The Emperor Joseph II of Austria paid 1,500 florins somewhere about the year 1785 for the formula for a secret febrifuge which was at that time enjoying extreme popularity. It proved to be simply an alcoholic tincture of box bark (Buxus sempervirens). The remedy lost its prestige as soon as the secret was gone.
Nouffer’s Tapeworm Cure.
Louis XVI gave 18,000 livres (about £700) to a Madame Nouffer or Nuffer for a noted cure for tapeworm, which she had inherited from her deceased husband. As the result of the king’s purchase, a little book was published in 1775 explaining fully the treatment.
Nouffer was a surgeon living at Morat, in Switzerland. He had practised his special worm cure treatment for many years, and by it he had acquired a considerable local fame. After his death his widow, who knew all about the secret, continued to receive patients. Among those who came to her was a Russian, Prince Baryantinski, who was staying in the neighbourhood and had heard of the cure. He had been troubled for years with tapeworm, and Madame Nouffer’s remedy cured him. The Prince reported the facts to his regular physician at Paris, and consequently cases were sent from that city to the Swiss lady. She was so successful that the king was induced to give her the sum named for the revelation of her method, which was briefly as follows:—
For a day or two the patient was fed on buttered toast only. Meanwhile enemas of mallow and marshmallow with a little salt and olive oil were administered. Then, early in the morning, 3 drachms of powder of male fern in a teacupful of water was taken. Candied lemon was chewed after the dose to relieve the nauseousness, and the mouth was washed out with an aromatic water. If the patient vomited the medicine another dose was given. Two hours after the male fern a bolus containing 12 grains each of calomel and resin of scammony, with 5 grains of gamboge, and with confection of hyacinth as the excipient, had to be taken. A cup of warm tea was recommended shortly after the bolus. The doses quoted were regarded as average ones. They might be modified according to the strength of the patient. Generally the treatment narrated sufficed to expel the worm. If it did not, the whole proceeding was repeated.
Male fern was a remedy mentioned by Dioscorides and other ancient writers, but it had been forgotten for centuries until Madame Nouffer’s system brought it to the recollection of medical practitioners. It again fell out of use, but a French physician named Jobert revived its popularity in 1869. He was assisted in the preparation of the remedy by Mr. Hepp, pharmacien of the Civil Hospital of Strasburg.
Bestucheff’s Tincture and La Mothe’s Golden Drops.
Alexis Petrovitch Bestoujeff-Rumine, commonly called Count von Bestoujeff or Bestucheff, was in the service of the Elector George of Hanover when that Prince was called to reign over Great Britain. He thereupon became George’s ambassador at St. Petersburg. On the death of Peter the Great Bestucheff withdrew from the British diplomatic service, and commenced a varied and stormy political career, under the three Empresses Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II, who, with brief intervals, succeeded each other on the Russian throne. He was Foreign Minister under the first, Grand Chancellor and then a disgraced exile under the second, recalled and highly honoured by Catherine. During his banishment he interested himself in a remedy which became enormously popular at that epoch, known in France as the Golden Drops of General La Mothe, and in Germany and Russia as Bestucheff’s Tincture. La Mothe had been in the service of Leopold Ragotzky, Prince of Transylvania, but retiring from the Army he went to live at Paris and took these golden drops with him. They were a tincture of perchloride of iron with spirit of ether, but the public believed them to be a solution of gold. They were recommended as a marvellous restorative medicine, and sold (in Paris) at 25 livres (nearly £1) for the half-ounce bottle. So famous were they that Louis XV sent 200 bottles to the Pope as a particularly precious gift. Subsequently Louis gave La Mothe a pension of 4,000 livres a year for the right of making the drops for his Hotel des Invalides, La Mothe and his widow after him retaining the right to sell to the public.
Bestucheff sold his recipe to the Empress Catherine for 3,000 roubles, and by her orders it was passed on to the College of Medicine of St. Petersburg, which published it under the title of the Tinctura Tonica Nervina Bestucheffi. The formula at first published was chemically absurd, but Klaproth corrected it, and the prestige of the quack medicine was destroyed. But an ethereal tincture of perchloride of iron was adopted in most of the Continental pharmacopœias.