Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by A. C. Wootton

IRON.

Iron was not regarded as of special medicinal value by the ancients. The alleged administration of the rust of iron by Melampus was apparently looked upon as a miracle, and though this instance is often quoted as the earliest record of ferruginous treatment, it does not appear to have been copied. Classical allusions, such as that of the rust of the spear of Telephus being employed to heal the wounds which the weapon had inflicted, which is referred to by Homer, can hardly be treated as evidences of the surgical skill of that period. Iron is not mentioned as a remedial agent by Hippocrates, but Dioscorides refers to its astringent property, and on this account recommends it in uterine hæmorrhage. He states that it will prevent conception; it subsequently acquired the opposite reputation. The same authority, as well as Celsus, Pliny, and others, allude to a practice of quenching a red-hot iron in wine or water in order to produce a remedy for dysentery, weak stomachs, or enlargement of the spleen.

The later Latin physicians made very little use of iron or its compounds. Oribasius and Aetius write of the uses of its oxide outwardly in the treatment of ulcers, and Alexander of Tralles prescribes both an infusion and the metal in substance for a scirrhus of the spleen. He was probably the earliest physician who discovered its value as a deobstruent. Rhazes, the Arab, gave it in substance, and in several combined forms, but Avicenna regarded iron as a dangerous drug, and suggested that, if any had been accidentally taken, some loadstone should be administered to counteract any evil consequences.

Vitriol (sulphate of iron and sulphate of copper) was the iron medicine most in use up to the sixteenth century; but it was not given with the special intention of giving iron. Paracelsus had great faith in the Arcanum Vitrioli, which, indeed, appears to have been sulphur. He also introduced the use of the magnet, but only externally. It was in the century after him that the salts of Mars came into general medical use. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the preparations of iron became very numerous. Iron filings brought into an alcohol, that is very finely powdered, were much employed, sometimes alone and sometimes saccharated, or combined with sugar candy. Crocus martis was the sesquioxide, æthiops martial was the black oxide, and flores martis, made by subliming iron filings and sal ammoniac, yielding an ammoniated chloride of iron, was included in the several British pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century.

The association of iron with Mars probably influenced the early chemical physicians in their adoption of iron salts in anæmic complaints, and as general tonics. The undoubted effect of iron remedies in chlorotic disease was naturally observed, and the reputation of the metal was established for the treatment of this condition long before it was discovered that iron is an invariable constituent of the human body. When this physiological fact came to be recognised it was supposed that the action of iron salts was explained; but, in fact, the investigations of the last century have only tended to make this theory doubtful.

It is known that in health the proportion of iron in the body is fairly constant. An average man’s blood contains about 38 grains, almost all of which is contained in the hæmoglobin. He requires from one to two grains every day to make up for waste, and this he gets in the meat and vegetable food which he absorbs. The vegetables obtain iron from the soil, and animals acquire it from the corn, roots, or grasses which they eat. So far as is known it is from these sources only that human beings assimilate the iron they require. It is very doubtful whether a particle of the iron administered in any of the multitudinous forms which pharmacy provides is retained. A noted modern physiologist, Kletzinsky, says “From all the hundredweights of iron given to anæmics and chlorotics during centuries not a single blood corpuscle has been formed.” For all that there is no medical practitioner of any considerable experience who has not found directly beneficial results follow the administration of these medicines in such cases.

To Sydenham and Willis, two of the most famous physicians of the seventeenth century, the general employment of iron as a medicine may be traced. Sydenham, in his treatise on hysteric diseases, which, he says, are occasioned by the animal spirits being not rightly disposed, and not as some supposed by the corruption of the blood with the menstrual fluid, points out that the treatment must be directed to the strengthening of the blood, for that is the fountain and origin of the spirits. In cachexies, loss of appetite, chlorosis, and in all diseases which we describe as anæmic, he recommends that if the patient is strong enough recourse should be had first to bleeding, this to be followed by a thirty days’ course of chalybeate medicine. Then he describes, much the same as modern treatises do, how rapidly iron quickens the pulses, and freshens the pale countenances. In his experience he has found that it is better to give it in substance than in any of the preparations, “for busy chemists make this as well as other excellent medicines worse rather than better by their perverse and over officious diligence” (Pechey’s translation). He advises 8 grains of steel filings made into two pills with extract of wormwood to be taken early in the morning and at 5 p.m. for thirty days; a draught of wormwood wine to follow each dose. “Next to the steel in substance,” he adds, “I choose the syrup of it prepared with filings of steel or iron infused in cold Rhenish wine till the wine is sufficiently impregnated, and afterwards strained and boiled to the consistence of a syrup with a sufficient quantity of sugar.”

Dr. Thomas Sydenham. 1624–1689.