No medicine has been more violently attacked or so enthusiastically
praised as antimony. The virulent antagonism to it manifested by the
Faculty of Physicians of Paris was unquestionably the exciting cause
of much of the fame to which it attained. It is generally stated that
on the instigation of the Faculty the Parliament of Paris decreed
that it should not be employed in medicines at all. This, however,
has been proved to be incorrect. Certainly the Faculty in 1566 did,
in fact, forbid its own licentiates to use it, and actually expelled
one of their most able associates, Turquet de Mayerne, because he had
disobeyed their injunction. But M. Teallier has shown by documentary
evidence that the decree of the Parliament did not go beyond requiring
that antimony should not be supplied for medicinal use except on the
order of a qualified physician. The action of the Faculty, although
approved for a time, was later almost disregarded, and when the
court physicians cured the young king, Louis XIV, in 1657, by the
administration of antimony, the defeat of the anti-antimonists was
completed. The repeal of the decree against antimonials was dated 1666,
just a century after its promulgation.
Louis XIV was taken dangerously ill at Calais, in 1657, when he was
19 years of age. A physician (Voltaire says a quack) of Abbeville had
the audacity to treat him by the administration of emetic tartar, and
the King himself and his Court were convinced that he owed his life to
this remedy. The opponents of antimony were silenced, though they did
not yield in their opinion. Gui Patin, who had termed the new medicine
“tartre stygiè” (its usual French name was tartre stibié), protested
against the attempt to canonise this poison, and asserted that the cure
of the king was due to his own excellent constitution.
To illustrate the earnestness, not to say the ferocity, of medical
controversy at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the record of
the expulsion of Turquet de Mayerne from the College of Physicians of
Paris, in 1603, quoted from the minutes of the College and translated
by Nedham, may be given. It should be remembered that Turquet was
the favourite physician of Henri IV, and, nominally, his offence was
that he had published a defence of his friend, Quercetanus, who had
prescribed mercurial and antimonial medicines. The minute is in the
following terms:--
The College of Physicians in the University of Paris, being
lawfully congregated, having heard the Report made by the
Censor to whom the business of examining the Apology published
under the name of Turquet de Mayerne, was committed, do with
unanimous consent condemn the same as an infamous libel,
stuffed with lying reproaches and impudent calumnies, which
could not have proceeded from any but an unlearned, impudent,
drunken, mad fellow: And do judge the said Turquet to be
unworthy to practise physick in any place because of his
rashness, impudence, and ignorance of true physick: 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. Whosoever shall presume to act contrary shall be
deprived of all honours, emoluments, and privileges of the
University and be expunged out of the regent Physicians.
Dated December 5, 1603.
[Illustration: ANTIMONY CUP.
(From an illustration to a note by Professor Redwood in the
_Pharmaceutical Journal_, July 1, 1858.)
]