“Canella, myrrh, mastic, aa 1 drachm; musk, amber, aa 1 scruple;
“Make a mass with Venice turpentine.”
Lemery says you cannot kill the mercury with rose juice, but must use some of the Venice turpentine.
These pills were largely used in syphilis, but they were practically superseded later by the pills of Belloste, which are still official in the French Codex. These were very similar. Belloste was a French Army surgeon, and his formula was devised about the year 1700. A formula for them was published in the Pharmacopœia of Renaudot during Belloste’s lifetime, but after the death of Belloste in 1730 his son tried to make a mystery of the pills and sold them as a proprietary product, which probably had the effect of making them popular. The formula of Renaudot, which is also that of the Codex, was: Mercury, 24 (killed with honey); aloes, 24; rhubarb, 12; scammony, 8; black pepper, 4. Made into pills, each of which should contain 5 centigrams of mercury.
The Treatment of Syphilis.
It was at the close of the fifteenth century that syphilis began to spread through Europe. There are doubtful evidences of its existence in both Europe and Asia long previously, but the theory is generally accepted that it was brought from America by the sailors of the earliest expeditions, while its rapid spread throughout the old world in the decade from 1490 to 1500 has often been attributed to the Spanish Jews in the first place, and also particularly to the siege of Naples by the French in 1495. That large numbers of the French soldiers then engaged contracted it in the course of that war is undoubted, and as they were largely instrumental in spreading the contagion the disease soon came to be known as the French disease, or morbus Gallicus, though it has been questioned whether the adjective was not originally a reference to the skin diseases known under the name of “gale” or “itch.” The opinion that syphilis came from the west is not universally adopted. It has been pointed out that Columbus only reached Lisbon on March 6, 1493, on his return from his first voyage of discovery; and there are several more or less authentic allusions to the French disease before that date.
The rapidity with which this epidemic seized on all the countries of Europe, and the virulence of its symptoms, alarmed all classes and staggered the medical men of the day. Special hospitals were opened and Parliamentary edicts were promulgated in some of the French and German cities, ordering all persons contaminated to at once leave the neighbourhoods. Mercury was one of the first remedies to suggest itself to practitioners. It had been employed by the Arabs in the form of ointments and fumigations for skin diseases, and quacks and alchemists had long experimented with it in the hope of extracting a panacea from it. Before Paracelsus had begun to administer it, Torrella, physician to the Borgias, had prescribed mercurial lotions made from corrosive sublimate, and Jean de Vigo, of Naples, had compounded his mercurial plaster, and mercurial ointment, and had even given red precipitate in pills.
At the time when syphilis was causing excitement through Europe sarsaparilla and guaiacum were much praised as sudorifics, and wonderful cures of syphilis by them were reported. The poet and reformer Ulrich von Hutten wrote a book, De Morbo Gallico, in which he related his own years of suffering from the disease, and his complete cure by means of guaiacum in 30 days. “You may swallow these woods up to the tomb,” said Paracelsus. He had not much more respect for fumigations with cinnabar, which he regarded as a quack treatment by which it was impossible to measure the dose of the mercury, though he recognised that it cured sometimes. Red precipitate with theriacum made into pills with cherry juice was his favourite remedy, and was one of his laudanums. His Catholicon, or universal panacea, was a preparation of gold and corrosive sublimate, which was largely used by his followers under the name of Aurum Vitæ.
Corrosive sublimate was the great quack remedy for syphilis for more than a century, and the so-called vegetable remedies, syrups and decoctions of guaiacum, sarsaparilla, and sassafras, maintained their reputation largely in consequence of the perchloride of mercury, which was so often added to them. Aqua Phagadænica, 1 drachm of corrosive sublimate in 1 pint of lime water, was a very noted lotion for venereal ulcers. It began from a formula by Jean Fernel, a Paris medical professor and Galenist (1497–1558), who dissolved 6 grains of sublimate in 3 oz. of plaintain water. This was known as the Eau Divine de Fernel. By the time when Moses Charas published his Pharmacopœia this lotion had acquired the name by which it was so long known, and was made from ½ oz. of sublimate in 3 lb. of lime water, and ½ lb. of spirit of wine. It yielded a precipitate which varied in colour from yellow to red.