Albert Seba was an apothecary of Amsterdam, who spent some part of his early life in the Dutch Indies. He was born in 1668 and died in 1736. He was particularly noted for a great collection illustrating all the branches of natural history, finer than any other then known in Europe. Peter the Great having seen this collection bought it for a large sum and presented it to the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, where it is still preserved.
Anxious to pay due honour to the distinguished pharmacists of other nations, the authorities of the School of Pharmacy introduce the medallions of Dante and Sir Isaac Newton. The Italian poet’s connection with pharmacy was the entirely nominal inscription of his name in the guild of apothecaries of the city of Florence; there are almost slighter grounds to the right of claiming the English philosopher among pharmacists, his immediate association with the business having been that as a schoolboy he lodged at Grantham with an apothecary of the name of Clark. In his later years he worked with Boyle on ether.
Moses Charas figures between these two. Living between the years 1618 and 1698, Charas attained European celebrity. He was the first French pharmacist to prepare the famous Theriaca. This he did in the presence of a number of magistrates and physicians. He also wrote a treatise on the compound. For nine years he was demonstrator of chemistry at the King’s Garden at Paris, but he was a Protestant, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 drove him from France. Charles II received him cordially in London, and made him a doctor. Afterwards he went to Holland, and from there the King of Spain sent for him to attend on him in a serious illness. While at Toledo he got into trouble with the ecclesiastics in a singular manner. An archbishop of Toledo being canonised, his successor announced that snakes in that archbishopric should henceforth lose their venom. This was a special temptation to Moses Charas. He was strong on vipers. He had made medicine of many of them, he had written a book about them, and he knew all there was to know about them. He knew something about archbishops too, which ought to have prevented him from publicly demonstrating the vanity of the proclamation. But he must needs show to some influential friends a local viper he had caught and make it bite two chickens, both of which died promptly. This demonstration got talked about, and Charas was prosecuted on a charge of attempting to overthrow an established belief. He was imprisoned by the Inquisition, but after four months he abjured Protestantism, and was set free. It must be remembered that he was 72 years of age. On his return to France Louis XIV received him kindly, and had him elected to the Academy of Sciences. Charas’s chief work was a Pharmacopœia, which was in great vogue, and was translated into all the principal modern languages, even into Chinese.
Nicolas Lemery (born at Rouen, 1645, died 1715), a self-taught chemist and pharmacist, exercised an enormous influence in science and medicine. He opened a pharmacy in the Rue Galande, Paris, and there taught chemistry orally and practically. His course was an immense success. Fashionable people thronged to his lectures, and students came from all countries to get the advantage of his teaching. He, too, was a Protestant, and was struck by the storm of religious animosity. Charles II had the opportunity of showing him hospitality in London, and seems to have manifested towards him much friendliness. The University of Berlin likewise made him tempting proposals, but Lemery could only feel at home in France. Things seemed quieter and he returned, only to find in a short time that the condition was worse for Protestants than ever. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes prevented him from following either of his professions, pharmacy or medicine; and for their sake he adopted the Catholic faith. His “Universal Pharmacopœia” and his “Dictionary of Simple Drugs” were published after these troubles, and they are the works by which he won his lasting reputation.
Gilles François Boulduc (1675–1742) was for many years first apothecary to Louis XIV, and an authority on pharmaceutical matters in his time. By his essays he helped to popularise Epsom, Glauber’s, and Seignette’s salts in France.
Antoine Baumé (born at Senlis, 1728, died 1804), the son of an innkeeper, after an imperfect education in the provinces, got into the famous establishment of Geoffrey at Paris and made such good use of his opportunities that he became Professor of Chemistry at the College of France when he was 25. A practical and extraordinarily industrious chemist, he wrote much, invented the areometer which bears his name, founded a factory of sal ammoniac, and bleaching works for silk by a process which he devised. Baumé did good service, too, in dispelling many of the traditional superstitions of pharmacy, such as the complicated formulas and disgusting ingredients which were so common in his time. He was never content to accept any views on trust.
The three medallions which follow are those of Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Chaptal; great chemists whose right to be represented cannot be challenged, but whose works were not specially associated with pharmacy. These three all lived at the time of the Revolution. Lavoisier was one of its most distinguished victims, Berthollet became the companion and adviser of Napoleon in Egypt, and Chaptal was the chemist commissioned by the Convention to provide gunpowder for its ragged troops. He became one of Napoleon’s Ministers under the Consulate.
André Laugier (1770–1832), who comes next, was a relative and pupil of Fourcroy, and became an Army pharmacist, serving through Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign. His works were mostly on mineralogical subjects.
Georges Simon Serullas (1774–1832) was another military pharmacist who served in the Napoleonic wars. He was, later, chief pharmacist at the military hospital of Val de Grace, where he devoted much study to many medicinal chemicals, such as cyanic acid, iodides, bromides, and chlorides of cyanogen, hydrobromic ether, etc.
Thénard (1777–1857), the eminent chemist, follows. He was very poor when he asked Vauquelin to receive him as a pupil without pay. He only secured the benefit he asked for because the chemist’s sister happened to want a boy at the time to help her in the kitchen. He became a peer of France in 1832. To him we owe peroxide of hydrogen.