Calomel was introduced into practice by Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne
about the year 1608. It has been said that he was the inventor of the
product, but as it was described and, perhaps, to some extent used
by other medical authorities, Crollius among these, who lived and
died before Turquet was born, this was evidently impossible. 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. Both James I and Charles I accepted his services
and placed great confidence in his skill. He was instrumental, as
explained in another section, in the independent incorporation of the
apothecaries, and was also one of the most active promoters of the
publication of the “London Pharmacopœia.”
It appears likely that Turquet invented the name by which this milder
form of mercurial has come to be most usually known. The alchemical
writers of the time called it Aquila Alba or Draco Mitigatus. A
notorious Paracelsian of Paris, Joseph Duchesne, but better known by
his Latinised surname of Quercetanus, who shared with Turquet the
animosity of Gui Patin and his medical confederates, and for similar
reasons, also made calomel and administered it, probably sold it, under
the designation of the mineral Panchymagogon, purger of all humours.
Panacea mercurialis, manna metallorum, and sublimatum dulce, were among
the other fanciful names given. It was believed by the old medical
chemists that the more frequently it was resublimed the more dulcified
it became. In fact, resublimation was likely to decompose it, and thus
to produce corrosive sublimate.
What the name “calomel” was derived from has been the subject of much
conjecture. “Kalos melas,” beautiful black, is the obvious-looking
source, but it does not seem possible to fit any sense to this
suggested origin. A fanciful story of a black servant in the employ
of de Mayerne manufacturing a beautiful white medicine is told by
Pereira with the introduction of “as some say.” A good remedy for
black bile is another far-fetched etymology, and another conceives
the metal and the sublimate in the crucible as blackish becoming a
fair white. Some thirty years ago, in a correspondence published in
the “Chemist and Druggist,” Mr. T. B. Groves, of Weymouth, and “W.
R.” of Maidstone, both independently broached the idea that “kalos”
and “meli” (honey) were the constituents of the word, forming a sort
of rough translation of the recognised term, dulcified mercury; a not
unreasonable supposition, though this leaves the “kalos” not very well
accounted for. In Hooper’s “Medical Dictionary” it is plausibly guessed
that the name may have been originally applied to Ethiops Mineral, and
got transferred to the white product; and Paris quotes from Mr. Gray
the opinion that a mixture of calomel and scammony which was called the
calomel of Rivierus may have been the first application of the term,
meaning a mixture of a white and dark substance.
Beguin (1608) is generally credited with having been the first
European writer to describe calomel. He gave it the name of “Draco
mitigatus” (corrosive sublimate being the dragon). But Berthelot, in
his “Chemistry of the Middle Ages,” has shown that the protochloride
of mercury was prepared as far back as Democritus, and that it is
described in certain Arab chemical writings. It is also alleged to have
been prepared in China, Thibet, and India many centuries before it
became known in Europe.