James’s Powder.
The antimonial preparation which attained the most permanent popularity was Dr. James’s Fever Powders. The inventor, Dr. Robert James, was a life-long friend of Dr. Johnson. The two went to school together at Lichfield, in which town James at one time practised. He was also in practice in Sheffield and Birmingham before he came to London. He first settled in Southampton Street, Covent Garden, but removed later to Craven Street, Strand. He was a man of considerable attainments, and is described as cordial, impetuous, improvident, but thoroughly loved by his associates. He was the author of a massive Dictionary of Medicine, and Dr. Johnson said of him: “No man brought more mind to his profession.” Dr. Munk, in his “Roll of the College of Physicians,” adds to this, however: “But he tarnished the fair fame he might otherwise have attained by patenting his powder and falsifying the specification.” Dr. James died in 1776 at the age of 73.
Dr. James.
The patent for his fever powder was taken out in 1747. It is on record that Johnson introduced him to John Newbery, a noted bookseller of the time, who had a shop at the corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard and Ludgate Hill. Newbery became the agent and part proprietor of the medicine. It is still owned and prepared by the direct descendants of John Newbery, who carry on business in Charterhouse Square.
The specification of the patent directs to “Take antimony, calcine it with a continual protracted heat in a flat unglazed earthen vessel, adding to it from time to time a sufficient quantity of any animal oil and salt well dephlegmated; then boil it in melted nitre for a considerable time, and separate the powder from the nitre by dissolving it in water.” The doctor adds to his specification a process for a mercurial pill with antimony, made by amalgamating equal parts of martial regulus of antimony with “pure silver” (sic), adding a proportionable quantity of sal ammoniac, then distilling off the mercury and using it again. This performance was to be repeated nine or ten times, the mercury being at last dissolved in spirits of nitre (nitric acid), distilled to dryness, the caput mortuum calcined till it was of a golden colour, and this powder, after spirits of wine had been burnt upon it, was ready to be made into pills. Dr. James gave the moderate dose of the antimonial powder at 30 grains, and that of the mercurial at 1 grain.
Paris says that James “usually combined his antimonial powder with some mercurial, and always followed it up with large doses of bark.” He suggests that the adjuncts largely accounted for the success of the medicine.
The fever powder acquired great fame in James’s lifetime, and after his death imitations were numerous. One of these is of interest because of an advertisement against it written by Dr. Johnson. The man who ventured to imitate the genuine product was named Hawes, and he had once been in the employment of Dr. James. He professed that he had learned how to make the powder during his service, but Dr. James signed an affidavit against his pretensions a short time before his death. Later Hawes asserted that when the doctor made that affidavit he was not in the possession of his mental faculties. To this Francis Newbery replied by an advertisement quoting affidavits by many of James’s patients and acquaintances. A paragraph was appended which Newbery himself stated was written by Dr. Johnson, and as a section of literature rather foreign to the famous author, it seems worthy of reproduction. It ran thus:—
“The public will now be fully enabled to judge of Mr. Hawes’s pretensions to the knowledge of this medicine; and they will determine what degree of credit they ought to pay to the assertions of a man who has made so daring an attempt to impose upon their understanding; who in contradiction to Dr. James’s deposition has represented himself as possessing a secret with which he was never entrusted, and as having performed operations at which he was never present; and who, to invalidate the Doctor’s testimony, has declared him to be reduced to fatuity at a time when the vigour of his mind was known and acknowledged by the physician and surgeon who attended him, and by patients of the highest rank who continued to entrust him with health and life.”
In 1774 Dr. James patented an “analeptic pill.” It was composed of his own fever powder with pil. rufi and gum ammoniacum, the last two ingredients to be dissolved in an underground cave furnished with the conductors of electric fire.
The first official substitute for James’s powder was introduced into the London Pharmacopœia of 1787. The formula was devised by a Dr. Higgins, and the experiments were made in the laboratory of the Society of Apothecaries. It was composed of equal parts of tersulphuret of antimony and hartshorn shavings. This was found to be stronger than the original, and further experiments were made for the College by Dr. Pearson, who reported in 1791 that James’s powder consisted of about equal parts of oxide of antimony and phosphate of lime. The formulas in the London Pharmacopœias of 1809 and 1824 were consequently reduced in strength, one part of the antimonial salt with two parts of horn shavings being substituted. The ingredients were heated to redness in a crucible and afterwards powdered. For the Pharmacopœia of 1851, Mr. Richard Phillips experimented, and mainly confirmed Dr. Pearson’s results. The formula remained as in 1824. Meanwhile the Edinburgh Pharmacopœia continued to adopt the stronger combination, while the Dublin Pharmacopœia prescribed a different preparation altogether, tartarised antimony and phosphate of soda solutions being mixed, and a precipitate consisting of teroxide of antimony and phosphate of lime being produced by precipitation by the addition of a solution of chloride of calcium and ammonia. This was a modification of a process advocated by Chevenix in a paper published in Phil. Trans., 1801. His process was recommended by Abernethy and many other of the leading practitioners of his time. In the British Pharmacopœias the simple formula of one part of antimonious oxide and two parts of calcium phosphate has been adopted. The name of Dr. James’s Powder as a synonym has now been dropped.
It has been suspected that Dr. James did not actually invent the powder, but adopted it from an Italian recipe which was certainly popular when he introduced it. In Colborne’s “English Dispensatory,” published in 1756, directions are given for making Mr. Lisle’s Powder for Fevers, sent to the author, he says, by a friend in Italy. Hartshorn shavings are to be boiled in a large quantity of water for six hours; the water is then to be strained off, the hartshorn to be dried by a slow fire, and finely powdered. Equal weights of this and of diaphoretic antimony are to be heated in a crucible, stirring all the time with a long iron, for eight hours or as long as it smokes. This powder is said to have been in great reputation for some years, having been successful in cases when hardly any hope seemed left. Twenty grains is indicated as a moderate dose at not less than six hours’ interval, and it is noted that the first and second doses often cause vomiting.
Whether this was the original of James’s invention or not it may be presumed that the formula was a guide to those doctors and chemists who were busying themselves with the analysis of his powder. Another claim of precedence was made by a patent medicine dealer of London named William Baker, who alleged that Dr. James’s process was an infringement of a patent or at least a copy of a formula invented by a German named Schwanberg.
Medical opinion has varied concerning the relative merits of the proprietary medicine and its official imitation. Christison in his Dispensatory (1842) expresses an opinion which was very generally held at least in his time when he says, “No one can deny that the antimonial powder of the Pharmacopœias is an irregular preparation inferior in activity as well as certainty to the nostrum sold by Dr. James’s representatives.” Some dispensers will recollect that up to recent years it was not at all unusual for prescribers specially to order “Pulvis Jacobi Vera.”
That Dr. James was a man of great ability and industry is testified by his great Dictionary and also by his “Pharmacopœia Universalis or New English Dispensatory.” The latter is a most valuable guide to the Pharmacy of the eighteenth century, and is not only full in its information but particularly advanced in much of its criticism.
It may be of interest to add that the famous novelist G. P. R. James was a grandson of the Doctor.