loathsome medicines.—sympathetical cures.—weapon-salve.—superstitions.
notwithstanding all the splendid scientific work of the period, the absurdest superstitions about amulets and charms still held their ground. sir john harrington, in his schoole of salerne, printed in 1624, says: “alwaies in your hands use eyther corall or yellow amber, or a chalcedonium, or a sweet pommander, or some like precious stone to be worne in a ring upon the little finger of the left hand; have in your rings eyther a smaragd, a saphire, or a draconites, which you shall beare for an ornament; for in stones, as also in hearbes, there is great efficacie and vertue, but they are not altogether perceived by us; hold sometime in your mouth eyther a hyacinth, or a crystall, or a granat, or pure gold, or silver, or else sometimes pure sugar-candy. for aristotle doth affirme, and so doth albertus magnus, that a smaragd worne about the necke, is good against the falling-sicknes; for surely the virtue of an hearbe is great, but much more the vertue of a precious stone, which is very likely that they are endued with occult and hidden vertues.”
materia medica.
amongst those who, after willis, laboured to reform pharmacology may be mentioned—
john zwelfer, a learned physician of vienna, who published in 1651 a greatly improved pharmacop?ia, which rejected many useless and improper medicines.
daniel ludwig in 1671 published a dissertation on useless and unsatisfactory drugs. he denied the virtues of earthworms, toads, and the like.
moses charas (1618-1698) was a pharmacist of paris, who founded the historical establishment known as the vipères d’or of that city. seventeenth-century pharmacy owed much to this man, who was395 “one of the last of the arabian polypharmacists, one of the last of the adepts of expiring alchemy, and the immediate precursor of the epoch of lemery.”908 he studied pharmacy at montpellier. he was acquainted with natural history.
no history of medicine would be complete without reference to the immense number of loathsome and filthy substances which from the remotest times, even up to the present, have been used as medicines. this subject has been treated in a very complete form by captain bourke in his work on skatological rites of all nations, an important section of which is devoted to “skatological medicine.”909 the theory underlying the use of disgusting remedies seems to be this: nearly all medicines which have any efficacy are unpleasant to take; a bitter infusion of tonic leaves or roots is not usually agreeable; many good medicines are very nasty, but their efficacy is universally acknowledged. ignorant persons argue that the nastiness is the sign of the efficacy; that the more disgusting the potion or pill, the more good it will do. even at the present day pauper and hospital patients of the lower classes have no faith in medicines which are not dark in colour and rich in sediment; elegant pharmacy would soon destroy the best east-end practice. the most repulsive sediment in a mixture is readily swallowed, and is usually considered highly “nourishing.” now from nasty herbal medicines to filthy animal excretions is but a short step. pliny gives hundreds of instances of skatological remedies in his natural history, and the ancient writers frequently prescribe them. they consist of such things as the dung and urine of various animals, not excepting those of man, of the catamenial and lochial discharges, of the sweat of athletes, of the parasites of human and animal bodies, of ear wax, human blood, etc.
“xenocrates of aphrodisias (about a.d. 70) introduced disgusting filth as medicines; e.g., ear wax, catamenial fluid, human flesh, bats’ blood, etc.”910
“asclepiades pharmacion (about a.d. 100) recommended even animal excrement as a medicine.”911
quintus serenus samonicus (died a.d. 211) prescribed mouse dung in poultices; goats’ urine internally for stone in the bladder; earth and dung from a wagon rut for colic, externally.912
marcellus empiricus, physician to theodosius (345-395), prescribed natural pills of rabbit’s dung. dr. baas declares that this remedy is in use on the rhine at the present day, as a cure for consumption.913
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culpeper, in his translation of the pharmacop?ia (1653), ridicules the remedies enumerated in that work. thus the college of physicians employ “the fat, grease, or suet of a duck, goose, eel, bore, heron, thymallos (‘if you know where to get it,’ says culpeper), dog, capon, bever, wild cat, stork, hedgehog, hen, man, lyon, hare, kite, or jack (if they have any fat, i am persuaded ’tis worth twelve pence the grain), wolf, mouse of the mountains (if you can catch them), pardal, hog, serpent, badger, bear, fox, vulture (if you can catch them), album gr?cum, east and west benzoar, stone taken out a man’s bladder, viper’s flesh, the brain of hares and sparrows, the rennet of a lamb, kid, hare, and a calf and a horse too (quoth the colledg) [they should have put the rennet of an ass to make medicine for their addle brains], the excrement of a goose, of a dog, of a goat, of pidgeons, of a stone horse, of swallows, of men, of women, of mice, of peacocks,” etc., etc.
there was, says southey,914 a water of man’s blood which in queen elizabeth’s day was a new invention, “whereof some princes had very great estimation, and used it for to remain thereby in their force, and, as they thought, to live long.” they chose a strong young man of twenty-five, dieted him for a month on the best meats, wines and spices, and at the month’s end they bled him in both arms as much as he could “tolerate and abide.” they added a handful of salt to six pounds of this blood, and distilled it seven times, pouring water upon the residuum after every distillation. an ounce of this was to be taken three or four times a year. as the life was thought to be in the blood, it was believed it could thus be transferred.
dr. o. m?ller says that in denmark, even now in some few places, human excrements are not entirely obsolete as epispastic applications in inflammation of the breast.915
dr. baas says916 that urine is taken in the rhine provinces in fevers instead of quinine. this was recommended by the surgical writer schmidt in 1649. in the seventeenth century the old pharmacies of germany contained, amongst other disgusting remedies, frog-spawn water, mole’s blood, oil of spiders, snake’s tongue, mouse dung, spirits of human brain, urine of a new-born child, etc.917 the dung of screech-owls was prescribed for melancholy, as also was the dung of doves and calves boiled in wine, ox-dung, etc. dog-dung and fleas boiled with sage was a medicine for gout, and death-sweat was used as a cure for warts.918
mould from the churchyard is used in some parts of ireland and in397 shetland medicinally. clay or mould from a priest’s grave boiled with milk is given as a decoction for the cure of disease.919 the dew collected from the grave of the last man buried in a churchyard has been used as a lotion for goitre. it is so employed at launceston.920 in shetland a stitch in the side was treated by applying mould dug from a grave and heated, the mould was to be taken from and returned to the grave before sunset.921 in lincolnshire a portion of a human skull taken from the grave was grated and given to epileptics for the cure of fits. a similar custom prevailed in kirkwall, at caithness, and the western islands—the patient was made to drink from a suicide’s skull.922
in the year 1852 i saw amongst the more precious drugs in the shop of a pharmaceutical chemist at leamington a bottle labelled in the ordinary way with the words, “moss from a dead-man’s skull.” this has long been used superstitiously, dried, powdered, and taken as snuff, for headache and bleeding at the nose.923
sympathetical cures.
a curious chapter in the history of surgery is found in the popular belief in “sympathetical cures,” which prevailed in the reigns of james i. and charles i. sir kenelm digby professed to have introduced a method of curing wounds by the “powder of sympathy.” dr. pettigrew,, in his superstitions of medicine and surgery, says that a mr. james howel, endeavouring to part some friends who were fighting a duel, received a severe wound in his hand. the king sent one of his own surgeons to attend him; but as the wound did not make good progress, application was made to sir kenelm digby, who first inquired if the patient had any article which had the blood upon it. mr. howel sent for the garter with which his hand had been bound; then a basin of water having been brought, sir kenelm dissolved therein some powder of vitriol, and immersed the bloody garter in the solution. the patient was instructed to lay aside all his plasters and keep the wound clean and in a moderate temperature. all the while the garter lay in the solution of vitriol. the patient did well; probably if it had been applied to the injured part it would have made it worse. in the course of five or six days the wound was cicatrized and a cure effected. sir kenelm professed to have learned the secret from a carmelite friar.398 it was communicated to the king’s physician, dr. mayerne, and before long every country barber knew of it. sir kenelm digby discoursed on the matter before an assembly of nobles and learned men at montpellier in france, and endeavoured to explain the action of his powder by all sorts of conjectures, as emanation of light, the action of impinging rays, etc. he tried to prove that the spirit which emanated from the vitriol became incorporated with the blood, and there met the exhalation of hot spirits from the inflamed part.
infinitely simpler, however, was the process of cure. nature, left to herself, did the whole of the work. it seemed, as dr. pettigrew says, that it had hitherto been the practice of surgeons to place every obstacle in the way of the union of severed parts of the body. what with ointments and various more or less filthy applications, the edges of the wound were kept apart, and so the healing process was retarded.
of a kindred character to the “powder of sympathy” was the “weapon salve” of the period. instead of anointing the wound, the knife, axe, or other instrument which caused it was smeared with ointment and the weapon was then carefully wrapped up and put away. dryden refers to this same “weapon salve” in the “tempest,” act v. sc. 1. dr. pettigrew says that the practice was at one time very general.924
the principle underlying the doctrine of sympathetic powders was explained by sir kenelm thus: “in time of common contagion they use to carry about them the powder of a toad, and sometimes a living toad or spider shut up in a box; or else they carry arsenic, or some other venomous substance, which draws unto it the contagious air, which otherwise would infect the party; and the same powder of toad draws unto it the poison of a pestilential cold. the scurf or farcy is a venomous and contagious humour within the body of a horse; hang a toad about the neck of the horse in a little bag, and he will be cured infallibly; the toad, which is the stronger poison, drawing to it the venom which was within the horse.”925
the same author says that persons of ill breath can be cured by holding their mouths open at a cesspool, the greater stink having the power to draw away the less.926
in the reign of charles ii. a gentleman named valentine greatrakes, of a good family and education, “felt an impulse that the gift of curing the king’s evil was bestowed upon him.” he published an account of his cures of this and other diseases, ague, epilepsy, and palsy, and some399 other complaints more or less connected with the nervous system, in a letter to the hon. robert boyle. he seems to have performed his cures, which were by some persons considered miraculous, by a kind of massage, or “by the stroaking of the hands.” the cures were simply the effect of an excited imagination.
