manifested in the case of Charles Ledger, to whom, more than to
any other man, the world is indebted for cheap quinine, and out of
whose adventurous services the Dutch nation have made millions in
their Java dependency. Between the years 1841 and 1858 Ledger was
travelling in South America in the employment of the New South Wales
Government buying alpacas. He had a faithful servant, Manuel Manami,
who had often told him how jealously the natives, especially those
of Bolivia, guarded the knowledge of their best seeds. Manami had
himself been a cascarillero or bark cutter. On Ledger’s return to
Australia in 1858 he found that Holland and England were eagerly
seeking to plant cinchona in their Eastern possessions. The mission
of Hasskarl had been practically a failure. He had not been able to
enter Bolivia, and the species he brought to Java were comparatively
valueless. Ledger was in South America when Markham went there on his
official journey. He endeavoured to open communication with the British
Government’s envoy but failed. He, however, pressed his faithful Manami
to secure some of the precious “rojo” (_Cinchona Calisaya_, var.
_Ledgeriana_) seeds from Bolivia. Manami fulfilled this service,
somewhat reluctantly, sent the seeds to his master, but was himself
thrown into prison, beaten, and died soon after in consequence of the
cruel treatment he underwent.
Ledger sent the seeds to his brother in England authorising him to
dispose of them as he best could. They were at first offered to the
British Government, but as Markham was then in India superintending
the planting of the seeds he had brought from Peru, the offer was not
entertained. Half of them were sold to a Ceylon planter, and the rest
were taken, after some discussion, by the Dutch Government for about
£33, with a promise of a further payment if the plants flourished. A
year later on a report that 20,000 plants had been raised from these
seeds the Dutch Government paid Ledger a further £100 and got from him
a letter expressing his satisfaction. That was in 1866.
For many years Ledger was lost sight of, and it was stated in several
books that he was dead. In 1895, however, a letter from him was
published in _The Chemist and Druggist_, of London, dated from
Goulburne, N.S.W. He wrote simply in reference to a paper which had
been printed in that journal referring to the admixture of some white
flowers with coca as imported. The addition of the “inga flowers,” Mr.
Ledger explained, was made by the natives in the belief that they kept
the coca leaves fresh and green. Later it was found that Mr. Ledger
was living in comparative poverty in consequence of the failure of
Australian banks and the slump in land values. Efforts were made to
induce the Dutch Government to make some compensation to the man who
had done them such grand service, but at first a blank refusal was
returned. In May, 1807, however, on his seventy-ninth birthday, Mr.
Ledger received the announcement from Amsterdam that an annuity of £100
would be conferred upon him. He lived nine years after this.
[Illustration: CHARLES LEDGER, CINCHONA PIONEER.
(From _The Chemist and Druggist_.)]
The Ledger cinchona had also been introduced into India, and as it
was found to be yielding such rich bark Mr. Markham appealed in 1880
to the Indian Government to grant Mr. Ledger at least the sum of £200
to compensate him for the expenses he had been put to, which far
exceeded what he was paid for the seeds. “The reply, after four months’
delay, was a curt refusal,” wrote Mr. Markham to _The Chemist and
Druggist_, in April, 1895.
Mr. Ledger, who was born in Bucklersbury, London, on May 4, 1818,
wrote a very pleasant and modest autobiographical sketch of his varied
experiences for _The Chemist and Druggist_, which was published in
that journal of July 27, 1895.
CUBEBS
have had a rather chequered medical history. The Arab physicians used
them apparently for the same medicinal purposes, that is, for checking
urethral discharges, as they are generally prescribed for by our own
physicians; but in the middle ages we hear of them as a popular but
costly condiment. Curious particulars of this use of cubebs are given
in “Pharmacographia.” They were an ingredient in the P.L. formulas for
Mithridate and Theriaca, probably as a stimulant. Then they seem to
have dropped out of use. They were omitted from the P.L. 1809. Their
re-introduction into medical practice is due to an article by Dr.
Crawfurd in the _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_, 1818,
but it appears that the knowledge of the anti-blennorrhagic properties
of cubebs came from an English officer in Java, whose Hindoo servant
had recommended to him the use of them as a medicine. The employment of
cubebs in hoarseness and bronchial complaints was popularised by some
American Troches, a proprietary medicine, but this use of the medicine
was familiar a hundred and fifty years ago. In James’s Dispensatory it
is stated that cubebs are “recommended in hoarseness and loss of voice,
especially when the tonsils are stuffed and obstructed.”
DIGITALIS.
Foxglove, the common and ancient name of this handsome plant, is
believed to be a corruption of a still older name, Foxes’ glew, or
Foxes’ music, in allusion to an instrument consisting of a series of
bells hanging from one support. The Norwegian name of the plant is
Rev-bjelda, fox-bells. A pretty fancy, but one which is not supported
by evidence, is that the original name was folks’ glew, or fairy bells.
In Scotland the flower is called bloody fingers, and sometimes dead
men’s bells; in France, gants de notre Dame, and doigts de la Vierge.
The German popular name is finger-hut, finger hood or thimble, and the
Latin term, digitalis, coined by Fuchs of Tubingen about 1550, was
intended to be the equivalent of that designation.
The medical history of the foxglove is somewhat varied. It appears
to have been used as an ingredient in external applications by old
herbalists, principally for scrofulous complaints. Gerard, Parkinson,
and Salmon, who wrote in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, extol
its virtues and mention also its employment internally for the falling
sickness or epilepsy. Parkinson quotes an Italian saying concerning
it that it is a salve for all sores. It found a place in the London
Pharmacopœia of 1650 and in several subsequent issues.
But foxglove was always a medicine with a popular rather than a
professional reputation until Dr. William Withering, of Birmingham,
published “An Account of the Foxglove, and some of its Medical Uses,”
in 1785. Withering was a scientific pioneer of European fame, an
intimate associate of Priestley, Watt, and Boulton, a painstaking
botanist in whose honour a genus of the Solanaceæ was named
Witheringia, and a mineralogist whose name is similarly commemorated by
the name Witherite, given to barium carbonate.
[Illustration: WILLIAM WITHERING, M.D.
(From a print in the British Museum.)]
In Dr. Withering’s “Account of the Fox-glove,” he narrated that ten
years previously his opinion had been asked about a family recipe for
the cure of dropsy which had long been the secret of an old woman
in Shropshire, and which he was told had cured cases after regular
treatment had failed. The medicine was composed of some twenty
different herbs, but it was not difficult, he says, for one conversant
with such matters to perceive that foxglove was the active ingredient.
Dr. Withering details his experience as well as that of others with
the drug in some hundreds of cases. He noted its action on the heart
and as a diuretic. He had also ascertained that it was prescribed
in family recipes in Yorkshire. An article in Parkinson’s “Herbal,”
written he believed by Mr. Saunders, “an apothecary of great reputation
at Worcester,” declared it to be of great value in consumptive cases.
It had been admitted into the Edinburgh Pharmacopœia 1783, but many
practitioners were giving it in such dangerous doses that he feared its
reputation would not last long.
Dr. Withering died in 1799 at the age of fifty-eight. A foxglove is
carved on his monument in Edgbaston Old Church.
GUAIACUM
Came into fame in Europe in the early years of syphilis. The story told
about it (perhaps it was only a clever advertisement, though it is
related without any question by Leclerc) was that a certain Spaniard
named Gonsalvo Ferrand having taken the disease and finding no cure
for it resolved to go into the countries from which the infection had
come, confident that he would there find the remedy which the natives
themselves employed. He went to St. Domingo, discovered that the wood
there called Huaiacon was regarded as a specific, took it himself,
and was cured. This was in 1508. Whatever may be the truth of this
history it seems that Ferrand was subsequently a seller of guaiacum
wood (according to Freind), at seven gold crowns per pound (say
35s.), and accumulated a great fortune. Enormous popularity accrued
to guaiacum by the book which Ulrich von Hutten, the German poet and
reformer, wrote on the “Morbus Gallicus” in 1519. Therein he narrated
his own experience; what he had suffered from this disease; how he had
undergone salivation with mercury eleven times to no purpose; and how
at last he had been cured completely in thirty days by a course of
treatment by guaiacum. This early treatment as it was developed in the
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries deserves to be recorded. First
a decoction was made by boiling 1 lb. of the wood raspings in 8 or 10
pints of water down to 5 or 6 pints. After straining this off another
weaker decoction was made from the same wood. The syphilitic patient
was prepared for his course of treatment by a few days’ spare diet, and
by a few aperient doses. Then he went to bed in a well-warmed room, and
early every morning took half a pint of the first decoction warm. He
was then covered with blankets and allowed to sweat for two or three
hours. After being dried he was given a few biscuits with some almonds
and raisins. The process was repeated in the latter part of the day,
and so on for fifteen days, only enough food being given to prevent
the patient from fainting. In the middle of the month a day or two’s
interval was granted, and during that time the bowels were evacuated by
an enema. Then the treatment was renewed as before, but a rather more
liberal diet was permitted. All the time the second decoction was taken
for drink as freely as the patient could be induced to swallow it.
Gradually the usual habits of eating and drinking were resumed.
It is not surprising to learn that the treatment just described was
soon accused of so reducing the strength of many patients that they
never recovered from it, and it was being abandoned when Boerhaave
revived it for a time as a remedy in syphilitic cases.
[Illustration: PREPARATION OF GUAIACUM REMEDIES AND THEIR
ADMINISTRATION.
(Etching by Stradanus, 1570.)
_Reproduced (by permission) from “The Follies of Science at the
Court of Rudolph II.” by H. Carrington Bolton, Pharmaceutical Review
Publishing Co., Milwaukee, U.S.A._]
IPECACUANHA.
Although several earlier allusions to ipecacuanha have been found,
the first being in an account of Brazil by a Portuguese friar given
in Purchas’s “Pilgrimes” (1625), where the medicine is named Igpecaya
and is described as a remedy for the bloody flux, its effective
introduction to European medicine was in the year 1686, when Louis XIV
bought from Jean Adrien Helvetius the secret of a medicine with which
he had performed a number of remarkable cures of diarrhœa and dysentery.
Helvetius, whose original name was Schweitzer, was the son of a Dutch
quack, and had gone to Paris to try to sell his father’s compounds
there. Apparently he had also enrolled himself as a student of
medicine, for he is reported to have accompanied a physician of note at
the period, named Afforty, in his attendance on a merchant variously
called Grenier and Garnier. The merchant, having recovered from his
illness, wished to present to Afforty a parcel of a new drug which
he had received from Brazil. Afforty was not tempted by the offer,
but his companion was more open to be influenced by something new. He
experimented with the medicine and found it of remarkable efficacy in
dysentery. Thereupon he placarded the corners of the streets with his
announcements of a new remedy but without stating what the drug was.
Colbert, having heard of the success of Helvetius, mentioned the remedy
to Louis XIV when the dauphin was ill with dysentery, and the young
Dutch quack was sent for. With the consent of the court physician,
D’Aquin, Helvetius treated the Dauphin and cured him. As a result the
king authorised D’Aquin and his confessor, the Père de la Chaise, to
negotiate with Helvetius for the publication of his secret, which
he sold for a thousand louis d’or, for a share in which the merchant
Garnier unsuccessfully sued. This was the beginning of a successful
career which was continued by his son and his grandson. The last became
France’s fashionable poet and philosopher in the generation before
the Revolution. The discoverer of ipecacuanha was appointed Inspector
General of the Hospitals of Flanders, and became physician to the Duke
of Orleans.
It appears from a treatise which Helvetius wrote that at first
ipecacuanha was given in doses of two drachms, sometimes in decoctions
and sometimes in enemas. Hans Sloane in England and Leibnitz in Germany
wrote warmly in favour of the new remedy, but it was not till thirty
years after it had been introduced that the dose was popularly reduced
to some four to ten grains. Dover’s lucky combination of ipecacuanha
with opium had a great effect in ensuring its permanent adoption.
KOUSSO.
Although Bruce, the African traveller and others had described the tree
which bears the kousso flowers in Abyssinia (Hagena Abyssinica) and had
noted that the natives used these as worm medicine, the first knowledge
of them actually made use of came through a French physician named
Brayer residing in Constantinople about the year 1820. Brayer was one
day in a café where was a waiter extremely emaciated and who suffered
cruel pains from tapeworm. An old Armenian came into the café and told
this waiter that he possessed a remedy which his son had brought from
Abyssinia, and which he was sure would cure him. Brayer ascertained the
successful result of the experiment and subsequently tested the remedy
himself on other patients with similar results. He sent some of the
flowers to the German botanist Kunth, to whom they were new, and who
named the tree _Brayera anthelmintica_. Still it does not appear
that much notice was taken of the reports until about the year 1850,
when a Frenchman offered the flowers in London for 35s. per ounce. The
fancy price attracted attention to the remedy, which proved effectual.
OPIUM.
The ancients recognised two kinds of opium. The superior kind was
called opion, and was the juice which exuded from the poppy head while
it was growing; and the second quality, which was named meconion, was
an extract made from the crushed heads and leaves of the poppy.
It is doubtful whether Hippocrates was acquainted with the juice of the
poppy at all. He refers to mecon but he attributes to it a purgative
as well as a narcotic power; it is therefore probable that he alludes
to some other plant. In any case, he made but very little use of
poppy or opium if he used either. Theophrastus certainly knew opium,
and Dioscorides distinguishes opion and meconion as explained above.
Dioscorides also gives the receipt for the famous Dia-kodion (made from
the poppy head), the original of our syrup of poppies. His process was
to macerate 120 poppy heads for two days in three sextarii (a sextarius
was nearly equal to our Imperial pint) of rain-water. This was boiled,
strained, mixed with honey, and boiled down to a suitable consistence.
Probably the shopkeepers and travelling quacks made more use of opium
in Rome than the regular physicians. Galen expressly says that he never
used the drug except in very urgent cases; but he enthusiastically
commends several confections such as theriaca which owed their
efficiency to opium more than to any other ingredient. Indeed it may
be said that the fame of those compounds was due to opium, and that by
them the medicinal employment of the drug was maintained during many
centuries.
We know that Paracelsus owed much of his success to the bold way
in which he administered opium to his patients; evidence that his
contemporaries did not use it to any great extent. His followers were
as enthusiastic as himself over the virtues of opium, and before
long the most serious practitioners were advocating it, and devising
formulas for its suitable administration. Platerus of Basle about 1600
strongly recommended it, and Sylvius (de la Boe) a Dutch physician said
that without opium he would not practise. Van Helmont about 1640 used
opium so frequently that he was called the Doctor Opiatus. Sydenham
about 1680 says, “Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty
God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal
and so efficacious as opium.” Many other eminent physicians might be
cited to the same effect, and some who took an opposite view. Stahl,
for instance, wrote a treatise entitled De Imposturis Opii. Hoffmann
considered that the use of opium was greatly abused, and he believed
his ether would fulfil its purpose in almost all cases.
QUASSIA
was sent to Linnæus from Surinam in 1763 by C. D. Dallberg, one of
his pupils, with the statement that it formed the basis of a secret
remedy employed there by a negro slave in endemic malignant fevers. The
negro’s name was reported as Quassi, and from this Linnæus invented the
name of quassia. This bitter wood was obtained from a shrub growing in
Dutch Guiana, but for the English market it was subsequently superseded
by the wood of a large tree growing in Jamaica, belonging to the same
genus. The earlier product is, however, still used in France and
Germany. Ritman, who was in Surinam in 1756, said he had met with the
old negro, Quassi, there, and reported that he was almost worshipped by
some, while others suspected him of magic. Ritman, however, found him a
simple old man skilled in old women’s medicines.
SARSAPARILLA.
Sarsaparilla was introduced to Europe early in the sixteenth century,
and soon leaped into fame. The great Emperor Charles V, was cured
of gout by it, or fancied he was, and this gave it an enormous
advertisement. It appeared afterwards that it was really China root,
another smilax, that was given to the Emperor, but it was called
sarsaparilla, and the western medicine got the glory. Sarsaparilla
was vaunted as a cure for syphilis, but physicians were not long in
discovering that it was much more effectual whenever it was combined
with mercurials. Its advocates insisted that it was a wonderful
sudorific, and for many years a “sweating cure” was practised in
Denmark and Sweden with apparent success. As a matter of fact
sarsaparilla has no sudorific properties whatever; but it was given in
long draughts, other more effective medicines were associated with it,
and vigorous exercise and heavy blankets were adjuncts of the cure. It
is not surprising that a sudorific result ensued.
Other confusions have distinguished the history of this so-called
remedy. The species which Linnæus selected as the medicinal
sarsaparilla and which he named _Smilax sarsaparilla_, happens to
be about the only one of some two hundred species which has never been
employed in medicine at all. It is only found in North America and not
further south than Virginia. Jamaica sarsaparilla has the reputation of
being the best, and that comes from Central America. The sarsaparilla
which actually grows in Jamaica is not valued in European markets. The
origin of the name of sarsaparilla is not agreed upon. Some authorities
attribute it to sarsa--red, and parilla--a little vine. Littré derives
it from zarza--a bramble, and Parilla--a hypothetical Spaniard who
helped to introduce it. The native Indians call it salsa, and the
French follow this origin and call it salsepareille.
STRAMONIUM
may have been known to the ancients as a poison. Dioscorides included
it among the henbanes, and Avicenna is supposed to have described
it under the name of the Methel nut. Some species of Datura were
frequently used in Eastern countries by thieves and sorcerers to
induce delirium and subsequent coma, and the herb had the worst of
reputations when Störck, of Vienna, experimented with it first on
himself about 1765. In consequence of its action on the brain he gave
it in cases of mania and epilepsy, and he and some practitioners who
followed him claimed to have administered it in such diseases with much
success. Its action as an asthma remedy was, however, a popular Indian
tradition which was made known to Europeans through a General Gent
about 1802. It had been recommended to him by a native, and he found
so much relief from it that he introduced it to Dr. Anderson who was
practising at Madras. It was stated that General Gent used it so freely
and so frequently that it caused his death.
XX
FAMILIAR MEDICINES AND SOME NOTES OF THEIR HISTORIES.
Morbi, non eloquentia sed remediis, curantur.
CELSUS: _De Re Medica_.
BLACK DRAUGHT.
Laxative or cathartic potions have been prescribed in all modern
pharmacopœias, most of them being preparations of senna. The original
one was devised by Mannagetta, an Italian physician at the court of the
Emperor Rudolph II, about 1600. His prescription became popular under
the title of Aqua, or Potio Laxativa Viennensis, and was popularly
known all over Germany as “Wiener Trank.” The formula was 1 oz. of
senna, 6 drachms of currants, 2 drachms of coriander seeds, and 2½
drachms of cream of tartar. These ingredients were packed in a bag
and suspended in hot water for a night. In the morning the liquor was
strained after the bag had been pressed, and 5 oz. of manna and 3
drachms of cream of tartar added. The dose was 3 to 4 oz. In the London
Pharmacopœia the alkaline salt of tartar was at first prescribed with
the senna, but later the acid tartrate of potash was preferred. In the
Edinburgh Pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century a formula for “Infusi
Sennæ Unciæ Quatuor” was included, while the London Pharmacopœias of
the same period provided an alkaline infusion, and an “Infusum Sennæ
Limoniatum,” containing lemon peel and lemon juice with the object of
making the draught less nauseous.
The modern combination of sulphate of magnesia with an infusion or
tincture of senna, and sometimes with manna, sometimes with ammonia,
and always with some aromatic ingredient, began to be used about the
beginning of the nineteenth century. The earliest mention of the term
“black draught” that I have met with is in Paris’s “Pharmacologia,”
1824. It was dropped out from later editions. The mixture was called
“black dose” in Brande’s “Materia Medica and Pharmacy,” 1839. The
phrases “black draught” and “blue pills” were not given as synonyms in
the Pharmacopœia until 1885. They are essentially English. Dorvault
gives a formula (practically the Mist. Sennæ Co.) entitled “Potion
Noire Anglaise,” and Hager has “Pilulæ Hydrargyrosæ seu pilulæ ceruleæ
Anglorum.”
BLAUD’S PILLS.
These pills are probably taken in larger numbers than any other pills
sold in Great Britain. If in proper condition they present iron in the
form of the protocarbonate, either formed in the pills, or perhaps
partially or entirely in the stomach. They are similar to Griffiths’
pills, which were the popular Mist. Ferri Co. in pilular form. Dr. J.
Blaud, a French provincial practitioner, in an article published in the
_Revue Medicale_, in 1831, entitled “Memoires sur les Maladies
Chlorotiques,” gave the following formula:--
“Gummi Arabici, 5 grammes; solve calore baln. vapor in aquæ
distillatæ, 30·5; syrupi simplicis 15 grammes; ferri sulfuric. sicci,
30; quibus caute mixtis adde kalii carbonici, 30; et inter agitatione
ope spatula ferreæ in balneo vaporis evaporando ad massam pilularum
redige; e qua forma pilulas 120; obducantur argento foliato.”
There has been much discussion concerning the best method of making
these pills so as to keep them from oxidation. Honey was for a long
time generally used as the excipient, but glycerin and sugar are
generally preferred with gum acacia or tragacanth. Pilula Ferri, B.P.,
is a substitute for Blaud’s pills.
THE CHELSEA PENSIONER.
An electuary for rheumatism bearing this title was evidently popular
under the above name in the early part of the nineteenth century,
but I have not been able to discover where or when or with whom it
originated. The compilers of books of formulas naturally copy from
each other, and consequently a legend once started is likely to become
crystallised.