CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
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MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

CHRONICLES OF
PHARMACY

BY

A. C. WOOTTON

VOL. I

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1910

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

Pharmacy, or the art of selecting, extracting, preparing, and compounding medicines from vegetable, animal, and mineral substances, is an acquirement which must have been almost as ancient as man himself on the earth. In experimenting with fruits, seeds, leaves, or roots with a view to the discovery of varieties of food, our remote ancestors would occasionally find some of these, which, though not tempting to the palate, possessed this or that property the value of which would soon come to be recognised. The tradition of these virtues would be handed down from generation to generation, and would ultimately become, by various means, the heritage of the conquering and civilising races. Of the hundreds of drugs yielded by the vegetable kingdom, collected from all parts of the world, and used as remedies, in some cases for thousands of years, I do not know of a single one which can surely be traced to any historic or scientific personage. It is possible in many instances to ascertain the exact or approximate date when a particular substance was introduced to our markets, and sometimes to name the physician, explorer, merchant, or conqueror to whom we are indebted for such an addition to our materia medica; but there is always a history or a tradition behind our acquaintance with the new medicine, going back to an undetermined past.

In modern dispensatories the ever increasing accumulation of chemical, botanical, histological, and therapeutic notes has tended to crowd out the historic paragraphs which brightened the older treatises. Perhaps this result is inevitable, but it is none the less to be regretted on account of both the student and the adept in the art of pharmacy. “I have always thought,” wrote Ferdinand Hoefer in the Introduction to his still valuable “History of Chemistry” (1842), “that the best method of popularising scientific studies, generally so little attractive, consists in presenting, as in a panorama, the different phases a science has passed through from its origin to its present condition.” No science nor, indeed, any single item of knowledge, can be properly appreciated apart from the records of its evolution; and it is as important to be acquainted with the errors and misleading theories which have prevailed in regard to it, as with the steps by which real progress has been made.

The history of drugs, investigations into their cultivation, their commerce, their constitution, and their therapeutic effects, have been dealt with by physicians and pharmacologists of the highest eminence in both past and recent times. In Flückiger and Hanbury’s “Pharmacographia” (Macmillan: 1874), earlier records were studied with the most scrupulous care, and valuable new information acquired by personal observation was presented. No other work of a similar character was so original, so accurate, or so attractive as this. A very important systematic study of drugs, profusely illustrated by reproductions of photographs showing particularly the methods whereby they are produced and brought to our markets, by Professor Tschirch of Berne, is now in course of publication by Tauchnitz of Leipsic. In these humble “Chronicles” it has been impossible to avoid entirely occasional visits to the domain so efficiently occupied by these great authorities; but as a rule the subjects they have made their own have been regarded as outside the scope of this volume.

But the art of the apothecary, of pharmacy, as we should now say, restricted to its narrowest signification, consists particularly of the manipulation of drugs, the conversion of the raw material into the manufactured product. The records of this art and mystery likewise go back to the remotest periods of human history. In the course of ages they become associated with magic, with theology, with alchemy, with crimes and conscious frauds, with the strangest fancies, and dogmas, and delusions, and with the severest science. Deities, kings, and quacks, philosophers, priests, and poisoners, dreamers, seers, and scientific chemists, have all helped to build the fabric of pharmacy, and it is some features of their work which are imperfectly sketched in these “Chronicles.”

My original intention when I began to collect the materials for this book was simply to trace back to their authors the formulas of the most popular of our medicines, and to recall those which have lost their reputation. I thought, and still think, that an explanation of the modification of processes and of the variation of the ingredients of compounds would be useful, but I have not accomplished this design. I have been tempted from it into various by-paths, and probably in them have often erred, and certainly have missed many objects of interest. I shall be grateful to any critic, better informed than myself, who will correct me where I have gone astray, or refer me to information which I ought to have given. I may not have the opportunity of utilising suggestions myself; but all that I receive will be carefully collated, and may assist some future writer.

A. C. Wootton.

4, Seymour Road, Finchley,
London, N.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

As the author unhappily died while his book was still in the printer’s hands, his friend, Mr. Peter MacEwan, editor of The Chemist and Druggist, has been good enough to revise the proofs for press.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

ERRATA
VOL. I

Page 101. Tenth line from top, for Mesué read Mesuë.

„  211. Sixth line from bottom, reference should be: Vol. II., 63.

„  217. Eighth line from top, reference should be: Vol. II., 182.

„  224. Top line, reference should be: Vol. II., 37.

„  337. Second line from top, additional reference: Vol. II., 179.

„  419. Ninth line from top, for Panchymagogum read Panchymagogon.

CHRONICLES OF PHARMACY

MYTHS OF PHARMACY

“Deorum immortalium inventioni consecrata est Ars Medica.”—Cicero, Tusculan. Quaest., Lib. 3.

The earliest medical practitioners of any sort and among all peoples would almost certainly be, as we should designate them, herbalists; women in many cases. How they came to acquire knowledge of the healing properties of herbs it is futile to discuss. Old writers often guess that they got hints by watching animals. Their own curiosity, suggesting experiments, would probably be a more fruitful source of their science, and from accidents, both happy and fatal, they would gradually acquire empiric learning.

Very soon these herb experts would begin to prepare their remedies so as to make them easier to take or apply, making infusions, decoctions, and ointments. Thus the Art of Pharmacy would be introduced.

The herbalists and pharmacists among primitive tribes would accumulate facts and experience, and finding that their skill and services had a market value which enabled them to live without so much hard work as their neighbours, they would naturally surround their knowledge with mystery, and keep it to themselves or in particular families. The profession of medicine being thus started, the inevitable theories of supernatural powers causing diseases would be encouraged, because these would promote the mystery already gathering round the practice of medicine, and from them would follow incantations, exorcisms, the association of priestcraft with the healing arts, and the superstitions, credulities, and impostures which have been its constant companions, and which are still too much in evidence.

THE INVENTORS OF MEDICINE

Medicine and Magic consequently became intimately associated, and useful facts, superstitious practices, and conscious and unconscious deceptions, became blended into a mosaic which formed a fixed and reverenced System of Medicine. Again the supernatural powers were called in and the credit of the revelation of this Art, that is its total fabric, was attributed either to a divine being who had brought it from above, or to some gifted and inspired creature, who in consequence had been admitted into the family of the deities.

In Egypt Osiris and Isis, brother and sister, and at the same time husband and wife, were worshipped as the revealers of medical knowledge among most other sciences. Formulas credited to Isis were in existence in the time of Galen, but even that not too critical authority rejected these traditions without hesitation. In ancient Egypt, however, the priests who held in their possession all the secrets of medicine claimed Isis as the founder of their science. Some old legends explained that she acquired her knowledge of medicine from an angel named Amnael, one of the sons of God of whom we read in the book of Genesis. The science thus imparted to her was the price she exacted from him for the surrender of herself to him. The son of Isis, Horus, was identified by the Greeks with their Apollo, and to him also the discovery of medicine is attributed.

Isis.

Osiris.

From the Collection of Medals and other Antiquities of Casalius (17th century).

In Leclerc’s History of Medicine.

The legend which associated “the sons of God” with the daughters of men before the Flood, and the suggestion that they imparted a knowledge of medicine to the inhabitants of the earth, is traceable in the traditions of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Persians, as well as in Jewish literature. In the 6th chapter of Genesis it is said that “they saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose.” From these unions came the race of giants, and the wickedness of man so “great in the earth” that the destruction of the race by the Flood resulted. The apocryphal Book of Enoch, composed, it is agreed, about 100 or 150 years before the birth of Christ, is very definite in regard to this legend, showing that it was current among the Jews at that period. We read in that Book, that “They (the angels) dwelt with them and taught them sorcery, enchantments, the properties of roots and trees, magic signs, and the art of observing the stars.” Alluding to one of these angels particularly it is said “he taught them the use of the bracelets and ornaments, the art of painting, of painting the eyelashes, the uses of precious stones, and all sorts of tinctures, so that the world was corrupted.”

Hermes.

With Osiris and Isis is always associated the Egyptian Thoth whom the Greeks called Hermes, and who is also identified with Mercury. He was described as the friend, or the secretary, of Osiris. Eusebius quotes an earlier author who identified Hermes with Moses; but if Moses was the inventor of medicine and all other sciences it would be hardly exact to speak of him as “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Thoth, who is also claimed as a Phoenician, as Canaan the son of Ham, and as an associate of Saturn, attained perhaps the greatest fame as an inventor of medicine. He was the presumed author of the six sacred books which the Egyptian priests were bound to follow in their treatment of the sick. One of these books was specially devoted to pharmacy.

Thoth, or Hermes, is supposed to have invented alchemy as well as medicine, the art of writing, arithmetic, laws, music, and the cultivation of the olive. According to Jamblicus, who wrote on the mysteries of Egypt in the reign of the Emperor Julian, the Egyptian priests then recognised forty-two books as the genuine works of Hermes. Six of these dealt respectively with anatomy, diseases in general, women’s complaints, eye diseases, surgery, and the preparation of remedies. Jamblicus is not sure of their authenticity, and, as already stated, Galen uncompromisingly declares them to be apocryphal. Other writers are far less modest than Jamblicus in their estimates of the number of the writings of Hermes. Seleucus totals them at 20,000, and Manethon says 38,000.

The legend of Hermes apparently grew up among the Alexandrian writers of the first century. It was from them that his surname Trismegistus (thrice-great) originated. It was pretended that in the old Egyptian temples the works of Hermes were kept on papyri, and that the priests in treating diseases were bound to follow his directions implicitly. If they did, and the patient died, they were exonerated; but if they departed from the written instructions they were liable to be condemned to death, even though the patient recovered.

It is hardly necessary to say that in the preceding paragraph no attempt has been made to discuss modern researches on ancient beliefs. Greek scholars, for example, trace the Greek Hermes to an Indian source, and assume the existence of two gods of the same name.

Bacchus, Ammon, and Zoroaster.

Bacchus, King of Assyria, and subsequently a deity, was claimed by some of the Eastern nations as the discoverer of medicine. He is supposed to have taught the medicinal value of the ivy, but it is more likely that he owes his medical reputation to his supposed invention of wine. Some old writers identify him with Noah. Hammon, or Ammon, or Amen, traced to Ham, the second son of Noah, has been honoured as having originated medicine in Egypt. Some attribute the name of sal ammoniac to the temple of Ammon in the Libyan oasis, on the theory that it was first produced there from the dung of camels. Gum ammoniacum is similarly supposed to have been the gum of a shrub which grew in that locality. Zoroaster, who gave the Persians their religious system, is also counted among the inventors of medicine, perhaps because he was so generally regarded as the discoverer of magic.

Apollo.

Apollo, the reputed god of medicine among the Greeks, was the son of Jupiter and Latona. His divinity became associated with the sun, and his arrows, which often caused sudden death were, according to modern expounders of ancient myths, only the rays of the sun. Many of his attributes were similar to those which the Egyptians credited to Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, and it is evident that the Egyptian legend was incorporated with that of the early Greeks. Besides being the god of medicine Apollo was the deity of music, poetry, and eloquence, and he was honoured as the inventor of all these arts. He evidently possessed the jealousy of the artist in an abundant degree, for after his musical competition with Pan, Apollo playing the lyre and Pan the flute, when Tmolus, the arbiter, had awarded the victory to the former, Midas ventured to disagree with that opinion, and was thereupon provided with a pair of asses’ ears. Marsyas, another flute player, having challenged Apollo, was burnt alive.

Apollo.

Peon, sometimes identified with Apollo, was the physician of Olympus. He is said to have first practised in Egypt. In the fifth book of the 'Iliad’ Homer describes how he cured the wound which Diomed had given to Mars:—

—Peon sprinkling heavenly balm around,

Assuaged the glowing pangs and closed the wound.

Æsculapius.

Æsculapius, son of Apollo and Coronis, had a more immediate connection with medicine than his father. He was taught its mysteries by Chiron the Centaur, another of the legendary inventors of the art, who also taught Achilles and others. Æsculapius became so skilful that Castor and Pollux insisted on his accompanying the expedition of the Argonauts. Ultimately he acquired the power of restoring the dead to life. But this perfection of his art was his ruin.

Æsculapius.

From the Casalius Collection of Medals, &c. (17th century).

From the Louvre Statue, Paris.

Pluto, alarmed for the future of his own dominions, complained to Jupiter, and the Olympian ruler slew Æsculapius with a thunderbolt. Apollo was so incensed at this cruel judgment that he killed the Cyclops who had forged the thunderbolt. For this act of rebellion Apollo was banished from Olympia and spent nine years on earth, for some time as a shepherd in the service of the king of Thessaly. It was during this period that the story of his adventure with Daphne, told by Ovid, and from which the quotation on

The Arms of the Society of Apothecaries

(italicised below) is taken, occurred. Ovid relates that Apollo, meeting Cupid, jeered at his child’s bows and arrows as mere playthings. In revenge Cupid forged two arrows, one of gold and the other of lead. The golden one he shot at Apollo, to excite desire; the leaden arrow, which repelled desire, was shot at Daphne. The legend ends by the nymph being metamorphosed into a laurel which Apollo thenceforth wore as a wreath. One of the incidents narrated by Ovid represents the god telling the nymph who he is. Dryden’s version makes him say:

Perhaps thou knowest not my superior state

And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.

A somewhat uncouth method of seeking to ingratiate himself with the reluctant lady. Among his attainments Apollo says:

Invention medicina meum est, Opiferque per orbem

Dicor, et herbam subjecta potentia nobis.

Dryden versifies these lines thus:

Medicine is mine, what herbs and simples grow

In fields and forests, all their powers I know,

And am the great physician called below.

The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are thus described in Burke’s “Encyclopædia of Heraldry,” 1851:

“In shield, Apollo, the inventor of physic, with his head radiant, holding in his left hand a bow, and in his right a serpent. About the shield a helm, thereupon a mantle, and for the crest, upon a wreath of their colours, a rhinoceros, supported by two unicorns, armed and ungulated. Upon a compartment to make the achievement complete, this motto: 'Opiferque per orbem dicor.’”

Arms of the Society of Apothecaries.

It was William Camden, the famous antiquary and “Clarenceux King at Arms” in James I.’s reign, who hunted out the middle of the above Latin quotation for the newly incorporated Society of Apothecaries.

The Sons of Æsculapius.

Æsculapius left two sons, who continued their father’s profession, and three or four daughters. It is not possible to be chronologically exact with these semi-mythical personages, but according to the usual reckoning Æsculapius lived about 1250 B.C. He would have been contemporary with Gideon, a judge of Israel, about two centuries after the death of Moses, and two centuries before the reign of King David. His sons Machaon and Podalirus were immortalised in the Iliad among the Greek heroes who fought before Troy, and they exercised their surgical and medical skill on their comrades, as Homer relates. When Menelaus was wounded by an arrow shot by Pandarus, Machaon was sent for, and “sucked the blood, and sovereign balm infused, which Chiron gave, and Æsculapius used.”

After the Trojan war both the brothers continued to exercise their art, and some of their cures are recorded. Their sons after them likewise practised medicine, and the earliest Æsculapian Temple is believed to have been erected in memory of his grandfather by Spyrus, the second son of Machaon, at Argos. Perhaps he only intended it as a home for patients, or it may have been as an advertisement. From then, however, the worship of Æsculapius spread, and we read of temples at Titane in the Peloponnesus, at Tricca in Thessalia, at Trithorea, at Corinth, at Epidaurus, at Cos, at Megalopolis in Arcadia, at Lar in Laconia, at Drepher, at Drope, at Corona on the Gulf of Messina, at Egrum, at Delos, at Cyllene, at Smyrna, and at Pergamos in Asia Minor. The Temple of Epidaurus was for a long time the most important, but before the time of Hippocrates that of Cos seems to have taken the lead.

The Daughters of Æsculapius

are often described as allegorical figures, Hygeia representing health, and Panacea, medicine. Hygeia especially was widely worshipped by Greeks, and when rich people recovered from an illness they often had medals struck with her figure on the reverse. Pliny says it was customary to offer her a simple cake of fine flour, to indicate the connection between simple living and good health. Panacea was likewise made a divinity. She presided over the administration of medicines. Egrea and Jaso are but little known. The former (whose name signified the light of the Sun) married a serpent and was changed into a willow, while Jaso in the only known monument on which she appears, is represented with a pot, probably of ointment, in her hand.

Prometheus.

More mythical than the story of Æsculapius, or even of Orpheus, who was also alleged to have discovered some of the secrets of medicine, is the legend of Prometheus who stole fire from heaven for the benefit of mankind. According to the older mythologists Prometheus was the same as Magog, and was the son of Japhet. Æschylus is the principal authority on his tradition. After recounting many other wonderful things he had done for humanity, the poet makes him say, “One of the greatest subtilties I have invented is that when any one falls ill, and can find no relief; can neither eat nor drink, and knows not with what to anoint himself; when for want of the necessary remedies he must perish; then I showed to men how to prepare healing medicine which should cure all maladies.” Or as Dean Plumptre has rendered it:—

If any one fell ill

There was no help for him nor healing balm,

Nor unguent, nor yet potion; but for want

Of drugs they wasted till I showed to them

The blendings of all mild medicaments

Wherewith they ward the attacks of sickness sore.

In other words, Prometheus was the first pharmacist.

Melampus.

Melampus was a shepherd to whom we owe, as legend tells us, hellebore (Gr. Melampodion) and iron as medicines. Melampus studied nature closely, and, when young, brought up by hand some young serpents, who were dutifully grateful for the cares he had bestowed on them. One day, finding him asleep, two of them crept to his ears and so effectively cleaned them with their tongues that when he woke he found he could easily make out the language of birds, and hear a thousand things which had previously been hidden from man. Thus he became a great magician. In tending his goats he observed that whenever they ate the black hellebore they were purged. Afterwards, many of the women of Argos were stricken with a disease which made them mad. They ran about the fields naked, and believed they were cows. Among the women so afflicted were the three daughters of Proetus, the king of Argos. Melampus undertook to cure the three princesses, and did so by giving them the milk of the goats after they had eaten the hellebore. His reward was one of them for his wife and a third of the kingdom. Another cure effected by Melampus was by his treatment of Iphiclus, king of Phylacea, who greatly desired to beget children. Melampus gave him rust of iron in wine, and that remedy proved successful. This was the earliest Vinum Ferri. Melampus is supposed to have lived about 1380 B.C.

Glaucus.

Glaucus, son of Minos, king of Crete, was playing when a child and fell into a large vat of honey, in which he was suffocated. The child being lost the king sent for Polyidus of Argos, a famous magician, and ordered him to discover his son. Polyidus having found the dead body in the honey, it occurred to Minos that so clever a man could also bring him back to life. He therefore commanded that the magician should be put into the same vat. While perplexed at the problem before him, Polyidus saw a serpent creeping towards the vat. He seized the beast and killed him. Presently another serpent came, and looked on his dead friend. The second went out of the place for a few minutes and returned with a certain herb which he applied to the dead reptile and soon restored him to life. Polyidus took the hint and used the same herb on Glaucus with an equally satisfactory result. He restored him to his father, who loaded the sorcerer with gifts. Unfortunately in telling the other details of this history the narrator has forgotten to inform us of the name of the herb which possessed such precious properties. Polyidus, according to Pausanias, was a nephew of Melampus.

Chiron.

Chiron the Centaur was very famous for his knowledge of simples, which he learned on Mount Pelion when hunting with Diana. The Centaury owes its name to him, either because he used it as a remedy or because it was applied to his wound. His great merit was that he taught his knowledge of medicines to Æsculapius, to Hercules, to Achilles, and to various other Greek heroes. In the Iliad Homer represents Eurypylus wounded by an arrow asking Patroclus

With lukewarm water wash the gore away

With healing balms the raging smart allay

Such as sage Chiron, sire of pharmacy,

Once taught Achilles, and Achilles thee.

(Il., Bk. XI., Pope’s Translation.)

Chiron was shot in the foot by Hercules by an arrow which had been dipped in the blood of the Hydra of Lerna, and the wound caused intense agony. One fable says that Chiron healed this wound by applying to it the herb which consequently bore the name of Centaury; but the more usual version is that his grief at being immortal was so keen that Hercules induced Jupiter to transfer that immortality to Prometheus, and that Chiron was placed in the sky and forms the constellation of Sagittarius. The Centaurs were a wild race inhabiting Thessaly. Probably they were skilful horse tamers and riders, and from this may have grown the fable of their form.

Chiron the Centaur.

Achilles.

Achilles carried a spear at the siege of Troy which had the benign power of healing the wounds it made. He discovered the virtues of the plant Achillea Milfoil, but Pliny leaves it doubtful whether he cured the wounds of his friend Telephas by that remedy or by verdigris ointment, which he also invented.

Achillea Milfoil.

Aristes.

Aristes, king of Arcadia, was another famous pupil of Chiron. He is credited with having introduced the silphion or laser which became a popular medicine and condiment with the ancients, and which was long believed to have been their name for asafœtida, but which modern authors have doubted, alleging that silphion was the product of Thapsia silphion. Aristes is further said to have taught the art of collecting honey and of cultivating the olive.

Medea.

Medea of Colchis is one of the most discussed ladies of mythical history. Euripides, Ovid, and other poets represented her for the purposes of their poems as a fiend of inhuman ferocity. Some more trustworthy historians believe that she was a princess who devoted a great deal of study to the medicinal virtues of the plants which grew in her country, and that she exercised her skill on the poor and sick of her country. Certainly the marvellous murders attributed to her must have been planned by a tragic poet to whom no conditions were impossible. Diodorus declares that the Corinthians stoned her and her sons, and afterwards paid Euripides five talents to justify their crime. Medea’s claim to a place in this section is the adopted theory that she discovered the poisonous properties of colchicum, which derived its name from her country. Colchis had the reputation of producing many poisonous plants; hence the Latin expression “venena Colchica.”

Morpheus.

Morpheus was, according to the Roman poets, the son or chief minister of the god of sleep (Somnus). The god himself was represented as living in Cimmerian darkness. Morpheus derived his name from Morphe, (Gr., form or shape), from his supposed ability to mimic or assume the form of any individual he desired to pose as in dreams. Thus Ovid relates how he appeared to Alcyone in a dream as her husband, who had been shipwrecked, and narrated to her all the circumstances of the tragedy. Morpheus is represented with a poppy plant in his hand bearing a capsule with which he was supposed to touch those whom he desired to put to sleep. He also had the wings of a butterfly to indicate his lightness. Sertürner adopted the term “morphium” as the name of the opium alkaloid which he had discovered.

Pythagoras.

Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century before Christ, has been the subject of so many legends that it is difficult to separate the philosopher in him from the charlatan. He is said to have tamed wild beasts with a word, to have visited hell, to have recounted his previous stages of existence from the siege of Troy to his own life, and to have accomplished many miracles. Probably these were the myths which often gather round great men, and it is certain that from him or from his disciples in his name much exact learning, especially in mathematics, has reached us. Pythagoras was famous in many sciences. His chief contribution to pharmacy was the invention of acetum scillae. According to Pliny he wrote a treatise on squills, which he believed possessed magic virtues. Pliny also states that he attributed magic virtues to the cabbage, but it is not certain that he meant the vegetable which we call the cabbage. Aniseed was another of his magic plants. Holding aniseed in the left hand he recommended as a cure for epilepsy, and he prescribed an anisated wine and also mustard to counteract the poisonous effect of the bites of scorpions. An Antidotum Pythagoras is given in some old books, but there is no authority for supposing that this was devised by the philosopher. It was composed of orris, 18 drachms and 2 scruples; gentian, 5 drachms; ginger, 4½ drachms; black pepper, 4 drachms; honey, q.s.

THE PATRON SAINTS OF PHARMACY.

Cosmas and Damien, who are regarded as the patron saints of pharmacy in many Catholic countries, were two brothers, Arabs by birth, but who lived in the city of Egea, in Cilicia, where they practised medicine gratuitously. Overtaken by the Diocletian persecution in the fourth century, they were arrested and confessed their faith. Being condemned to be drowned, it is related that an angel severed their bonds so that they could gain the shore. They were then ordered to be burnt, but the fire attacked their executioners, several of whom were killed. Next they were fastened to a cross and archers shot arrows at them. The arrows, however, were turned from them and struck those who had placed them on the crosses. Finally they were beheaded, and their souls were seen mounting heavenward. For centuries their tomb at Cyrus, in Syria, was a shrine where miracles of healing were performed, and in the sixth century the Emperor Justinian, who believed he had been cured of a serious illness by their intercession, not only beautified and fortified the Syrian city, but also built a beautiful church in their honour at Constantinople. Later, their relics were removed to Rome, and Pope Felix consecrated a church to them there. Physicians and pharmacists throughout Catholic Europe celebrated their memory on September 27th for centuries.

FABLES OF PLANT MEDICINES.

The Mandrake (Atropa Mandragora) has been exceptionally famous in medical history. Its reputation for the cure of sterility is alluded to in the story of Leah and Rachel (Genesis xxx, 14–16). It is not, however, certain that the Hebrew word “dudaim” should be translated mandrake. Various Biblical scholars have questioned this which was the Septuagint rendering. Lilies, violets, truffles, citrons, and other fruits have been suggested. In Cant., vii, 14, the same plant is described as fragrant, and the odour of the mandrake is said to be disagreeable. Mandragora is described in Chinese books of medicine, and from Hippocrates down to almost modern times every writer on the art of healing treats it with reverence. Hippocrates asserts that a small dose in wine, less than would occasion delirium, will relieve the deepest depression and anxiety. The roots of the mandrake are often of a forked shape and were supposed to represent the human form, some being regarded as male and others as female. This fancy originated with Pythagoras, who conferred on the mandrake the name of anthropomorphon. It was said that when the roots were drawn from the earth they gave a human shriek. Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet alludes to this superstition:

And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth

That living mortals hearing them run mad.

In Othello again Shakespeare refers to this medicine, and particularly to its alleged narcotic properties:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world.

In Antony and Cleopatra, too, Cleopatra says, “Give me to drink mandragora” (that she may sleep out the great gap of time while Antony is away); and Banquo in Macbeth, when he asks, “Or have we eaten of the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?” is believed to allude to the mandrake.

There is a good deal of evidence that mandragora was used in ancient and mediæval times not only as a soporific, but also as an anæsthetic. Dioscorides explicitly asserts this property of the root more than once. He describes a decoction of which a cupful is to be taken for severe pains, or “before amputations, or the use of the cautery, to prevent the pain of those operations.” Elsewhere he alludes to its employment in parturition, and in another passage dealing with a wine prepared from the external coat of the root, says, “The person who drinks it falls in a profound sleep, and remains deprived of sense three or four hours. Physicians apply this remedy when the necessity for amputation occurs, or for applying the cautery.” Pliny refers to the narcotic powers of the mandrake, and among later writers its effects are often described. Josephus mentions a plant which he calls Baaras, which cured demoniacs, but could only be procured at great risk, or by employing a dog to uproot it, the dog being killed in the process. This Baaras is supposed to have been mandrake. Dr. Lee in his Hebrew Lexicon quotes from a Persian authority an allusion to a similar root which, taken inwardly, “renders one insensible to the pain of even cutting off a limb.”

Baptista Porta describes the power of the mandrake in inducing deep sleep, and in A. G. Meissner’s “Skizzen,” published at Carlsruhe in 1782, there is a story of Weiss, surgeon to Augustus, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, who surreptitiously administered a potion (of what medicine is not stated) to his royal master, and during his insensibility cut off a mortifying foot.

Amaranth, Ambrosia, and Athanasia.

Amaranth is the name which has been given to the genus of plants of which Prince’s Feather and Love-Lies-Bleeding are species. This means immortal and is the word used in the Epistle of St. Peter (v, 4), the amaranthine crown of glory, or as translated in our version “the crown of glory that fadeth not away.” Milton refers to the “immortal amaranth, a flower which once in Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life began to bloom.”

Ambrosia, the food of the gods, sometimes alluded to as drink, and sometimes as a sweet-smelling ointment, was also referred to by Dioscorides and Pliny as a herb, but it is not known what particular plant they meant. It was reputed to be nine times sweeter than honey. The herb Ambrose of the old herbalists was the Chenopodium Botrys, but C. Ambroisioides (the oak of Jerusalem), the wild sage, and the field parsley have also borne the name. The Ambroisia of modern botanists is a plant of the wormwood kind.

Athanasia was abbreviated by the old herbalists into Tansy, and this herb acquired the fame due to its distinguished designation. In Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods, Jupiter tells Hercules to take with him the beautiful Ganymede, whom he has stolen from earth, “and when he has drunk of Athanasia (immortality) bring him back, and he shall be our cupbearer.” Naturally the ancients sought for that herb, Athanasia, which would yield immortality.

Myrrh.

Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyrus, King of Cyprus, having become pregnant, was driven from home by her father, and fled to Arabia. The story told by Ovid is that she had conceived a criminal passion for her father, and that by deception she had taken her mother’s place by his side one night. Lost in the desert and overcome by remorse, she had prayed the gods to grant that she should no longer remain among the living, nor be counted with the dead. Touched with pity for her, they changed her into the tree which yields the gum which to this day bears her name.

Nepenthe.

Nepenthe, or more correctly Nepenthes, is described by Homer in the Odyssey as an Egyptian plant which Helen, the wife of Menelaus, had received from Polydamna, wife of Thonis, King of Egypt. The word is compounded of ne, negation, and penthos, pain or affliction. Helen mixed it for Telemachus in “a mirth inspiring bowl” which would

Clear the cloudy front of wrinkled care,

And dry the tearful sluices of despair.

Its effects would last all through one day. No matter what horrors surrounded,

From morn to eve, impassive and serene

The man entranced would view the dreadful scene.

Much discussion of Homer’s drug has of course resulted from his description of these effects. Was it a mere poetic fancy of Homer’s and was the name his invention, or was there an Egyptian drug known in his time to which the properties he describes were attributed? Plutarch, Philostratus, and some other ancient commentators suppose that the poet is only representing in a materialistic form the charm of Helen’s conversation and manner. The difficulty about that interpretation is that he explicitly states that the remedy came from Egypt. Theophrastus credits the opopanax with similar properties to those which Homer claims, and Dioscorides is believed to allude to the same gum under the name of Nectarion, which he indicates to have been of Egyptian origin. This has been adopted by some old critics as the true nepenthes. Pliny asserts that Helenium was the plant which yielded the mirth-inspiring drug, but it is not clear that he means our elecampane. Borage and bugloss have also had their advocates, Galen supporting the latter. Rhazes voted for saffron. Cleopatra is assumed to have meant mandragora when she asked for some nepenthe to make her forget her sorrow while she was separated from Antony. Opium has of course been selected by many commentators, but it could hardly have furnished a mirth-inspiring bowl. Indian hemp or haschish seems to meet the requirements of the verse better than any other drug. There are also reasons for choosing hyoscyamus or stramonium. The Indian pitcher plants to which Linnaeus gave the name of nepenthes are out of the question. A learned contribution to this study may be found in the Bulletin de Pharmacie, Vol. V. (1813), by M. J. J. Virey.

Belladonna.

Atropa Belladonna is the subject of several legends. How it came by its several names it would be interesting to know. Atropa, from the eldest sister of the Fates, she who carried the scissors with which she cut the thread of life, is appropriate enough but not more to this than to any other poison plant. Belladonna—so-called because Italian ladies made a cosmetic from the berries with which to whiten their complexions; so-called because the Spanish ladies made use of the plant to dilate the pupils of their brilliant black eyes; so-called because Leucota, an Italian poisoner, used it to destroy beautiful women. These are among the explanations of the name which the old herbalists gave without troubling themselves about historical evidence. Belladonna is supposed to have been described by Dioscorides under the name of Morella furiosum lethale, and by Pliny as Strychnos manikon. It was used by Galen in cancerous affections, and its employment for this purpose was revived in the 17th century, infusions of leaves being administered both internally and externally. That it figured among the philtres of the sorcerers cannot be doubted. Like mandragora, it did not act by exciting amorous passions, but by rendering the victim helpless.

Centaury.

The lesser Centaury (Erythraea Centaurium) is alleged to owe its name to Chiron the Centaur, who is supposed to have taught medicine to Æsculapius. The story which associates Chiron with the plant has been given already.

Centaury.

Mint.

Mentha was a nymph of the infernal regions beloved of Pinto. Prosperine out of jealousy caused her to be metamorphosed into the plant which thus acquired her name.

Dittany.

Dittany, the origanum Dictamnus, was reputed to possess wonderful virtues for healing wounds. Æneas, wounded in a combat, was treated by Iapyx, who had been specially taught by Apollo, but his simples had no effect. Venus, touched by the sufferings of her son, thereupon descended from heaven in a cloud, gathered some dittany on Mount Ida, and secretly added it to the infusion with which Iapyx was vainly trying to relieve the hero. She added some ambrosial elixir, and suddenly the pain ceased, the flow of blood was arrested, the dart was easily drawn from the wound, and Æneas recovered his strength.

MYTHICAL ANIMALS.

The Phœnix.

The Phœnix was largely adopted by the alchemists as their emblem, and afterwards was a frequent sign used by pharmacists. According to Herodotus this bird, which was worshipped by the Egyptians, was of about the size of an eagle, with purple and gold plumage, and a purple crest. Its eyes sparkled like stars; it lived a solitary life in the Arabian desert, and either came to Heliopolis, the city of the sun, to die and be burned in the temple of that city, or its ashes were brought there by its successor. There was only one phœnix at the same time, and it lived for 500 years. The legends vary as to its longevity, but 500 years is the period usually assigned. When the phœnix knew that its time had come, it made its own funeral pyre out of spiced woods, and the sun provided the fire. Out of the marrow of its bones came a worm, which quickly grew into a new phœnix, who, after burying its parent in Egypt, returned to Arabia.

Phœnix.

The Talmud relates some curious legends of the phœnix, which the Jews believed to be immortal. One story is that when Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit she gave some to all the animals in the Garden of Eden, and that the phœnix was the only one which refused. Hence it escaped the curse of death which overtook the rest of the animal creation. Another legend is that when it was in the ark, and when all the other animals were clamouring to be fed, the phœnix was quiet. Noah, observing it, asked if it was not hungry, to which the phœnix replied, “I saw you were busy, so would not trouble you,” an answer which so pleased Noah that he blessed it with eternal life. In the book of Job, xxix, 18, recalling his earlier glory, the patriarch says, “Then I said I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand.” Many Jewish scholars believe that the word translated sand should be phœnix, and our Revised Version gives “phœnix” as an alternative rendering. It is easy to appreciate how aptly this would express Job’s idea. Some of the Hebrew commentators translate the verse in Ps. ciii, 5, “So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle,” by substituting phœnix for eagle.

The Unicorn

had not quite passed into the region of fable when Pomet wrote his History of Drugs very early in the 18th century, for though he does not believe in the animal himself, he quotes from other authors not so very long antecedent to him who did. He states, however, that what was then sold as unicorn’s horn was in fact the horn or tusk of the narwhal, a tooth which extends to the length of six to ten feet. The unicorn, or monoceros was referred to by Aristotle, Pliny, Aelian, and other ancient writers, and in later times it was described by various travellers who, if they had not seen it themselves, had met with persons who had.

Unicorn (after Bochaut’s Hierozoicon).

The details given by Aristotle are supposed to have been derived from Ctesias, whose description of the Indian wild ass is what was adopted with many embellishments for the fabulous unicorn. It is this author who first notices the marvellous alexipharmic properties so long attributed to the unicorn’s horn. Drinking vessels, he says, were made of the horn, and those who used them were protected against poison, convulsions, and epilepsy, provided that either just before or just after taking the poison they drank wine or water from the cup made from the horn. In the middle ages the horn of the unicorn was esteemed a certain cure for the plague, malignant fevers, bites of serpents or of mad dogs. It was to be made into a jelly to which a little saffron and cochineal were to be added. Some writers allege that poisoned wounds could be cured by merely holding the horn of a unicorn opposite the wound. These horns are said, however, to have cost about ten times the price of gold, so that not many sufferers could avail themselves of them as a remedy.

The unicorn is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, the translators of the Authorised Version having followed the Septuagint in which the Hebrew word Re’em was rendered by the Greek term Monokeros, which corresponds with our unicorn. It is agreed that the word in the original had no reference to the fabulous animal, but that the wild ox, or ox antelope, a strong untameable beast, known in Palestine, was intended. In the Revised Version wild ox is uniformly substituted for unicorn. This animal is believed to have been the Urus mentioned by Julius Cæsar as existing in his time in the forests of Central Europe, and not entirely extinct until some 500 or 600 years ago.

The translators evidently found a difficulty in associating the unicorn with the Hebrew Re’em in Deut. xxxiii, 17, where we read of “the horns of the unicorns.” In the Hebrew the horns are the plural but Re’em is singular. But the horns of the unicorn would have been a contradiction in terms.

The allusions to the unicorn in Shakespeare all seem to show unbelief in the legends. In the Tempest (Act 3, sc. 3) Sebastian says when music is heard in the wood, “Now I will believe that there are unicorns.” In Julius Cæsar (Act 2, sc. 1), Decius Brutus, recounting Cæsar’s superstitions, says, “He loves to hear that unicorns may be betrayed with trees”; and Timon of Athens raves about the unicorn among the legendary animal beliefs (Act 4, sc. 3). An authority on heraldry, Guillim, in 1660, however, comments thus on the scepticism of his contemporaries: “Some have made doubt whether there be any such beast as this or not. But the great esteem of his horns (in many places to be seen) may take away that needless scruple.”

The unicorn was introduced into the British royal arms by James I., who substituted it for the red dragon with which Henry VII. had honoured a Welsh contingent which helped him to win the battle of Bosworth fighting under the banner of Cadwallydr. The unicorn had been a Scotch emblem for several reigns before that of James I. (or VI.). The Scottish pound of that period was known by the name of a unicorn from the device stamped on it.

Pomet tells us that in 1553 a unicorn’s horn was brought to the King of France which was valued at £20,000 sterling; and that one presented to Charles I. of England, supposed to be the largest one known, measured 7 feet long, and weighed 13 lbs. It is also related that Edward IV. gave to the Duke of Burgundy who visited him, a gold cup set with jewels, and with a piece of unicorn’s horn worked into the metal. One large unicorn’s horn was owned by the city of Dresden and was valued at 75,000 thalers. Occasionally a piece was sawn off to be used for medical purposes. It was a city regulation that two persons of princely rank should be present whenever this operation was performed. This was in the sixteenth century.

The unicorn was a frequent sign used by the old apothecaries. It was also adopted by goldsmiths. The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are supported by unicorns.

Dragon.

The Dragon

was only associated with pharmacy by means of the “blood” which took his name and was at one time popularly supposed to be yielded by him. I know of no evidence in support of this statement, but it is sometimes so reported. According to Pharmacographia dragon’s blood was first obtained from Socotra and taken with other merchandise by the Arabs to China. Possibly it was there that it acquired the name of dragon’s blood, for the dragon has always been a much revered beast in that country. Dioscorides called this product cinnabar. I find in old books that the fruit of the calamus draconis on which the resin collects along with scales (and this is the source of our present supply), when stripped of its skin shows a design of a dragon. Lemery quoting from “Monard and several other authors,” says, “When the skin is taken off from this fruit there appears underneath the figure of a dragon as it is represented by the painters, with wings expanded, a slender neck, a hairy or bristle back, long tail, and feet armed with talons. They pretend,” he adds, “that this figure gave the name to tree. But I believe this circumstance fabulous because I never knew it confirmed by any traveller.”

The Dragon Tree (Dracona Draco).

The tree illustrated above is at Teneriffe, and is, perhaps, the oldest tree in the world. Humboldt, in 1799, found its trunk was forty-eight feet in circumference.]

Very likely the shrewd Arabs invented the name dragon’s blood to please their Chinese customers, and it may be therefore that the tree acquired its name from the resin, not the resin from the tree.

Dragon’s blood was given in old pharmacy as a mild astringent, and was one of the ingredients in the styptic pills of Helvetius. It was also included in the formula for Locatelli’s balsam. Now it is chiefly used as a varnish colouring, as for example in varnishes for violins. In some parts of the country it has a reputation as a charm to restore love. Maidens whose swains are unfaithful or neglectful procure a piece, wrap it in paper, and throw it on the fire, saying:

May he no pleasure or profit see

Till he come back again to me.

[Cuthbert Bede in Notes and Queries.

Series 1., Vol. II., p. 242.]

Dragons are mentioned many times in the Authorised Version of the Old Testament. In most of these instances jackals are substituted in the Revised Version, and only once, I think, the alternative of crocodiles is suggested in the margin, though in many instances it would obviously be a better rendering, as has been pointed out by many scholars.

THE SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY

which seeks to explain how the old myths, some poetical, many disgusting, and all impossible, originated, is a modern study which has fascinated a large number of learned scholars. The old notion that they were merely allegorical forms of representing facts and phenomena is not tenable in view of the universality of the legends among the least cultivated races. Professor Max Müller initiated a lively controversy some forty years ago by suggesting that myths were a consequence of language, a disease of language, as Mr. Andrew Lang has termed it. He traced many of the Greek myths to Aryan sources, and insisted that they had developed from the words or phrases used to describe natural phenomena. Thus, for example, he explained the myth of Apollo and Daphne (mentioned on page 9) by supposing that a phrase existed describing the Sun following, or chasing, the Dawn. He even maintained that the Sanskrit Ahana, dawn, was the derivation of Daphne. Words, of course, were invented to convey some mental conception; that conception, while it was intelligible, would (according to Max Müller’s system) be developed into a story. The argument was most ingeniously worked out, but it has not proved capable of satisfying the conditions of the problem. How could it suffice, for instance, to explain the occurrence of almost identical myths treasured by the most degraded and widely separated peoples? The more likely theory is that in a very early stage of the savage mind the untrained imagination tended inevitably to associate the facts of nature with certain monstrous, obscene, and irrational forms. Perhaps the most able exposition of this view, or something like it, expounded within moderate limits, is to be found in an article on Mythology contributed to the “Encyclopædia Britannica” by Mr. Andrew Lang.

II
PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS

“Go up into Gilead and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt: in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for thee.”

So wrote the prophet Jeremiah (xlvi, 11), and the passage seems to suggest that Egypt in his time was famous for its medicines. Herodotus, who narrated his travels in Egypt some two or three hundred years later, conveys the same impression, and the records of the papyri which have been deciphered within the last century confirm the opinion.

Whatever may have been the case with other arts and sciences, it does not appear that much progress was made in medicine in Egypt during the thousands of years of its history which have been more or less minutely traced. The discovery of remedies by various deities, by Isis especially, or the indication of compounds invented for the relief of the sufferings of the Sun-god Ra, before he retired to his heavenly rest, is the burden of all the documents on which our knowledge of Egyptian pharmacy is founded. It was criminal to add to or vary the perfect prescriptions thus revealed, a provision which made advance impossible to the extent to which it was enforced.

“So wisely was medicine managed in Egypt,” says Herodotus, “that no doctor was permitted to practise any but his own branch.” That is to say, the doctors were all specialists; some treated the eyes, others the teeth, the head, the skin, the stomach, and so forth. The doctors were all priests, and were paid by the Treasury, but they were allowed to take fees besides. Their recipes were often absurd and complicated, but there is reason to suppose that their directions in regard to diet and hygiene were sensible, and there is evidence that they paid some attention to disinfection and cleanliness.

The physicians were always priests, but all the priests were not physicians; Clement of Alexandria says those who actually practised were the lowest grade of priests. They prepared as well as prescribed medicines, but relied perhaps more on magic, amulets, and invocations than on drugs. The secrets of magic were, however, especially the property of the highest grade of priests, the sages and soothsayers. According to Celsus, the medical science of Egypt was founded on the belief that the human body was divided into thirty-six parts, each one being under the control of a separate demon or divinity. The art of medicine consisted largely in knowing the names of these demons so as to invoke the right one when an ailment had to be treated.

Symbolical names were given to many of the herbs used as medicines. The plant of Osiris was the ivy, the vervain was called Tears of Isis, saffron was the blood of Thoth, and the squill was the eye of Typhon.

Until the mystery of the Egyptian writings was unlocked, the key being found about a century ago in the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, of which Napoleon first took possession, and which was subsequently taken from the French by the British, and is now a familiar object in the British Museum, knowledge of Egyptian science and life was limited to the information which came to us from Greek and Roman authors; and this was often fabulous. Now, however, the daily life of the subjects of the Pharaohs has been revealed in wonderful minuteness by the papyri which have been deciphered.

Among the papyri preserved in various museums a number of medical and pharmaceutical records have been found. Some medical prescriptions inscribed on a papyrus in the British Museum (No. 10,059) are said to be as old as the time of Khufu (Cheops), reckoned to have been about 3700 years B.C. Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, the Director of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, informs me that these prescriptions have not been translated, and that no photograph of them is available. The Papyrus itself may be of about 1400 B.C., but it refers to some medical lore of the time of Khufu, as a modern English book might quote some prescriptions of the time of Alfred the Great.

By far the most complete representation of the medicine and pharmacy of ancient Egypt is comprised in the famous Papyrus Ebers, which was discovered by Georg Ebers, Egyptologist and romancist, in the winter of 1872–3.

Ebers and a friend were spending that winter in Egypt, and during their residence at Thebes they made the acquaintance of a well-to-do Arab from Luxor who appeared to know of some ancient papyri and other relics. He first tried to pass off to them some of no particular value, but Ebers was an expert and was not to be imposed on. Ultimately the Arab brought to him a Papyrus which he stated had been discovered fourteen years previously between the knees of a mummy in the Theban Necropolis. After examination Ebers was convinced of its genuineness and bought it. His opinion was fully confirmed by all the authorities when he brought it to Germany, and the contents have proved to be of extreme value and interest in the delineation of the medical manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians.

This papyrus was wrapped in mummy cloths and packed in a metal case. It is a single roll of yellow-brown papyrus of the finest quality, about 12 inches wide and more than 22 yards long. It is divided into 108 columns each separately numbered. The numbering reaches actually 110, but there are no numbers 28 and 29, though there is no hiatus in the literary composition. Ebers supposes there may have been some religious reason for not using the missing numbers. The writing is in black ink, but the heads of sections and weights and measures are written with red ink. The word “nefr” signifying “good” is written in the margin against many of the formulæ in a different writing and in a paler ink, evidently by someone who had used the book. It has been considered possible that this was one of the six hermetic books on medicine mentioned by Clement of Alexandria; but it is more likely to have been a popular collection of medical formulæ from various sources.

Internal evidence, satisfactory to experts, the writing, the name of a king, and particularly a calendar attached to one of the sections, establish the date of this document. The king named was Tjesor-ka-Ra, and his throne-name was Amen-hetep I., the second king of the 18th dynasty. The date assigned to the papyrus is about the year 1552 B.C., which, according to the conventional scriptural chronology, would correspond with about the 21st year of the life of Moses. If this estimation is approximately correct it follows that the prescriptions of the papyrus are considerably older than those given in the book of Exodus for the holy anointing oil and for incense, which in old works are sometimes quoted as the earliest records of “the art of the apothecary.”

The papyrus begins by declaring that the writer had brought help from the King of Eternity from Heliopolis; from the Goddess Mother to Sais, she who alone could ensure protection. Speech had been given him to tell how all pains and all mortal sicknesses might be driven away. Here were chapters which would teach how to conjure away the diseases “from this my head, from this my neck, from this my arm, from this my flesh, from these my limbs. For Ra pities the sick; his teacher is Thuti” (Thoth or Hermes) “who has given him words to make this book and to save instructions to scholars and to physicians who will follow them, so that what is dark shall be unriddled. For he whom the God loveth, he maketh alive; I am one who loveth the God, and he maketh me alive.”

Here are the words to speak when preparing the remedies for all parts of the body: “As it shall be a thousand times. This is the book of the healing of all sicknesses. That Isis may make free, make free. May Isis heal me as she healed Horus of all pains which his brother Set had done to him who killed his father Osiris. Oh, Isis, thou great magician, heal me and save me from all wicked, frightful, and red things, from demoniac and deadly diseases and illnesses of every kind. Oh, Ra. Oh, Osiris.”

The form of words to be said when taking a remedy:—“Come remedy, come drive it out of this my heart, out of these my limbs; Oh strong magic power with the remedy.” On giving an emetic the conjuration to be spoken was as follows:—“Oh, Demon, who dwellest in the body of ... son of ...; Oh, thou, whose father is called the bringer down of heads, whose name is Death, whose name is accursed for all eternity, come forth.”

The following shows how the Egyptian physicians diagnosed a liver complaint: “When thou findest one with hardening of his re-het; when eating he feels a pressure in the bowels, and the stomach is swollen; feels ill while walking; look at him when lying outstretched, and if thou findest his bowels hot, and a hardening in his stomach, say to thyself, This is a liver complaint. Then make a remedy according to the secrets of botanical knowledge from the plant pa-chestat and from dates cut up. Mix it and put in water. The patient may drink it on four mornings to purge his body. If after that thou findest both sides of the bowels, namely, the right one hot and the left one cold, then say, That is bile. Look at him again, and if thou findest his bowels entirely cold then say to thyself, His liver is cleaned and purified; he has taken the medicine, the medicine has taken effect.”

Superstitious notions in connection with medicine are not more apparent in the Ebers Papyrus than they are in any English herbal of three or four hundred years ago. The majority of the drugs prescribed are of vegetable origin, but there is a fair proportion of animal products, and as in comparatively modern pharmacopœias these seem to have been valued as remedies in the ratio of their nastiness. Lizards’ blood, teeth of swine, putrid meat, stinking fat, moisture from pigs’ ears, milk from a lying-in woman; the excreta of adults, of children, of donkeys, antelopes, dogs, cats, and other animals, and the dirt left by flies on the walls, are among the remedies met with in the papyrus.

Among the drugs named in the papyrus and identified are oil, wine, beer (sweet and bitter), beer froth, yeast, vinegar, turpentine, various gums and resins, figs, sebestens, myrrh, mastic, frankincense, opium, wormwood, aloes, cummin, peppermint, cassia, carraway, coriander, anise, fennel, saffron, sycamore and cyprus woods, lotus flowers, linseed, juniper berries, henbane, and mandragora.

There are certain substances, evidently metals by the suffixes, but they have not been exactly identified. Neither gold, silver, nor tin is included. One is supposed to be sulphur, another, electrum (a combination of gold and silver), and another alluded to as “excrement divine,” remains mysterious. Iron, lead, magnesia, lime, soda, nitre and vermilion are among the mineral products which were then used in medicine.

It need hardly be said that scores of drugs named have only been guessed at, and in regard to a number of them, it has not been possible to get as far as this.

Most of the prescriptions are fairly simple, but there are exceptions. There is a poultice with thirty-five ingredients. Here is a specimen of rather complicated pharmacy. It is ordered for what seems to have been a common complaint of the stomach called setyt. Seeds of the sweet woodruff, seeds of mene, and the plant called A’am, were to be reduced to powder and mixed. Then seven stones had to be heated at a fire. On these, one by one, some of the powder was to be sprinkled while the stone was hot; it was then covered with a new pot in the bottom of which a hole had been made. A reed was fitted to the hole and the vapour inhaled. “Afterwards eat some fat,” says the writer.

Reduced Facsimile of a page of the Papyrus Ebers.

The Papyrus Ebers has been reproduced by photography in facsimile, and published in two magnificent volumes by Mr. Wilhelm Engelmann, of Leipzig. Mr. Engelmann has kindly permitted me to copy one of the pages from his work for this book. The above is a reduced reproduction of page 47 of the Papyrus. The photograph was taken at the British Museum.

The first line of this page is the end of the instructions for applying a mixture of powders rubbed down with date wine to wounds and skin diseases to heal them. That compound was made by the god Seb, the god of the earth, for the god Ra. Then follows a complicated prescription devised by the goddess Nut, the goddess of heaven, also for the god Ra, and like the last to apply to wounds. It prescribes brickdust, pebble, soda, and sea-salt, to be boiled in oils with some groats and other vegetable matter. Isis next supplies a formula to relieve Ra of pains in the head. It contains opium, coriander, absinth, juniper berries, and honey. This was to be applied to the head. Three other formulas for pains in the head, the last for a pain on one side of the head (migraine), are given, and then there is a break in the manuscript, and afterwards some interesting instructions are given for the medicinal employment of the ricinus (degm) tree. The stems infused in water will make a lotion which will cure headache; the berries chewed with beer will relieve constipation; the berries crushed in oil will make a woman’s hair grow; and pressed into a salve will cure abscesses if applied every morning for ten days. The paragraph ends (but on the next page), as many of them do, with the curious idiom, “As it shall be a thousand times.” The translation is given in full (in German) in Dr. Joachim’s Papyros Ebers. Das älteste Buch über Heilkunde (Berlin, Georg. Reimer. 1890).

To draw the blood from a wound:—Foment it four times with a mixture made from wax, fat, date wine, honey, and boiled horn; these ingredients boiled with a certain quantity of water.

To prevent the immoderate crying of children a mixture of the seeds of the plant Sheben with some fly-dirt is recommended. It is supposed that Sheben may have been the poppy. Incidentally it is remarked that if a new-born baby cries “ny” that is a good sign; but it is a bad sign if it cries “mbe.”

To prevent the hair turning grey anoint it with the blood of a black calf which has been boiled in oil; or with the fat of a rattlesnake. When it falls out one remedy is to apply a mixture of six fats, namely those of the horse, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cat, the snake, and the ibex. To strengthen it anoint with the tooth of a donkey crushed in honey.

A few other prescriptions are appended.

As Purges:—Mix milk, one part, yeast and honey, two parts each. Boil and strain. A draught of this to be taken every morning for four days. Pills compounded of equal parts of honey, absinth powder, and onion. In another formula “kesebt” fruits are ordered with other ingredients. Ebers conjectures that kesebt may have been the castor oil tree.

For Headache:—Equal parts of frankincense, cummin, berries of u’an tree and goosegrease are to be boiled together; the head to be anointed with the mixture.

For Worms:—Resin of acanthus, peppermint flowers, lettuce, and “as” plant. Equal parts to make a plaster.

For too much urine (diabetes):—Twigs of kadet plant ¼, grapes ⅛, honey ¼, berries of u’an tree 1/32, sweet beer 1⅙.

As a Tonic:—Figs, sebestens, grapes, yeast, frankincense, cummin, berries of u’an tree, wine, goosegrease, and sweet beer are recommended.

An Application for Sore Eyes. Dried excrement of a child 1, honey 1, in fresh milk.

To make the hair grow:—Oil of the Nile horse 1, powder of mentha montana 1, myrrh 1, mespen corn 1, vitriol of lead 1. Anoint. Another formula prescribed for the same purpose was prepared for Schesch (a queen of the 3rd dynasty) and consisted of equal parts of the heel of the greyhound (from Abyssinia), of date blossoms, and of asses’ hoofs boiled in oil.

A long formula for an ointment “which the god Ra made for himself” contains honey, wax, frankincense, onions, and a number of unidentified plants. The dust of alabaster and powdered statues are prescribed as applications for wounds.

To stop Diarrhœa:—Green bulbs (? onions) ⅛, freshly cooked groats ⅛, oil and honey ¼, wax 1/16, water ⅓ dena (a dena is about a pint). Take four days.

A plaster to remove pains from one side of the stomach:—Boil equal parts of lettuce and dates in oil, and apply.

Medicines against worms are numerous. Heftworms, believed to be thread worms, are treated with pomegranate bark, sea-salt, ricinus, absinth, and other unidentified drugs. For tape worms, mandrake fruits, castor oil, peppermint, a preparation of lead, and other drugs are prescribed.

Remedies which the God Su (god of the air), the God Seb (god of the earth), the Goddess Nut (goddess of the sky), and other divinities had devised are comprised in this collection. This is an application which Isis prescribed for Ra’s headache:—Coriander, opium, absinth, juniper, (another fruit), and honey.

Remedies are also prescribed in this papyrus for diseases of the stomach, the abdomen, and the urinary bladder; for the cure of swellings of the glands in the groin; for the treatment of the eye, for ulcers of the head, for greyness of the hair, and for promoting its growth; to heal and strengthen the nerves; to cure diseases of the tongue, to strengthen the teeth, to remove lice and fleas; to banish pain; to sweeten the breath; and to strengthen the organs of hearing and of smell.

Quantities are indicated on the prescriptions by perpendicular lines thus:

one,

two,

three. Each of these lines represents a unit. Ebers calls the unit a drachm and supposes it to be equivalent to the Arabic dirhem, about forty-eight English grains. The Egyptian system of numeration was decimal. Up to nine lines were used;

was ten, and two, three or more of these figures followed each other up to ninety. Then came

a hundred,

a thousand, and so on. Fractions were shown by the figure

, and this with three dots under it meant one-third, with four dots one-fourth, or with the 10 sign under it,

one-tenth. Half was represented by

. The unit of liquid measure is believed to have been the tenat, equal to three-fifths of a litre, or rather more than an English pint.

In the British Museum “Guide” Dr. Budge quotes the following prescription “for driving away wrinkles of the face,” and gives the same in hieroglyphics:—“Ball of incense, wax, fresh oil, and cypress berries, equal parts. Crush, and rub down, and put in new milk, and apply it to the face for six days. Take good heed.” Generally medicines are directed to be taken or applied for four days; the ingredients are very often four; and in many cases incantations are to be four times repeated. The Pythagoreans swore by the number 4, and probably their master acquired his reverence for that figure from Egypt.

A sacred perfume called kyphi is prescribed to perfume the house and clothes for sanitary reasons. It was composed of myrrh, juniper berries, frankincense, cyprus wood, aloes wood, calamus of Asia, mastic, and styrax.

Among the Greek Papyri discovered in the last decade of the 19th century at Oxyrinchus one quoted by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in their work on these papyri (Vol. II., p. 134) gives about a dozen formulas for applications for the earache. These are believed to have been written in the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. One is:—Dilute some gum with balsam of lilies; add honey and rose-extract. Twist some wool with the oil in it round a probe, warm, and drop in. Onion juice, the gall of an ox, the sap of a fir tree, alum and myrrh, and frankincense in sweet wine, are among the other applications recommended.

III
PHARMACY IN THE BIBLE

Pour bien entendre le Vieux Testament il est absolument nécessaire d’approfondir l’Histoire Naturelle, aussi bien que les mœurs des Orientaux. On y trouve à peu près trois cents noms de végétaux; je ne sais combien de noms tirés du règne animal, et un grand nombre qui désignent des pierres précieuses.—T. D. Michaelis, Göttingen, 1790.

To some extent the habits and practices of the Israelites were based on those of the Egyptians. But in the matter of medicines the differences are more notable than the resemblances. In Egypt the practice of medicine was entirely in the hands of the priesthood, and was largely associated with magical arts. It appears, too, that the Egyptian practitioners had acquired experience of a fairly wide range of internal medicines. Among the Israelites the priests did not practise medicine at all. Some of the prophets did, and they were expected to exercise healing powers. Elijah and Elisha were frequently called upon for help in this way, and the prescription of Isaiah of a lump of figs to be laid on Hezekiah’s boil (2 Kings, xx, 7) will be recalled. But among the Israelites physicians formed a distinct profession, though it cannot be said that in all the history covered by the Scriptures they performed the same functions. The physicians of Joseph’s household whom he commanded to embalm his father (Genesis 1, 2) were rather apothecaries. That, of course, was in Egypt. There is a curious allusion to physicians in 2 Chronicles, xvi, 12, where it is said that when Asa was exceedingly ill with a disease in his feet “he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.” Possibly this means that he employed physicians who practised incantations. Some commentators think, however, that the passage has reference to himself, his name signifying a physician. In the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus physicians are alluded to in language which suggests that at the time it was written there were doubts about the necessity of physicians. Until recently this work was attributed to Joshua or Jesus, the son of Sirach. It so appeared in the Greek manuscripts. But a Hebrew manuscript discovered in 1896 shows that the author was Simon, son of Jeshua, and critics agree that the date of its composition was rather less than 200 years before Christ.

This book, “Ecclesiasticus,” is professedly a collection of the grave and short sentences of wise men. Those relating to medicine and physicians are brought together in the first part of the 38th chapter. They appear to be quoted from different authors, and several of the verses are merely parallels. Thus we have, “Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him; for the Lord hath created him.” And again, “Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him.” But the author of a verse inserted between these appears to regard the physician as less essential. He says, “My son, in thy sickness be not negligent; but pray unto the Lord, and He will make thee whole.” The 15th verse is somewhat enigmatic, and may or may not be complimentary. It runs, “He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician.” In the recently discovered manuscript is the passage not previously known, “He that sinneth against God will behave arrogantly before his physician.” Probably into this may be read the converse idea that he that behaves arrogantly towards his physician sinneth before God.

In the same chapter we are told that “the Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them.” Possibly this was directed against the Jewish prejudice against bitter flavours. Then the writer asks, “Was not the water made sweet with wood?” and he says “of such” (the medicines) men to whom God hath given skill heal men and take away their pains; and “of such doth the apothecary make a confection.”

The idea that physicians get their skill direct from God is prominent in these passages, and is perhaps truer than we are willing to admit in this age of curricula and examinations.

Medicines of the Jews.

The Papyrus Ebers was supposed by its discoverer to have been compiled about the time when Moses was living in Egypt, a century before the Exodus. There is no evidence in the Bible that the Jews brought with them from the land of their captivity any of the medical lore which that and other papyri not much later reveal. It is not certain that in the whole of the Bible there is any distinct reference to a medicine for internal administration. It is assumed that Rachel wanted the mandrakes which Reuben found to make a remedy for sterility, but that is not definitely stated. Nor is it certain that the Hebrew word Dudaim, translated mandrakes, meant the shrub we know by that name. Violets, lilies, jasmin, truffles, mushrooms, citrons, melons, and other fruits have been proposed by various critics. There are three passages in Jeremiah where Balm of Gilead is mentioned in a way which may have meant that it was to be used as an internal remedy. These are c. viii. v. 12, c. xlvi. v. 11, and c. li. v. 8. In two of these the expression “take balm” is used, but it is quite possible to understand this as meaning employ balm, and in all the passages the sense is metaphorical.

The Mishnah, the book of Jewish legends, which forms part of the Talmud, mentions a treatise on medicines believed to have been compiled by Solomon. Hezekiah is said to have “hidden” this work for fear that the people should trust to that wisdom rather than to the Lord. The Talmud also cites a treatise on pharmacology called Megillat-Sammanin, but neither of these works has been preserved. In the Talmud an infusion of onions in wine is mentioned as a means of healing an issue of blood. It was necessary at the same time for someone to say to the patient, “Be healed of thine issue of blood.” This remedy and the formula to be spoken are strongly reminiscent of Egypt.

The Talmud, though it was compiled in the early centuries of our era, undoubtedly reflects the Jewish life and thought of many previous ages, and consequently indicates fairly enough the condition of therapeutics among the ancient Hebrews. Among its miscellaneous items are cautions against the habit of taking medicine constantly also against having teeth extracted needlessly. It advises that patients should be permitted to eat anything they specially crave after. Among its aphorisms are salt after meals, water after wine, onions for worms, peppered wine for stomach disorders, injection of turpentine for stone in the bladder. People may eat more before 40, drink more after 40. Magic is plentifully supplied for the treatment of disease. To cure ague, for instance, you must wait by a cross-road until you see an ant carrying a load. Then you must pick up the ant and its load, place them in a brass tube which you must seal up, saying as you do this, “Oh ant, my load be upon thee, and thy load be upon me.”

Towards the time of Christ the sect of the Essenes, ascetic in their habits and communistic in their principles, cultivated, according to Josephus, the art of medicine, “collecting roots and minerals” for this purpose. Their designation may have been derived from this occupation.

The Apothecary

is, or was, familiar to readers of the Old Testament, but in the revised translation he has partially disappeared. The earliest allusion to him occurs in Exodus xxx., 25, where the holy anointing oil is prescribed to be made “after the art of the apothecary”; and in the same chapter, v. 29, incense is similarly ordered to be made into a confection “after the art of the apothecary, tempered together.” The Revised Version gives in both cases “the art of the perfumer,” and instead of the incense being “tempered together” (c. xxx, v, 35) the instruction is now rendered “seasoned with salt.” A further mention of the art of the apothecary, or in the Revised Version, the perfumer, is found again in connection with the same compounds in Exodus xxxvii., 29. In 2 Chronicles xvi., 14, the apothecaries’ art in the preparation of sweet odours and divers kinds of spices for the burial of King Asa is again alluded to, and this time without any apparent reason the Revised Version retains the old term. The next quotation (Nehemiah, iii, 8) is particularly interesting. The Authorised Version says “Hananiah, the son of one of the apothecaries,” worked on the repair of the walls of Jerusalem by the side of Haraiah of the goldsmiths. In the Revised Version Hananiah is described as “one of the apothecaries.” Hebrew scholars tell us that the idiom employed shows that these men belonged to guilds of apothecaries and goldsmiths respectively; a pretty little insight into ancient Jewish trade history.

In Ecclesiastes, x, 1, we come to the oft quoted parallel, “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour,” this being likened to a little folly spoiling a reputation for wisdom. The revisers have substituted perfumer for apothecary in this text. They certainly ought to have changed ointment for pomade in the same text to explain their view of the meaning of the passage.

In the passage already quoted from the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, xxxviii, 8, “Of such doth the apothecary make a confection,” and in xlix, 1, “The remembrance of Josias is like the composition of the perfume made by the art of the apothecary,” the revisers have not seen fit to alter the trade designation.

The words translated apothecary, compound, ointment, and confection in the passages cited, and in many others in the Hebrew scriptures, are all inflexions of the root verb, Rakach (in which the final ch is a strong aspirate or guttural). Gesenius says of this root, “The primary idea appears to be in making the spices small which are mixed with the oil.” The apothecary, therefore, may be regarded as a crusher, or pounder.

Pharmacy, Disgraceful.

The Greek word, pharmakeia, the original of our “pharmacy,” had a rather mixed history in its native language. It does not seem to have exactly deteriorated, as words in all languages have a habit of doing, for from the earliest times it was used concurrently to describe the preparation of medicines, and also through its association with drugs and poisons and the production of philtres, as equivalent to sorcery and witchcraft. It is in this latter sense that it is employed exclusively in the New Testament. St. Paul, for instance (in Galatians, v, 20), enumerating the works of the flesh names it after idolatry. The word appears as witchcraft in the Authorised, and as sorcery in the Revised Version. Pharmakeia or one of its derivatives also occurs several times in the Book of Revelations (ix, 21; xviii, 23; xxi, 8, and xxii, 15), and is uniformly rendered sorcery or sorcerers in both versions, and is associated with crime. Hippocrates uses the verb Pharmakeuein with the meaning of to purge, but he elsewhere employs the same word with the meaning of to drug a person, to give a stupefying draught. In Homer the word “Pharmaka” appears in the senses of both noxious and healing drugs, and also to represent enchanted potions or philtres. The word “pharmakoi” in later times came to be used for the criminals who were sacrificed for the benefit of the communities, and thus it acquired its lowest stage of signification. It is remarkable and unusual for a word which has once fallen as this one did to recover its respectable position again.

DRUGS NAMED IN THE BIBLE.

Balm of Gilead