THE PIONEERS OF PHARMACY AND BOTANY—PHYSIC GARDENS.
The operation of distillation was unknown to the ancient Greeks and
Romans, although Dioscorides and Pliny describe a process which may
be considered that of distillation in its infancy. The process was
not known in England until the time of Henry II. To the Arabs we are
indebted for the discovery of manna, cassia, senna, and rhubarb, also
aromatics, such as musk, nutmeg, mace, and cloves. Blisters were known
and used by the Arabs, who are the first also on record to mention
sugar extracted from the cane, and sugar-candy, which they called honey
of cane.
Rhazes and Avicenna were the first physicians to introduce improvements
in pharmaceutical preparations. The latter was the first to mention
the three mineral acids, and distinguish between vegetable and mineral
alkalies.
In the year 1226, Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester, in Somersetshire,
and a Franciscan monk, may be said to have laid the foundation of
chemical science in Europe. He was excommunicated by Pope Nicholas,
and imprisoned for ten years for supposed dealings with the devil.
He professed to have discovered an elixir of life, which he affirmed
prevented corruption of any constitution and the infirmities of age for
many years. Following Bacon, at the end of the thirteenth century, came
Arnoldas de Villa Nova, or Villeneuve, who was the first to recommend
the distilled spirit of wine impregnated with certain herbs, from which
we date our use of tinctures in medicine.
Basil Valentine followed as a pioneer in the administration of metallic
medicines; he made volatile alkali from sal-ammoniac, and noticed the
production of ether from alcohol.
In the year 1493, Phillipus Theophrastus, Bombast of Hohenheim,
afterwards known as Paracelsus, was born near Zurich in Switzerland, a
man of extraordinary conceit and boldness, but who wrought a greater
change and influence in _materia medica_ than any physician since
the time of Galen. He travelled all over Europe, and so obtained an
extensive knowledge of chemistry and medicine.
This genius of science and quackery, for such Paracelsus must be
termed, who scoffed at all the doctrines believed in since the time of
Hippocrates, professed to have received his knowledge from the Divine
Being Himself. His sheer impudence carried the sympathies of the public
with him, and they kissed the skirts of his gown as he passed through
the streets, whilst he had among his followers many princes and nobles.
He denounced the apothecaries, who, he said, “could only compose
insipid syrups and repulsive concoctions, when they have ready to hand
at the bottom of their stills, extracts and dyes derived from the best
vegetables and minerals”. He disagreed with the doctors also, whose
prescriptions he stigmatised as barbarous, and was much against the
use of correctives being added to pharmaceutical recipes when they
had no natural relation to the preparation itself. He believed in the
existence of an active principle in plants, which he termed the “Ether
of Aristotle,” that could be isolated and used to avert the various
disorders of the human body—an idea which is now the leading spirit
in pharmaceutical research. His labours did much to stimulate the
practical side of chemistry, though his language was mysterious, as,
like other alchemists, he wrapped up all his wisdom and his ignorance
in the garb of allegory. He was reported to carry about a familiar
spirit in the pommel of a long sword that always hung at his side.
Paracelsus is said to have been the first to use mercury internally;
he also employed opium, antimony, and lead largely in his treatment;
and devised a process for the preparation of red oxide of mercury. He
was sent for to many of the European Courts, and by the interest of
Erasmus was made Professor of Chemistry at Bale, the first chair that
was established in Europe. It was here while seated in his chair, that
with arrogant impudence he burnt with great solemnity the writings of
Galen and Avicenna, saying that “if God would not impart the secrets of
physic, it was not only allowable, but was justifiable, to consult the
devil”.
He had the greatest contempt for his fellow physicians, and said he had
more knowledge in the very down on his bald pate than was in all their
writings, and in the buckles of his shoes there was more learning than
in Galen and Avicenna, and in his beard more experience than all their
universities. The man was a mass of conceit and egotism, yet feared and
liked by the people for his boldness.
Latterly he took to drinking heavily, seldom taking off his clothes for
many nights together. At length he broke down, and the end came at
the age of forty-eight, when this singular man died after a few hours’
illness at Saltzburg, in Austria, a bottle of his boasted panacea for
all ills being found in his pocket. He believed the human body to be
composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, and that in these “three fast
substances” health and disease consist. To give Paracelsus his due,
although empiricism and quackery were the chief elements in his career,
he exerted an undoubted influence on the medical practice of his time,
and with all his egotism did his best to advance the science and art of
medicine.
The next pioneer was Van Helmont, who flourished some hundred years
later. He was the first to notice the existence of gases, also to
use alum in uterine hæmorrhage, through which he acquired a great
reputation.
Little was known of _materia medica_ by the nations of the West from
the eighth to the tenth century. The chief cultivation of medicinal
herbs took place in the monasteries, each having its own botanical
garden, which contributed much to the progress of medicine. At this
time the knowledge of the medicinal value of herbs and roots was
much more advanced in the East, and we find that during the reign
of Almansour, in the eighth century, a large school was founded at
Bagdad, which became a refuge for scientists when exiled from Athens
and Alexandria. The works of Aristotle and Galen were translated into
Syriac, and the greatest generosity and encouragement were shown to
_savants_ who settled there. Before this the Arabs had considerable
knowledge of the use of plants in medicine, and had made some valuable
discoveries. Their physicians recommended the use of senna, tamarinds,
and cassia in place of the violent purgatives used by the Greek
physicians, and a number of new plants were introduced by Rhazes from
India, Persia, and Syria. Mesué wrote his treatise on medicine (_De
Remedica_), which, on being translated into Latin, was used as a manual
in all the schools up to the Renaissance.
Constantine was the first to introduce the most noted Arabic works
into Europe, himself a writer of no little repute. Then several Arab
travellers added to the store of knowledge; among these, Ebor-Taitor,
a native of Malaga, travelled in Asia to study plants, and eventually
became minister of the Caliph at Cairo.
Otho, of Cremona, in a poem of 1500 lines, contributed his knowledge
of plants, and John of Milan, in his _Code of the School of Salerno_,
compiled the discoveries of a century in medical botany.
Coming to the twelfth century, scientific progress was not so rapid,
yet all the investigation that was made originated in the study of
medicine. Most of the monasteries and convents besides their botanical
gardens, had collections of minerals and animals, which were carefully
watched and tended, and the monks and nuns would not only administer
to the sick of their own orders, but also to the suffering who claimed
their charity. Once lodged there, the treatment was good and wholesome,
and consisted mostly of decoctions of simples, backed up by good
kitchen medicine, quietness, and rest. One or two monks who had a
special knowledge of herbs were usually allotted to this department.
It can then hardly be wondered at, that during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries most of the records we have of medicine are from
works by the brethren of the monasteries. An excellent collection of
recipes, comprising also a summary of plants, animals, and minerals was
compiled by Hildegarde, Abbess of Bingen, and called the _Jardin de
Santé_.
This good lady, like many other abbesses of her time, was much
interested in the art of healing. She cultivated her own medicinal
plants, and carefully noted down their properties for the use of
others, and thus left a valuable record.
In the thirteenth century an advance was made in _materia medica_ by
Gilbert and Hernicus Arviell, two Englishmen who travelled through Asia
to study plants and their uses. Simon de Cordo, called Simon of Genoa,
also took a botanising exploration into Sicily and the islands of the
Archipelago, and afterwards wrote a botanic dictionary.
Another eminent botanist of this period was Peter de Crescenzi, a man
of good birth and fortune, who was born at Bologna in 1330, and who
greatly interested himself in botany and horticulture. His great work,
which was translated into several languages, was called _Opus Rubarium
Commodorum_. Contemporary with Peter were three names we must not omit,
_viz._, Vincent de Beauvais, Albertus Magnus, and Arnaud de Villeneuve,
who professed a knowledge of alchemy, astrology, and physic. Vincent
de Beauvais was a Dominican monk, and his great work, the _Speculum
Naturale_, is saturated with the superstition of the time. In this book
he states, “the mandragora is of the same shape as the human body; the
winged dragon is capable of carrying off an ox, and devouring the same
whilst flying”. He also describes the scythion lamb, a sort of animal
plant which had roots and grew in the ground, and other fearsome
creatures, and declared that “in Scotland the fruits of certain trees,
when they fall into the water, produce the birds called black divers”.
Villeneuve wrote many treatises on plants and animals, and eventually
became teacher of medicine and botany at the University of Paris. He
was undoubtedly a man in advance of his time, and boldly declared “that
the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic faith could be explained by
the teachings of natural history and experimental physics”.
He was therefore accused by the magistrates of sorcery and magic, but
escaped through the special protection of Charles of Anjou into Italy,
where he settled for a long time.
The fourteenth century saw little advance in the medical art, but it
was enriched by one or two great works. One of these, written in Latin
by Bartholomew Glanvil, an English monk, was a kind of encyclopædia of
immense size, and was called _Liber de Proprietatibus Rerum_, and had a
great reputation for centuries afterwards.
The advent of printing about the middle of the fifteenth century
rapidly spread the knowledge of more recent discoveries throughout
Europe, and many large works on botany and herbalism, illustrated
with woodcuts, were published at Mayence and Louvain. At Venice
many of the works of the old Arab physicians, Avicenna, Mesué, and
others, were printed and eagerly purchased. The discovery of America
in 1492 heralded the introduction of numerous fresh additions to
_materia medica_, which were brought to this country by explorers and
naturalists.
In the sixteenth century, by the labours and researches of George
Agricola, a German, and Conrad Gesner, a Swiss, a considerable advance
was made in the knowledge of what was called chemical medicine and
botany. Agricola, who was the greatest mineralogist the world had then
seen, explored and spent much time in the mines of Bohemia and Saxony,
and thus obtained a practical knowledge of the then known methods of
the working of metals. His contemporary, Conrad Gesner, born at Zurich
in 1516, has been called the originator of scientific botany, as he was
the first to discover a method of recognising each genus and kind by
examining the organs of fructification, and in this way discovered 1800
new varieties. A famous physic garden was planted in Paris in the early
part of the seventeenth century by Jacques Gohory, an enthusiastic
pharmacist, and this garden eventually became part of the _Jardin des
Plantes_. In connection with this garden a school of medicine was
founded, the first occupant of the chair of chemistry being William
Davisson, a Scotchman, and predecessor to Lefebvre, who afterwards
became a chemist at St. James’s.
The practice of the teachers of this time was to dictate to their
students, and in order to save themselves the trouble of dictating
and the students the trouble of writing, which was a very laborious
matter in those days, the lecturer would write a book. Thus Jean Beguin
wrote a chemical text-book in 1612, which passed through no fewer than
fifty-three editions.
We must not omit to mention two other pioneers of this period, who
made important discoveries in botany; they were Matthias of Lille,
who eventually settled in England, and Andrew Cesalpin, professor of
botany at Pisa. The former first formulated the true principles of
classification of plants and arrangement into families, such as the
orchids, palms, and mosses; and to the latter belongs the honour of
having devised the first system of botany. Having compared the process
of generation in animals to the seeds of plants, he distinguished male
plants by their stamens, and those which yielded seed as female.
The next era is marked by the publication of the first pharmacopœia
at Nuremberg in 1542. “For this act,” says Paris, “we are indebted
to Valerius Cordus, a young student, who, during a transient visit at
that place, accidentally produced a collection of medical receipts
which he had selected from the works of the past esteemed writers, and
with which the physicians of Nuremberg were so highly pleased that
they urged him to print it for the benefit of the apothecaries, and
obtained the sanction of the Senate to the undertaking.” To this slight
circumstance we owe the institution of pharmacopœias. The first
_London Pharmacopœia_ was, however, not published until the reign
of James I., in 1618, of which there were twelve subsequent editions,
the last being in 1841. The _Dublin Pharmacopœia_ first appeared
in 1807, the last edition being published in 1850. Until the Medical
Act passed in 1858, the right of publishing the _Pharmacopœia_ for
England, Scotland, and Ireland was vested in the College of Physicians
of London, Edinburgh, and Ireland respectively; and as these books
contained several preparations similar in name and different in
strength, such obvious danger arose for travellers that the _British
Pharmacopœia_, published in 1864, became, by Act of Parliament, the
standard for Great Britain and Ireland.
The Chelsea Physic Garden is the oldest public botanical garden in
Great Britain, but there were private ones of older date, such as that
of Gerard, the author of _The Herbal_, which was situated in Holborn,
and that of Tradescant, the famous Dutch traveller, gardener to
James I., who had an extensive garden of exotic plants in Lambeth.
The founders of the Chelsea Garden were the members of the Society of
Apothecaries, who have maintained it for over two centuries entirely
for scientific purposes, as was stipulated in the deed of gift,
executed by Sir Hans Sloane, in which the growing or cultivation of
plants for purely pharmaceutical purposes, or for trade, was strictly
forbidden. The origin of this so-called Physic Garden was somewhat
amusing, and anything but scientific. The ground was first fixed upon
as an eligible spot for building a boathouse for the state barge of
the Apothecaries’ Company. This ground was walled in about 1674, and
planted with trees in 1678, and herbs were grown in it for use in the
company’s laboratories, some of these plants being from time to time
exchanged for others from the University of Leyden. Sir Hans (then Dr.)
Sloane bought the estate in 1712; and, as might have been expected of
a man of his parts, a pupil of the chemist Stahl and of the botanist
Tournefort, and a friend of the great Ray, a new era of usefulness was
begun in the Chelsea Garden. In 1722 he handed over the land to the
Apothecaries’ Society, at a yearly rental of £5, and an undertaking
that fifty specimens of fifty species of distinct plants, well dried
and mounted as herbarium specimens and properly named, should be
handed over to the Royal Society each year until 2000 had been duly
delivered. In a catalogue issued in 1730, written by Miller, the head
gardener, are enumerated 499 plants, mostly medicinal, so one may judge
of the extent of the gardens at that time. Exotics were cultivated in
hothouses in 1732, and in 1736 Linnæus paid a visit to the garden.
Thomas Dover, the originator of Dover’s powder, was born in England in
the year 1660. He settled and practised medicine for a time in Bristol;
left there for a period, and returned again. He lived with, and was
contemporaneous with Sydenham. He gained much professional reputation
on the occasion of a severe epidemic of fever. This may have suggested
to him the use of ipecacuanha and opium in a compound.
In Dover’s day and time, the apothecaries were in the ascendancy, being
the medical practitioners, whilst the physicians were chiefly called in
to attend in childbirth and protracted illness. Indeed, it is naïvely
stated that the apothecary surgeons rode in their chaises, while the
doctors _walked_, and that the former were generally first consulted
when the choice of a family physician was to be made. Mercury had
at this time an unrestrained use—perhaps _abuse_ would be a better
word,—and much severe public stricture was made upon the fact. Crude
quicksilver was administered, and Dover was a warm advocate of its
use—in fact, he was called the _quicksilver doctor_. One Captain
Henry Coit, a patient of Dover’s, took an ounce and a quarter of crude
mercury daily, until he had used more than two pounds weight! Dover
professed to believe that mercury freed the patient from all vermicular
diseases, opened all obstructions, and made a pure balsam of the blood.
The doctors and apothecaries were at loggerheads. Dover said the best
way to affront the latter was to order too little physic—each patient
being deemed to be worth a certain sum to the dispenser.
In 1708 Dover joined the company of a group of Bristol merchants
in a scheme to fit out two vessels for privateering in the South
Seas. Dover, it seems, went as captain, and the voyage was eminently
successful in booty. They took in various reprisals from the
Spaniards—the hoards of treasure and gold which they in turn had
obtained from the native Indians—the principle of _might_ applied to
_right_. The expedition returned to Britain enriched with spoil, the
treasure amounting to £170,000 sterling. It was during this memorable
voyage that Dover, landing with some of his crew on the island of Juan
Fernandez, discovered the existence of Alexander Selkirk—Robinson
Crusoe—in his dreary solitude on this desert shore.