of the Physicians of Paris, that they do not admit a consultation with Turquet or such like person. ”

“ Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century before Christ, has been the subject of so many legends that it is difficult to separate the philosopher in him from the charlatan. He is said to have tamed wild beasts with a word, to have visited hell, to have recounted his previous stages of existence from the siege of Troy to his own life, and to have accomplished many miracles. Probably these were the myths which often gather round great men, and it is certain that from him or from his disciples in his name much exact learning, especially in mathematics, has reached us. ”

“ Even in 1271 the Faculty of Medicine of Paris forbade “herborists and apothecaries” to practise medicine. Special responsibilities, duties, and privileges were expressly provided for the apothecaries, and in the ordinance of 1514 it is specifically declared that though the apothecary is always a grocer, the grocer is not necessarily an apothecary. (“Qui est espicier n’est pas apothicaire, et qui est apothicaire est espicier.”) ”

“ In the course of ages they become associated with magic, with theology, with alchemy, with crimes and conscious frauds, with the strangest fancies, and dogmas, and delusions, and with the severest science. Deities, kings, and quacks, philosophers, priests, and poisoners, dreamers, seers, and scientific chemists, have all helped to build the fabric of pharmacy, and it is some features of their work which are imperfectly sketched in these “Chronicles.” ”

“ The doctrine of the “humours,” or humoral pathology, as it is generally termed, is usually traced to Hippocrates. It is set forth in his book on the Nature of Man, which Galen regarded as a genuine treatise of the Physician of Cos, but which other critics have supposed to have been written by one or more of his disciples or successors. At any rate, it is believed to represent his views. Plato elaborated the theory, and Galen gave it dogmatic form.
The human body was composed not exactly of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, but of the essences of these elements. ”

“ Paracelsus says it needs much preparation before it can be administered. To make their aurum potabile some of the alchemists professed to separate the salt from the fixed sulphur, which they held was the real principle of gold, its seed, as some of them called it, and to obtain this in such a form that it could be taken in any liquor. The seed of gold was with many of them the universal medicine which would cure all diseases, and prolong life indefinitely. It was the sulphur of the sun with which that body revivifies nature. ”

“ PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS
“Go up into Gilead and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt: in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for thee.”
So wrote the prophet Jeremiah (xlvi, 11) , and the passage seems to suggest that Egypt in his time was famous for its medicines. Herodotus, who narrated his travels in Egypt some two or three hundred years later, conveys the same impression, and the records of the papyri which have been deciphered within the last century confirm the opinion. ”

“ The name Apothek, which came to be appropriated to the warehouse where medicinal herbs were kept, and which is to-day the German equivalent of our pharmacy, or chemist’s shop, meant originally any warehouse, and from it has been derived the French boutique and the Spanish bodega.
The earlier Greek and Roman physicians were in the [96] habit of themselves preparing the medicines they prescribed for their patients. But naturally they did not gather their own herbs, and as many of those used for medicine were exotics, it is obvious that they could not have done so if they had wished. ”

“ According to Celsus, the medical science of Egypt was founded on the belief that the human body was divided into thirty-six parts, each one being under the control of a separate demon or divinity. The art of medicine consisted largely in knowing the names of these demons so as to invoke the right one when an ailment had to be treated.
Symbolical names were given to many of the herbs used as medicines. The plant of Osiris was the ivy, the vervain was called Tears of Isis, saffron was the blood of Thoth, and the squill was the eye of Typhon. ”

“ The compound is to be dissolved in water of dew, the solution filtered and abstracted in a glass alembic three times until the greenness turns to a black like ink, “stinking like a carcase.” After standing for forty hours the blackness and stink will depart, leaving a milky white solution. This is to be dried to a white mass, which will change into divers colours, ultimately becoming a finer green than formerly. That green gold is to be dissolved in spirit of wine, to which it will impart a quintessence, red as blood, which is the quickening tincture, a superfluous ashy body being left. ”

“ Gilbert Anglicanus, who was a contemporary of Bacon, and wrote a Compendium of Medicine, a tedious collection of the most fantastic theories of disease, was more advanced in pharmacy than in the treatment of disease. He describes at considerable length the manner of extinguishing mercury to make an ointment, recommending particularly the addition of some mustard seed to facilitate the process. He gives particulars of the preparation of the oil of tartar per deliquium, and proposes a solution of acetate of ammonia in anticipation of Mindererus four hundred years later. ”

“ Van Helmont said, “Whoever can make myrrh soluble by the human body has the secret of prolonging his days,” and Boerhaave had recognised that there was truth in this remark on account of the anti-putrefactive power of the myrrh. This was the power which tar possessed in so large a degree. Homberg had made gold by introducing the vital element in the form of light into the pores of mercury. The process was too expensive to make the production of gold by this means profitable, but the fact showed an analogy with the concentration of the same element in the tar. ”

“ An apothecary brought a youth to the hospital with a carbuncle on his face, and his throat and neck swollen beyond belief. The master said the youth must go home to die. “Is there then no remedy?” asked the apothecary. The physician replied, “I believe most truly that if thou wert to give tyriacum in a large dose, there would be a chance that he might live.” ”

“ Theodore Turquet de Mayerne had been a favourite physician to Henri IV, but he had been compelled to leave Paris on account of the jealousies of his medical contemporaries. His employment of mineral medicines, antimony and mercury especially, was the occasion of bitter attacks, but his professional heresy was perhaps actually less heinous than his firm Protestantism. ”

“ In the middle ages the horn of the unicorn was esteemed a certain cure for the plague, malignant fevers, bites of serpents or of mad dogs. It was to be made into a jelly to which a little saffron and cochineal were to be added. Some writers allege that poisoned wounds could be cured by merely holding the horn of a unicorn opposite the wound. These horns are said, however, to have cost about ten times the price of gold, so that not many sufferers could avail themselves of them as a remedy. ”

“ Among all the ancient Eastern nations olive oil was one of the most precious of products. It was used lavishly by the Egyptians for the hair and the skin, as well as in all sorts of ceremonies. The Israelites held it in the highest esteem before they went to Egypt, the earliest allusion to it in the Scriptures being in Genesis, xxviii, 18, where we read that Jacob poured oil on the stone which he set up at Bethel, evidently with the idea of consecrating it. The Apocalypse of Moses has a legend of Adam’s experience of its medicinal virtues in the Garden of Eden. ”