as an improvement on Mithridatium which until then was the great
antidote in Roman pharmacy. The most important addition which appeared
in the new formula was the introduction of vipers. Andromachus named
his electuary “Galene,” which meant tranquil, probably to suggest that
it was a soothing, anodyne medicine. It soon, however, acquired its
permanent name, for it is referred to as Theriaca by Pliny, who would
have been a contemporary with Andromachus. Pliny, it may be remarked,
was rather contemptuous of the polypharmaceutic compounds which were
then becoming so popular. They were devised, he says, “ad ostentationem
artis;” just to “show off,” as we should say.
Andromachus (or it may have been his son, a physician of the same
name) wrote his formula, and described the virtues of his compound
in Greek elegiac verses which he dedicated to Nero, and which Galen
has preserved. The object of giving the formula in verse was that it
should be less easy to modify it. The enumeration of the medicinal
properties of the antidote left very little room for any other remedy.
First it would counteract all poisons and bites of venomous animals.
Besides, it would relieve all pains, weaknesses of the stomach, asthma,
difficulty of breathing, phthisis, colic, jaundice, dropsy, weakness of
sight, inflammation of the bladder and of the kidneys, and plague.
Galen, after describing its alexipharmic properties, states that he
tested it by causing a number of fowls to be dosed with it. To these
he brought others to which no theriaca had been given. The poison was
administered to all. The fowls to which the theriaca had been given all
survived, and all the others died. Galen’s encomiums on this compound
were no doubt largely responsible for the marvellous reputation it
enjoyed all through the centuries in which his authority was accepted.
He declares that it resists poison and venomous bites, cures inveterate
headache, vertigo, deafness, epilepsy, apoplexy, dimness of sight, loss
of voice, asthma, coughs of all kinds, spitting of blood, tightness of
the breath, colic, the iliac passion, jaundice, hardness of the spleen,
stone, urinary complaints, fevers, dropsies, leprosies, the troubles to
which women are subject, melancholy, and all pestilences.
Down to the seventeenth century these virtues were almost universally
accepted, and many were the learned treatises written to explain its
action; how one drug toned down the effect of others, and how the whole
formed a sort of harmony in medicine. At the same time most of the old
masters in pharmacy fancied they could suggest some improvement, and
the original formula was modified in scores of ways.
In addition there arose new electuaries, modelled more or less closely
on theriaca, but perhaps devised for some special complaints, and
bearing the names of their authors. Many of these also attained to
considerable fame.
For some centuries the theriaca made in turn at Constantinople, Cairo,
Genoa, and Venice was in such reputation that customers would have it
so branded. Ultimately the last-named city secured almost the monopoly
of the manufacture. A reference to its production there occurs in
Evelyn’s Diary, dated March 23, 1646. Evelyn writes: “Having packed up
my purchases of books, pictures, casts, treacle, &c. (the making and
extraordinary ceremony whereof I had been curious to observe, for it is
extremely pompous and worth seeing), I departed from Venice.”
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth English apothecaries began to
claim that they could make the confection as well as their Italian
contemporaries. Some curious documents illustrating their confidence
were given in an interesting research by Mr. W. G. Piper, published
in _The Chemist and Druggist_, March 15, 1880. He quotes from
William Turner, “the learned divine, daring Protestant, and first
English botanist,” the title of a work on the virtues and properties
of the great Triacle (published in 1568 but not now known), and also
a few paragraphs from a later volume on the same subject in which,
after describing the method of making the remedy, he says: “Wherefore
if there be any Apothecaries in London that dare take in hande to make
these noble compositions they may know where to haue them.” It appears
that Hugh Morgan, the Queen’s apothecary, accepted the challenge,
for in a pamphlet by him (1585) he insists that his product has been
compared with other “theriacle” brought from Constantinople and Venice,
and has been better commended. “It is very lamentable to consider,”
he writes, “that straungers doe dayly send into England a false and
naughty kinde of Mithridatium and Threacle in great barrelles more
than a thousand weight in a year, and vtter ye same at a lowe price for
3d. and 4d. a pound, to ye great hurt of Her Maiesties subjects and no
small game to straungers purses.”
[Illustration: PREPARATION OF THERIACA.
(From Brunschwick’s “Destillir,” Strassburg, 1500.)
_Reproduced (by permission) from “The Follies of Science,” by H.
Carrington Bolton (Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Co., Milwaukee,
U.S.A.)_]
Mr. Piper also quoted at length from another pamphlet published in
1612 by R. Band (in a subsequent edition, R. Browne), who relates how
the Master and Wardens of the Grocers’ Company, having marked that “a
filthy and unwholesome baggage composition” was being brought into this
Realm as Tryacle of Genoa, “made only of the rotten garble and refuse
outcast of all kinds of spices and drugs, hand over head with a little
filthy molasses and tarre to worke it up withal,” communicated with
the College of Physicians, and induced them to prescribe the proper
formula and to superintend the manufacture, which was then entrusted to
Mr. William Besse, apothecary in the Poultry. Mr. Besse had to take “a
corporall oath” before the Lord Mayor, and every year when he made the
confection had to show the ingredients and the product to the College
of Physicians. His triacle was sold at not above 2_s._ 8_d._
per lb. or 2_d._ per ounce. It appears from the same pamphlet
that nothing was alleged against Venice Treacle except its “excessive
dearness.”
Prosper Alpinus, a Paduan physician, wrote an account of his three
years’ residence at Cairo (“De Medicina Ægyptorum”) in 1591, and has
much to say of the manufacture of Theriaca in that city. It was only
allowed to be made in public, and the ceremony was performed once
a year in the month of May in the Mosque of Morestan by the chief
pharmacist of the city in the presence of all the physicians. The
operator would give no information to Albinus, a Christian, about the
composition; but he got what he wanted from a famous herbalist who
collected all the materials for the compound. Albinus states that at
that time Italians, Germans, Poles, Flemings, Englishmen, and Frenchmen
came to Cairo to purchase this true Theriaca.
Theriaca (Tyriaca, as he calls it), was among the drugs recommended to
Alfred the Great by Helias, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The manuscript
is quoted in “Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms” by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne. (See
Vol. I, p. 124, 131.)
Many allusions in old records show how highly the confection was
esteemed by those who could afford to take it. According to Buckle
(“Miscell. Works,” Vol. II, p. 303) it is first mentioned in English
literature by Foucher de Chartres (1124). He had come to know of it in
the first crusade. A “Pixis argenti ad Tyriacum” is named in the Close
Roll of King John, 1208; in the old romance of Sir Tristrem (about
1250) a man is slain by a dragon; and “His mouth opened thai And pelt
treacle in that man”; the “triacle box du pere apelle une Hakette
garniz d’or” is mentioned among the precious effects of Henry V; in the
Paston letters written in the reign of Edward IV we find allusions to
“treacle pottes of Geane (Genoa) as my potecarie swerytht on to me, and
moerovyr that they were never undoo syns that they came from Geane.”
In early English books treacle was a term used metaphorically for the
divinest blessings. Nothing could better prove the high appreciation
in which it was held. Piers Ploughman (about 1370) writes, “Treuthe
telleth that love ys tryacle for synne”; Chaucer (1340–1400) has
“Crist, which is to every harm triacle”; in Coverdale’s Bible (1535)
the sentence in Jeremiah viii, 22 is rendered “Is there no triacle
in Gilead?”; Sir Thomas More (1573) writes of “laying up a store of
cumfort in your hart as a triacle against the poyson of desperate
dread”; and later Milton speaks of “the treacle of sound doctrine”;
Jeremy Taylor says, “We kill the Viper and make treacle of him; that
is, we not only escape from but get advantage by temptations.”
Laurens Catelan, Master Apothecary of Montpellier, and Apothecary in
Ordinary to Monseigneur the Prince de Condé, has left a full report of
his discourse on the occasion of his dispensing a batch of Theriaca at
Montpellier on September 23, 1628. It is a most interesting lecture,
full of curious old facts chiefly about poisonings, and inspired with
an unshakable faith in the importance of the operation in which he was
engaged. The exordium is explanatory of the ceremony:
“The regulations and statutes under which we live in this city,” says
Master Catelan, “require that whenever we prepare either Theriaca,
Mithridatium, Confection of Hyacinth, or Confection Alkermes, the
compounding shall be done in public, and in the presence of the
very illustrious professors of this famous University of Medicine,
so that they may have the opportunity of censuring or approving the
ingredients, and the public may therefore be assured of the fidelity of
these important medicines.
“This is why I have here spread out before you all these drugs which
are used in the composition of the great and famous Theriaca.
“But as I am honoured with the attendance of such an august assembly, I
ought not, I think, to omit to lay before you some of the singularities
associated with the history and composition of this remedy, and I
will divide what I have to say on these subjects into three sections,
namely--
“(1) The discoverer of this compound; (2) the purpose of the invention;
and (3) the reasons why these drugs and no others of the multitude
known to us have been chosen for this purpose.”
The lecturer then entered upon a history of Mithridates and his
wonderful immunity against poisons; of his defeat by Pompey, of the
recovery of his formula, of the additions made to it a hundred years
later by Andromachus, and of the preservation of directions for making
it which Galen wrote some fifty years after Andromachus had completed
his invention.
At this point the book tells us there was an interval, and some music
was performed. When the lecturer resumed he proceeded to tell of
the risks which princes and nobles ran of being poisoned in those
old times, and of the precautions taken against such crimes. Of the
rings and amulets they wore, of the tasters they employed, and of the
treatment such as Mithridates went through of accustoming his system to
poisons to such an extent that they took no effect on him. He quotes
in support of the belief in this method of ensuring immunity against
poisons two or three stories from the classics which one would have
thought would have been too strong even for a professional eulogist of
Theriaca.
One case was that of a girl who ate spiders from her childhood, and was
so fortified against poisons as not to be afraid to take any of them.
A man is alluded to by Galen who would drink a cup of wine in which a
live viper had been drowned. We have also the account of a girl whose
system had been so saturated with aconite that an Indian king had sent
her as a present to Alexander the Great in the hope that he would kiss
her, and thus imbibe the poison with which her lips would be charged;
but, fortunately, Aristotle saw her first, and recognised by her
flaming eyes that she was filled with some sort of poison, and thus the
Indian’s purpose was frustrated.
After another interval and some more music, the lecturer came to the
third part of his subject, in which he expounded the special virtues
of the drugs before him. These were grouped, and it was shown that
some were good for the brain, others for the chest, for the stomach,
for the kidneys, the heart, and other organs. Others, like the viper’s
flesh, were directly sympathetic with poisons, and would go straight
for them if they were inside the body, or would lie in wait for them,
as it were, if they were only expected. When the subject was exhausted,
it was announced that in consequence of the lateness of the hour the
weighing of the ingredients would be postponed till the next day. That
ceremony was duly performed on the 24th of September, and the drugs
were passed on to a “pulveriser.” It was not until the 16th of November
that the final mixing was undertaken.
KERMES.
Kermes as a pharmaceutical term reaches us through the Arabic, qirmis,
red. But it was not a native Arabic word. It was adopted into that
language from the Persian, and was of Sanskrit origin. The word
Krimija in Sanskrit meant produced by a worm, and was itself from
krimi, a worm; worm is the direct English descendant of krimi. Kermes
is responsible in modern English for carmine and crimson, but it need
hardly be said that it has no connection with the Flemish kermess
though it looks so like it. Kermess is kerkmess, or, in English,
church-mass.
The kermes of the Arabs was the kokkos of the Greeks, coccus of the
Romans. It was found on a species of oak, now called the Quercus ilex,
a low, shrubby, evergreen bush with prickly leaves like the holly.
The tree, however, bears acorns. The ancients generally regarded
these insects as the fruit of the trees, though they were aware that
worms came from them. But these they thought were produced from the
corruption of the fruit. The principal use they made of them was in
dyeing, and for this purpose they were employed until the superior
coccus cacti from Mexico superseded the coccus ilicis. In the middle
ages kermes was retained as the medicinal name, but for dyeing the
insects were called vermiculi, and the cloth dyed by them was known
as vermiculata. From this came the French word vermeil, and from that
vermilion was derived.
Medicinally the coccus was principally employed by the Greek and Latin
physicians as an application to wounds and for inflamed eyes. It
acquired a very high reputation among the Arab doctors as a cordial
for internal administration, and the famous Confection of Alkermes,
invented by Mesué the younger, who was contemporary with Avicenna,
continued in popular favour up to the eighteenth century. Meanwhile,
the external application of kermes lingered in the use of scarlet cloth
in measles, erysipelas, and other red diseases.
The original Confection of Alkermes contained juice of rennet apples,
rose water, silk, kermes, sugar, ambergris, amber, yellow santal, lapis
lazuli, pearls, musk, and leaf gold. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries this compound was prepared publicly at Montpellier, and
was supplied from that city to all Europe. It was described as good
for all maladies proceeding from the melancholic humour, faintings,
palpitations, heart weakness, and in slow convalescence. It fortified
the stomach, rejoiced the heart, and engendered good spirits. The dose
was 1 drachm, or it might be applied externally on a piece of scarlet
cloth.
MEL ÆGYPTIACUM
is a very ancient compound used chiefly by veterinarians as an
escharotic. Its name suggests Egyptian origin, but it has not been
traced further back than to the “Grabadin” of John Mesué, the Arabian
author, about the year 800. Scribonius Largus before him gives a
similar formula under the name of Hygra. Mesué’s formula was to boil
1 oz. of vinegar with 1 oz. of honey to the consistence of honey and
to add 2 drachms of verdigris. This formula was modified in various
ways in the different pharmacopœias in which it was adopted; alum was
added in some cases, cream of tartar in others. The chemical action
varied with the process, but generally the result was to reduce a part
of the verdigris to an oxide of copper, metallic copper, and a little
basic acetate in different proportions. The compound appeared in the
London Pharmacopœia of 1721 as Unguentum Ægyptiacum; in that of 1746 as
Mel Ægyptiacum; as Oxymel Æruginis in that of 1788; and as Linimentum
Æruginis in the P.L. 1851. In this last edition the formula given was
to dissolve 1 oz. of verdigris in 7 oz. of vinegar, and boil this with
14 oz. of honey to a proper consistence. It was not adopted in the
British Pharmacopœia. In old veterinary recipes it was often combined
with tincture of myrrh to form a detergent liniment, and occasionally
in a very diluted form was administered internally as a tonic. On the
Continent, where its employment lingered longer than in this country,
an Egyptiac of Solleysel, from which the vinegar was omitted, but
litharge, sulphate of zinc, and arsenic in small proportions added, was
frequently preferred to the original.
An Unguentum Ægyptiacum magis compositum, containing rock alum and sal
ammoniac, in addition to the other ingredients mentioned, was included
in the London Pharmacopœia 1721. In some foreign pharmacopœias camphor
was prescribed as an ingredient, and in one old one theriaca is ordered.
TERRA SIGILLATA.
Various earths were celebrated as medicines in old times, that from
the Island of Lemnos especially having been esteemed from the days of
Herodotus among the Greeks, and this product retained its reputation
in Western Europe down to the seventeenth century. It is still used
by the Turks and neighbouring nations. The Lemnian earth is a greasy
clay which is dug from a desolate hill in the island and consists of
silica, alumina, chalk, and magnesia, with a little oxide of iron
which gives it a red tint. It acquired the fame of being an antidote
to all poisons, and was given in dysenteries, internal ulcers, and
hæmorrhages; also in gonorrhœa, and in pestilential fevers. Externally
it was applied to festering wounds. The characteristic of the best
Lemnian earth was its greasy feel and freedom from grit.
A sufficient supply of this Lemnian earth is still, and has been
certainly from the time of Galen, dug out of the hill only on one day
of the year, with considerable ceremony and in the presence of the
principal inhabitants of the island. At present the ceremony is largely
a religious one, and the day fixed for it is the 6th of August, which
in the Greek church calendar is the Fête of the Saviour. Formerly the
ceremony was originally associated with the worship of Diana, and the
date of the performance was the 6th of May. The particular earth may
not be dug by any one on any other day of the year except that formally
set apart for the operation. According to Dioscorides the earth was
made up into a paste in his time with goats’ blood, but when Galen
visited the place 150 years later he could find no evidence of this
addition.
Lemnian earth was, and I presume still is, a monopoly of the Sultan
of Turkey. Most of the produce of the day’s digging was sent to
Constantinople and was made up into round tablets of about half an
ounce in weight, which were stamped with designs similar to those shown
in the accompanying sketches. At one time it is said the figure of
Artemis (Diana) or the goat, which was one of her symbols appeared on
the tablets, and it may be from this that the story of the goat’s blood
originated.
[Illustration]
Many other sealed earths were also more or less used in medicine, and
were credited with similar virtues. The Terra Mellitea came from Malta
and was alleged to have a special power against the bites of serpents,
Malta, vipers, and St. Paul thus associating themselves in the public
mind. These cakes bore the effigy of St. Paul, and a popular legend
attributed their efficacy to a blessing on the earth of the island
when the apostle landed there. There were besides Terra Samia, from
the Isle of Samos; Terra Sicula or Fossil Bezoar from Sicily; Terra
Portugallica, stamped with the figure of a rose, from Portugal; Terra
Strigensis or Germanica from Strigonium in Hungary, stamped with a
design, suggesting mountain peaks and cross-keys on them; and Terra
Livonica. Naturally the temptation of selling soil at fabulous prices
per shovelful appealed to all nations.
The appended formulas from Geoffroy’s Materia Medica (written before
1731) will show how this sealed earth was used. Both are for dysentery.
Lemnian earth, ʒi, syrup of quinces, 1 oz., plantain water, and knot
grass water, of each 3 oz. Spoonful doses.
Lemnian earth, conserve of red roses, conserve of hips, of each ½ oz.;
syrup of bearberries sufficient to make a soft electuary. Take ʒi
morning and evening.
Several so-called “alexipharmic powders” or mixtures much more
complex than the preceding were prescribed in small-pox, fevers, and
pestilential diseases.
OIL OF BRICKS.
Oil of Bricks appeared in the earlier London and Edinburgh
pharmacopœias and in many foreign formularies. It was long held to be
a specially valuable application in gouty and rheumatic pains, and was
especially in repute as a cure for deafness. It was also sometimes
given as an internal remedy. Among its synonyms were those of oleum
philosophorum, oleum sanctum, oleum divinum, and oleum benedictum;
but as these names were adopted for selling purposes they may not
have meant much. The process given in the P.L. 1746 was to heat
bricks red-hot and quench them in olive oil until they had soaked up
all the oil. They were then broken into small pieces and put into a
retort, and by means of a sand-bath with a gradually increasing heat
a distillate of oil and so-called spirit was obtained. The spirit was
water impregnated with empyreumatic oil. The oil was nothing but an
empyreumatic olive oil.
ARQUEBUSADE WATER
was the original of many vulnerary waters invented for application
to wounds, bruises, and ulcers. It was a weak, spirituous distillate
from a large number of herbs and aromatic plants, such as angelica,
rosemary balm, hyssop, mint, rue, sage, and wormwood. These would
furnish an antiseptic lotion. As the arquebus was displaced by the
musket about the end of the sixteenth century it may be supposed that
the lotion acquired its name and popularity at that same period; but
these evidently lasted for a long time, as we find that a certain John
Thomson took out a patent for “a concentrated balsam of arquebusade” in
1786.
FOUR THIEVES VINEGAR
is the sub-title of the Antiseptic Vinegar of the French Codex. It is a
strong vinegar in which a number of aromatics with camphor and garlic
have been macerated. The story of its origin is that in the year 1720 a
plague was raging in the city of Toulouse, and that during the period
of panic four thieves went about the city plundering the dead and
dying. People wondered why they never took the disease, and when they
were ultimately brought to justice and convicted, they were offered
pardon if they would reveal the secret of their prophylactic. This is
the legend as given by Littré, who quotes it from Abbé Lemontey. Other
authors make Marseilles the scene of the exploit.
ELIXIR PROPRIETATIS.