to make them more useful as purgatives. Dioscorides alludes to their
purgative properties, but only contemplates the external employment of
the oil in medicine. Pliny, however, is more explicit. Chapter xli., of
Book 23 begins with the sentence: “Oleum cicinum bibitur ad purgationes
ventris cum pari calidæ mensura.” The whole passage is of interest.
The following is the translation of it given in Bohn’s “Classical
Library” (Dr. Bostock): “Castor oil taken with an equal quantity of
warm water acts as a purgative upon the bowels. It is said, too, that
as a purgative it acts particularly upon the regions of the diaphragm
(precordia). It is useful for diseases of the joints, all kinds of
indurations, affections of the uterus and ears, and for burns, employed
with the ashes of the murex; it heals itch, scabs, and inflammations of
the fundament. It improves the complexion also, and by its fertilising
tendencies promotes the growth of the hair. The cicus or seed from
which this oil is made no animal will touch, and from these grape-like
seeds wicks are made which burn with a peculiar brilliancy. The light,
however, that is produced by the oil is very dim, in consequence of its
extreme thickness. The leaves are applied topically with vinegar for
erysipelas. Fresh gathered they are used by themselves for diseases of
the mamillæ and defluxions. A decoction of them in wine with polenta
and saffron is good for inflammations of various kinds. Boiled by
themselves and applied to the face for three successive days they
improve the complexion.”
In Egypt and Rome, therefore, Ricinus was evidently esteemed; and
though as a medicine they dropped largely out of use, it is clear from
old English physic books that a traditional reputation was always
associated with both the seeds and the oil. Gerard, in his “Herbal,”
and Piso, in an account of the natural history of the West Indies,
both recommend them, the former in broth, the latter in the form of a
tincture made with brandy for colic and constipation. Gerard states
that the Palma Christi “of America” grew in his garden (in Holborn) and
in many other gardens likewise. The seeds, however, came to be regarded
as dangerous, and were clearly but little used in orthodox medicine.
Quincy (1724) refers to them as “hardly ever met with in practice,
unless amongst empirics and persons of no credit.”
In 1764, however, Dr. Peter Canvane, of Bath, who had practised for
seven years in the West Indies, published a treatise entitled “A
Dissertation on the Oleum Palmæ Christi, sive Oleum Ricini, or (as it
is commonly call’d) Castor Oil,” in which he warmly recommended the oil
as a gentle purgative, particularly in cases of “dry belly ache.” His
advocacy soon took effect, for in the second edition of his treatise
published in 1769, he says it had become officinal, by which he meant
was sold in the shops, “at Apothecaries Hall and several other shops in
London and Bath.” Dr. Odier, of Geneva, who visited England in 1776,
became then acquainted with the medicine, and subsequently brought
it to the notice of Continental physicians. It was admitted into the
London Pharmacopœia in 1788.
The name “Ricinus” was in Latin the name of the parasite known as the
dog-tick, _Ixodes ricinus_, and was transferred to the Palma
Christi seeds because of their resemblance to the insect. In Greek the
same insect was called the kroton, and Theophrastus and Dioscorides
describe the Palma Christi seeds as kroton seeds. Curiously the name
kroton has been applied in America to the cockroach, not from any
association with ticks, but from a belief that the insects came from
the Croton River when the water from that source was brought to New
York in 1842. The name of castor oil is supposed to have been given
to the oil in consequence of a mistaken idea in the Western Indies
that the plant which yielded the seeds was _Agnus Castus_. There
was, however, a castor oil and compound castor oil in medicinal use in
England and other countries until the eighteenth century. The simple
oil was made by digesting castorum in oil and boiling it with wine
until the latter had all evaporated. The compound oil contained besides
a number of aromatic gums and spices. Possibly the taste of the oil
from the Palma Christi seeds recalled that from the old oil of castor,
and the name may thus have been transferred.
CINCHONA.
It is not possible to determine from the legends and reports collected
by the many competent naturalists who visited Peru in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries with the special object of investigating
the history of the cinchona trees whether it was known or used as
a medicine by the natives before its virtues were ascertained by
Europeans.
Peru was discovered in 1513, and became subject to Spain about the
middle of the sixteenth century. But Hanbury points out that no
reference to the bark as a febrifuge has been found earlier than the
beginning of the seventeenth century. It was reported by La Condamine,
and others who acquired their knowledge on the spot, that the Indians
had long used the bark as a dye. The Countess Ana of Chinchon, wife of
the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, was cured of a fever by the bark in 1638,
but there is evidence that its medicinal value had been experienced
by some of the conquering race before that date. One story is that
when the Countess was ill and all the usual remedies had been found
ineffective, the Corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan Lopez Canizares, who
had himself been cured by the bark of a similar illness, brought some
of the remedy from Loxa to Lima and staked his reputation on its
infallibility. After her cure the Countess became an enthusiastic
advocate of the medicine, administering it with uniform success to her
dependents and others in Lima, and on her return to Spain in 1640,
exerting herself to make it known there.
Another story is to the effect that a native maid in the employment
of the Countess had made known the virtues of the bark to the Viceroy
out of affection for her mistress, though until then the Indians had
concealed the secret from their cruel rulers. The most likely account
is that the bark had become known as a valuable medicine to the Jesuit
missionaries who had been in the country for fully fifty years when the
Countess of Chinchon was cured.
Le Condamine stated, in 1738, that the Indians had a legend that they
had become acquainted with the properties of the bark in consequence of
an earthquake in the neighbourhood of Loxa which had caused a number of
the trees surrounding a lake near the city to be thrown into the water.
An Indian violently ill with a fever and consumed with thirst had drunk
water from this lake and had been rapidly cured. Another tradition was
that the pumas of the country had been observed to eat the bark when
they were ill, and that the Indians had learned its value from this
circumstance.
The Count and Countess of Chinchon returned to Spain, as has been said,
in 1640. They went to live on their estate at Chinchon Castle, about
forty miles from Madrid, and their physician, Juan del Vego, followed
them and resided at Seville. Vego brought with him a considerable
quantity of the bark from Peru, and sold it at 100 reals per pound.
Sprengel queries whether the real of Plata or the real of Vellon is to
be understood; the latter was worth about 2d., the Plata or silver real
being worth about 8d. It is not at all certain that Vego’s bark was the
first importation of the medicine into Spain. A Spanish physician named
Villerobel, quoted by Badus in 1663 in a work on the Peruvian bark,
states that a quantity was received in 1632, but was not tried until
1639 (a year after the cure of the Countess, it will be noted). The
patient was an ecclesiastic of Alcala de Henarez, near Madrid. However
this may be, Vego’s reports and the experiments with his bark excited
lively interest all through Spain, and from then began a controversy
almost as bitter as that between the Galenists and Paracelsists. There
were a large number of practitioners who could not bring themselves
to believe in any medicine which Galen had not described. It was also
alleged by some contemporary writers that a prompt cure of intermittent
fevers was not by any means desired by a large number of medical men
and apothecaries, who consequently allied themselves in opposition
to this very effective bark. This statement is no doubt due to the
usual uncharitableness of controversy; but it is possible that the
adversaries of the new remedy might at least cling to their old
prejudices with not less firmness when these and their interests ran on
parallel lines.
Fevers were at that time regarded as caused by some morbific principle
in the humours which occasioned effervescence, and which it was
essential first of all to expel. The patient was, therefore, treated
with evacuants and debilitating medicines while the fever continued,
and the vital spirits were afterwards restored by a course of cordials
and bitters, such as wormwood, chamomile flowers, mace, carduus
benedictus, angelica, and valerian. The opponents of the bark insisted
that if it palliated the fever it “fixed the humour” and ensured a
relapse or some other more dangerous disease. In 1652 Leopold William,
Archduke of Austria, and Governor of the Low Countries, who had
interested himself in popularising the bark, fell ill with a quaternian
fever. He took bark and recovered. A relapse occurred, but the
complaint again yielded to the remedy. Some time after he had another
attack. This time, perhaps influenced by the views already quoted, he
refused to take bark and died. This event was regarded, illogically
enough, as evidence of the dangerous character of the medicine.
Meanwhile, the Jesuits had been busy propagating the new remedy and
proving its virtues. The provincial father brought a large supply to
Rome, and explained the method of using it to a congress of Jesuits
then assembled in that city. The fathers administered it all over
Europe, giving it gratuitously to the poor and to their own order,
but charging its weight in gold to the rich. It is said that they
endeavoured to keep it as a secret medicine, and would only supply
it in powder so that it might be more difficult to identify. The
Procurator-General of the order, Father (afterwards Cardinal) de Lugo,
making a journey to Paris in 1649, found the king, Louis XIV, himself
suffering at the time from an intermittent fever. He recommended to
him the use of the bark, and Louis took it and quickly recovered.
The powder of the Cardinal, the Powder of the Fathers, the Jesuits’
Powder, by which names among others it was known, consequently came
into strong demand. But these titles were largely responsible for the
reaction which almost drove cinchona out of practice. Protestant fears
and prejudices were added to the orthodox opposition of the Galenists,
and besides, many practitioners administered the bark ignorantly, in
too small or too large doses, while the high prices at which it was
sold led to fraudulent substitution, which more than anything else
discredited the bark as a medicine. Sprengel quotes complaints from the
Cardinal de Lugo, the apothecary of the College of Medicine at Rome,
and Vincent Protospatario, a physician at Naples, who alleged that the
Spanish merchants were sending into Italy instead of the true Peruvian
bark various other astringent barks devoid of any aromatic taste, but
flavoured up to the necessary bitterness by aloes.
Although Sydenham in England, and a number of eminent physicians on
the Continent, studied the proper methods of administration and the
suitable doses of bark, it fell to a practitioner whose methods went a
long way to justify charges of charlatanry firmly to establish cinchona
in professional and popular favour.
Robert Talbor was assistant with an apothecary at Cambridge named Dear.
It has been ascertained that in 1663 he had been entered as a sizar at
St. John’s College for five years, but there is no indication that he
took a degree. In his writings he states that he was largely indebted
to a member of the University of the name of Nott for suggestions
relative to the administration of bark. The next heard of him is that
he was practising in Essex. This was about 1671. He wrote a book in
1672, which he called “Pyretologia,” a rational account of the cause
and cure of agues. In this he refers to his own secret remedy, which,
he says, consists of four ingredients, two indigenous and two exotic.
He mentions Peruvian bark and intimates that it is an excellent remedy,
but one that should be employed with prudence, as in the hands of
inexperienced doctors it might occasion serious evils. He does not say
that it was contained in his specific.
Talbor moved to London and set up his sign next door to Gray’s Inn
Gate, in Holborn. His treatment brought him into fame, the climax
of which was that having cured the daughter of Lady Mordaunt he was
sent for when Charles II was ill with an ague and cured him. He was
knighted, appointed a royal physician with a salary of £100 a year, and
the king caused a letter to be written to the College of Physicians
asking them not to interfere with his practice in London.
Talbor next figures in Paris, and there leaped into eminence. For
French convenience he assumed the name of Talbot, an English name with
which they were historically familiar. He soon became a favourite
in high circles. Mme. de Sévigné refers to him several times in her
letters of 1679. In one she says, “Nothing is talked of here but
the Englishman and his cures.” In November, 1780, the Dauphin was
dangerously ill with a fever. Talbor had plenty of friends at court who
wanted him to be sent for. Mme. de Sévigné is again the chronicler. She
writes:--“The Englishman has promised on his head to cure monseigneur
in four days.” If he fails she believes he will be thrown out of the
window. She further states that the King (Louis XIV) insisted on seeing
Talbor prepare his wine; and when she reports the fulfilment of his
promise and the cure of the Dauphin she notes with malicious glee the
discomfiture of the king’s head physician, Antoine d’Aquin.
D’Aquin wrote bitterly against Talbor, insisted that his treatment
of the Dauphin and of other persons had been founded on a mistaken
diagnosis, and that in the Dauphin’s case he had made a bilious fever
into a dangerous disorder. Another critic suggested that his remedy
given to the Duke of Rochefoucauld in an arthritic asthma had had fatal
consequences.
Louis agreed to buy Talbor’s formula, but nothing was published until
after the death of the latter. Two thousand guineas and an annual
pension of £100 were granted to the English doctor, and he was made a
Chevalier. Shortly afterwards he went to Spain and cured the queen of
that country of a fever. Then he returned to London and died in 1781,
at the early age of forty.
His official formula, published after his death, directed 6 drachms
of rose leaves to be infused in 6 ounces of water with 2 ounces of
lemon juice for four hours. A strong infusion of cinchona was added to
the above, together with some juice of persil or ache. He also made
alcoholic tinctures and wines of cinchona. The French doctors were sure
that he was in the habit of adding some opium to his speciality. If he
did he invented a valuable combination.
Another contemporary writer, John Jones, gives the following as
Talbor’s process. He digested finely-powdered bark in juice of persil
and decoction of anise separately. The mixture was placed in an
earthen vessel, and having been stirred frequently he added red wine
and macerated for a week. He also made a tincture of cinchona by adding
8 ounces of alcohol to 2 ounces of powdered bark.
From a handbill in a collection of quack advertisements in the British
Museum Library, dated “1675, &c.,” it appears that Dr. Charles Goodal,
who gave his address “at the Coach and Horses, near Physician’s
Colledge, Warwick Lane,” offers “for the public good a very superior
sort of Jesuit’s Bark, ready powdered, and papered into doses” at
4_s._ per ounce, or in quantity £3 per lb., and as evidence that
this is a reasonable price he refers to Mr. Thain, druggist, of Newgate
Street, to whom he had paid 9_s._ per lb. for a considerable
quantity. Possibly it was Mr. Thain who was advertising.
TINCT. CINCHONÆ CO.
The official formula for this tincture is slightly modified from that
devised by John Huxham, M.D., and published in his Essay on Fevers,
1755. It first appeared in the P.L. 1788 as a College preparation.
John Huxham was born as Totnes in 1692, and was the son of a butcher.
He studied medicine under Boerhaave at Leyden, but graduated M.D.
at Rheims. Then he returned to England and after a time settled
at Plymouth. He was a Nonconformist, and at first depended on the
dissenting portion of the population for his practice, but it did not
expand as fast as he wished and it is alleged that he was not above
some of the tricks satirised by novelists; as, for example, being
called out of chapel, riding at full speed through the streets,
walking about with a gold-headed cane, wearing a red coat and
followed by a footman who carried his gloves. He, however, acquired
a considerable reputation both locally and nationally; was elected
F.R.S. in 1739, and was awarded the Copley medal in 1755 for a treatise
on antimony in which he strongly recommended an Essentia or Vinum
Antimonii made by infusing 1 oz. of glass of antimony in 24 oz. of
sound Madeira wine for 10 or 12 days, then decanting and filtering. He
advised doses of 30 to 80 drops of this in tea, wine, beer, or other
liquid, as an alterant, attenuant, and diaphoretic. The treatise though
verbose does not seem to have had any special merit.
[Illustration: DR. HUXHAM.]
His Essay on Fevers was much more important and has been highly
esteemed by competent critics. He also wrote a valuable note on
scurvy in seamen, recommending a more abundant supply of vegetables
on voyages, and was the first to describe the malignant ulcerous sore
throat now called diphtheria.
Huxham’s formula for Tinct. Cinchonæ Co. as given by himself was as
follows:
Cort. Peruv. opt. pulv. ℥ ii, Flav. Aurant. Hispan. ℥ iss, Rad.
serpent. Virgin. ℥ iii, Croci Anglic. ℈ iv, Coccinel. ℈ ii, Sp. Vini
Gallici, (Brandy), ℥ xx. F. Infusio clausa per dies aliquot (tres
saltern quatuerve) deinde coletur. The dose was ʒ i to ℥ ss every 4,
6, or 8 hours with 10, 15, or 20 drops of elixir of vitriol in diluted
wine. Huxham says of this tincture “it tends to strengthen the Solids,
to prevent the further Dissolution and Corruption of the blood and in
the event to restore its Crassis.” He has previously stated that it is
a very useful remedy “not only in slow, nervous fevers, but also in the
putrid, pestilential, and petechial, especially in the Decline.” But he
adds, “if the patient is costive or hath a tense and humid abdomen, I
always premise a dose of rhubarb, manna, or the like.”
According to Dr. Paris, Huxham believed in complicated prescribing.
“There are several prescriptions of Huxham extant,” we read in
“Pharmacologia,” “which contain more than four hundred ingredients.”
CINCHONA OR CHINCHONA.
Sir Clements Markham, whose services in introducing cinchona culture
into India and Ceylon are well known, has earnestly insisted on the
adoption of the name chinchona instead of cinchona in justice to the
lady after whom the generic title was chosen. In a Memoir of the Lady
Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon, Sir Clements Markham somewhat
extravagantly exalts that “illustrious and beautiful lady,” whom he
describes as “one of the most noble benefactors of the human race.” She
may have been an excellent woman, but her advocate does not furnish
sufficient evidence of her virtues to justify such lavish praise. The
Countess was cured of a fever by the bark, and on her return to Spain
she distributed the remedy to such of her vassals as needed it. Perhaps
her physician, who brought a quantity of the bark home with him and
sold it, did more to make it generally known than she did by her gifts.
Still there is no doubt that Linnæus intended by the name he gave to
the genus to perpetuate her memory; and it is likewise true that her
name was Chinchon and not Cinchon. The latter term, Sir Clements says,
means a broad girdle or a policeman’s belt, and makes the intended
honour ridiculous. His opinion was that Linnæus had erred in ignorance,
having been misled by several French writers. Daniel Hanbury, however,
who contested some of Markham’s assertions, gave good reasons for
believing that Linnæus had adopted the term cinchona deliberately
for the sake of euphony. Anyway he shows that Mutis, the disciple of
Linnæus, who sent him the plant from which he wrote his description,
while at first writing of chinchona soon followed the spelling of the
master and continued to do so.
The name cinchona and derivatives from it are too well established to
be dislodged now for a sentimental reason, even if it were not that the
adopted name is undoubtedly easier to pronounce than the more strictly
correct one would be.
CULTIVATION OF CINCHONA IN THE EAST.
Many botanists and travellers remarked upon the reckless manner in
which the natives of Peru collected the bark. They felled the trees and
stripped them of bark without planting new ones to take the place of
those destroyed. Humboldt says that 25,000 trees were thus destroyed in
a single year.
The first attempt to transport any plants to Europe was made by La
Condamine in 1743. He had obtained some young plants and was conveying
them down the Amazon River to Cayenne, intending to transport them to
the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. At the mouth of the river a wave swept
over his little vessel and washed away his whole collection. Joseph
de Jussieu, who had accompanied La Condamine on his expedition, and
remained in the country after him for fifteen years, was robbed of his
collection at Buenos Ayres, and lost his reason as a consequence of his
misfortune.
Royle in 1839 strongly advocated the introduction of cinchona into
India, and suggested the Nilgiri Hills as a suitable position for
the experiment. His suggestions were taken into consideration by the
Government, but no immediate steps were taken. The Dutch Government
first moved in the matter, sending a botanist named Hasskarl to South
America in 1852. Their object was to establish cinchona gardens in
Java. All through the fifties they were carrying on their experiments,
but with very slow success. The English Government were meanwhile
instructing their Consuls in South America to obtain seeds, but it
was not until 1859 that the collection was seriously undertaken for
India. In that year Mr. (now Sir) Clements Markham was commissioned
to go to South America to collect seeds of the best species. Markham
has told the full story of his mission in his work on “Peruvian Bark,”
and has incidentally in that narrative exposed the parsimony of the
authorities in their treatment of those associated in the important and
profitable enterprise successfully carried through after some years of
hard and often perilous labour. His principal coadjutor, Dr. Spruce,
whose health was utterly ruined by his efforts, was paid a salary of
£30 a month while the work lasted, and a special grant of £27 for an
exhaustive report which he prepared. A pension of £50 a year was given
him by the British Government for his botanical services, and after
thirteen years of persistent importunity, the Indian Government granted
him another £50 a year. Mr. Pritchett, who collected plants and seeds
in the forests of Huanuco, was paid his salary and nothing more. To Mr.
Cross, who assisted Dr. Spruce in the collection of the red bark, two
grants of £300 each were made. Mr. Weir, “a most conscientious, active,
and skilful worker, and, so far as his own labours were concerned,
completely successful,” crippled and disabled for life, got nothing
from the Government, though the Horticultural Society collected some
funds which yielded £27 a year.