Before CHAPTER XIX. PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Thompson, C. J. S. (Charles John Samuel)
AN APOTHECARY.
From an engraving, 1517.
The physician’s fees were by no means small in the time of the Commonwealth, as may be judged from the following extract from the Memoirs of the Verney Family:—
“Sir Theodore Mayerne is buryed,” writes Dr. Denton, “and died worth £140,000.” Sir Ralph thought £30 too small a fee to pay Dr. Denton for his attendance on his wife during her confinement, but for his pressing poverty he would have sent him £50, equal to about £200 of our present money. Dr. Radcliffe’s regular fees were estimated to bring him in an income of at least £4000 a year; Dr. Mead’s were valued at between £5000 and £6000. Sir George Wheler’s sickness, after a Christmas dinner at Dr. Denton’s, cost him “the best part of £100”. He had caught a chill after dancing, which turned to “a spotted feavour”; Sir George Ent was called in: he had all sorts of “Applications of Blisters and Loudanums”. “My Apothecary’s ... bill came to £28. He was a good man, and told me if I fell into a feavour again, Sage Possit would do me as much good as all the Physitians Prescriptions.”
In Sir Daniel Fleming’s account books we have record of the amount paid to medical practitioners in 1659, as follows:—
To Doctor Dykes for comeing and laying plasters unto Will
£0
10
For his plaisters and paines contributed towards the cure of Will, the sum of
A further entry also shows the value of the midwife’s services at the same period. Under date
July 30th, 1659. Given unto Daniel Harrison’s wife for being my wife’s midwife, 5/-.
In the household books of Lord William Howard we learn that on 25th September, 1612, he paid one Mr. Adamson, an apothecary of Keswick, “for xxii dayes and his physick, £xiii. vi,s. viii,d”.
Some of the early preparations used in pharmacy were as elaborate as they were mysterious. The Treacle of Andromachus the elder, a recipe of great antiquity, contained sixty-three ingredients; and the celebrated Mithridate of Damocratis contained forty-eight.
The origin of the formula for “Mithridates” is ascribed to Mithridates, King of Pontus, whose recipe Pompey brought to Rome, where Damocratis sang its praises and proclaimed its virtues. It was considered by the ancients a panacea for every ill. Of the historic preparation known as the Treacle of Andromachus, its invention is attributed to that worthy. Pliny says that the formula of a similar composition was inscribed in verse 300 years before the Christian era upon the temple of Æsculapius, and that Andromachus merely imitated, by order of Nero, the composition of the Mithridate, which had then been known for a considerable time.
Of the forms of administration there were a great variety in the sixteenth century, and many, such as the Rob which consisted of the juice of fruits boiled down to two-thirds, the lohoch, and the treacle, have quite gone out of use.
But notwithstanding modern research and scientific advance, some of the ancient formulæ still survive and are employed to-day.
It may not be generally known that the preparation known as hiera picra was originated by Galen, on the properties of which he placed high value on account of its excessively bitter taste. Charas states that the great physician gave it the name of hiera picra or holy bitter.
In the pil. aloes. et myrrh. of the British Pharmacopœia, commonly known by the old name of Pil. Ruffi., we have a formula handed down intact for over a thousand years.
In mediæval times ladies were not above using preparations to beautify their complexions, and among others for this purpose, we find the formula of a cerate composed of white wax, spermaceti, oil of cole seed, bismuth, borax, and alum, which was spread on a cloth to cover the face at night, and worn as a mask.
Among the parts of the body used as medicine was human blood, on which some early physicians set great value for the cure of epilepsy and diseases of the brain.
Charas, in his Royal Pharmacopœia, says: “In the month of May take a considerable quantity of healthy young men’s blood, let blood in that season who are not red haired. This blood is to be distilled twice, or spread on plates and dried in the sun or an oven. All writers extol the volatile salt of man’s blood, for the cure of epilepsy, it being also very proper to suppress vapours that arise from the stomach and spleen.”
In a Celtic leech-book preserved in the University of Leyden, which is said to have been written in the ninth century, there are the following curious recipes:—
“1. To prevent wrinkles. Smear the face with a mixture of water and the pounded root of wild cucumber. Wash with cold water. ‘Hóc sí triduo facere uolueris mirabilem effectum uidebis.’
“2. To remove freckles. Rub a bull’s gall on the face.
“3. To cure headaches. Gather plantain-root before sunrise, and tie it on the head. Use also the juice of the seed of the elder-tree, a cow’s brain, goat’s dung dissolved in vinegar; swallows’ nests mixed with water, and applied to the forehead; water out of which an ass or an ox has drunk.
“4. To purge the head. Pour the juice of cabbage (brassica) into the nostrils.
“5. For dimness of the eyes. Pound fennel-roots, mix with honey, and boil over a slow fire; add cistern-water or woman’s milk. Smear the eyes with the fat of a fox (adipe volpis).
“6. Another remedy. Mix a child’s urine (lotium infantis) with the best honey; add a decoction of fennel-roots (‘omnem caliginem mirabiliter discutiet’).
“7. The beginning of this paragraph has been cut off. The remedies prescribed are butter and cram occifæth (garlic...?), mixed with ram’s fat (‘per aruinam ariætis’).
“14. To cure the bite of a dog. Apply two or three onions calcined and boiled with lard and honey.
“15. To extract a straw from the eye. Chant the psalm Qui habitat (Ps. 90) thrice over water, with which then douche the eye, et sanus ærit.”
Among the various remedies fish play a prominent part. For gravel it is recommended that the head of a pike be boiled in a newly-glazed earthen pot, then reduced to powder and drunk in a glass of white wine. A sure means of curing gout is to wear continually three or four moles’ feet tied to one’s garters. For nose-bleeding, the sufferer is advised to blow up the nose the powder of a stone found in the head of a carp, or to plug up the nostrils with hare’s fur. A certain remedy for curing a drunkard of his evil way is to give him as many eggs of the screech owl, boiled hard, as he can possibly eat, when we are assured he will ever after be a total abstainer.
In the first book of the Secretes of the reverent Maister Alexis of Piemont, 1562, which is a kind of general receipt-book for the apothecaries of the time, there occur some curious formulæ, which may be taken as a fair example of the pharmacy of those days. The process of making the oil of red dog is given with elaborate detail.
“To make an oile of a redde dogge,” says the chronicler, “by the meane whereof (beside other infinit vertues that it hathe) I have healed a Fryer of Saint Onostres, who had by the space of twelve years a lame and drye withered arme, lyke I styche so that nature gave it no more nouryshement—
“Take a yonge dogge of redde heare and keep him three days without meate, and then strangle him with a corde, and let him lie dead a quarter of an houre, and in the meane time boyle a kettell of ayle up by the fire, and putte the dogge in whole, or in pieces, it maketh no matter howe, so that he be all there with the skynne and heare; make him seethe so untyl he be almost sodden to pieces, keepying always the kettell close covered: In the meane tyme take scorpions to the number of four score or a hundred, and put them in a basyn on the fyre untyll they be thoroughly bruised. Then putte them in the sayde kettell with the ayle and the dogge, puttinge to it a good dishful of great grounde wormes, well washed, a good handful of Saint John’s Worte, a handful of wylde marshe mallowes, and a handful of wallworte, with an once of saffron. Seethe all these things well to-gether, and then let it ware colde.” The liquid being strained off and certain aromatic gums added, the preparation was complete.
The belief that carrying a piece of camphor will ward off infectious diseases, is a relic of the old days of amulets and charms. In 1547 Alexis recommended compounds to carry against the plague and fever, and we find that aromatics were used to perfume clothes in the time of the early Jews, long before the birth of Christ.