Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by A. C. Wootton

The fame of Hippocrates caused naturally a great multiplication of works attributed to him. The Ptolemies when founding the Library of Alexandria, which they were determined should be more important than that of Pergamos, commissioned captains of ships and other travellers to buy manuscripts of the Greek physician at almost any price; an excellent method of encouraging forgeries. The works attributed to Hippocrates have been subject to the keenest scrutiny by scholars, but even now the verdict of Galen in regard to their genuine or spurious character is the consideration which carries the greatest weight. Even the imitations go to prove how free the physician of Cos was from superstitious practices or prejudiced theories.

Between him and Galen an interval of some six hundred years elapsed and, especially in the latter half of that period, pharmacy developed into enormous importance. Not that it necessarily advanced. But the faith in drugs, and especially in the art of compounding them, and the wild polypharmacy which grew up in Alexandria and Rome in the first two centuries of our era, of which Galen shows so much approval, add inestimably to the chronicles of pharmacy. It was during the interval between Hippocrates and Galen that the many sects of ancient medicine, the Dogmatics, the Stoics, the Empirics, the Methodics, and the Eclectics were born and flourished. Some of these encouraged the administration of special remedies. But probably a far greater influence was exercised on the pharmacy of the ancient world by the new commerce with Africa and the East which the Ptolemies did so much to foster, and by the travelling quacks and the prescribing druggists who exploited the drugs of foreign origin which now came into the market.

Serapion of Alexandria, one of the most famous of the Empirics, who is supposed to have lived in the second century, was largely responsible for the introduction of the animal remedies which were to figure so prominently in the pharmacy of the succeeding seventeen centuries. Among his specifics were the brain of a camel, the excrements of the crocodile, the heart of the hare, the blood of the tortoise, and the testicles of the wild boar.

The Empirics were the boldest users of drugs, and so far as can be judged, were the practitioners who brought opium into general medicinal esteem. One of the most famous doctors of this sect, Heraclides, made several narcotic compounds which are commended by Galen. One of these formulæ prescribed for cholera was 2 drms. of henbane seeds, 1 drm. of anise, and ½ drm. of opium, made into 30 pills, one for a dose. Another which was recommended for coughs was composed of 4 drms. each of juice of hemlock, juice of henbane, castorum, white pepper, and costus; and 1 drm. each of myrrh and opium.

Musa, a freed slave of Augustus, and apparently a sort of medical charlatan, but a great favourite with the Emperor, is alleged to have introduced the flesh of vipers into medical use especially for the cure of ulcers.

Celsus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, whose works are recognized as the storehouses of the science of Imperial Rome, belonged to the period under review. Celsus wrote either a little before or a little after the commencement of our era. He was the first eminent author who wrote on medicine in Latin. Pliny died A.D. 79, suffocated by the gases from Vesuvius, which in his eagerness to observe he had approached too near during an eruption. Dioscorides is supposed to have lived a little before Pliny, who apparently quotes him, but curiously never mentions his name, though usually most scrupulous in regard to his authorities.

Themison, who lived at Rome in the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and who is said to have been the first physician to have distinguished rheumatism from gout, is noted in pharmacy as the author of the formulæ for Diagredium and Diacodium. He praised the plantain as a universal remedy, and is also the earliest medical writer to mention the use of leeches in the treatment of illness.

Several of the writers on medical subjects of this period adopted the method of prescribing their formulas and the instructions for compounding them in verse. The most famous instance is that of Andromachus, physician to Nero, whose elegiac verses describing the composition of his Theriakon are quoted by Galen. The idea was that the formula thus presented was less likely to be tampered with. Theriakon as invented contained 61 ingredients. Its principal improvement on the more ancient Mithridatum was the addition of dried vipers. Andromachus appears to have acquired a large and lucrative practice in Rome at the time when wealth was most lavishly squandered.

Among other medical verse writers were Servilius Damocrates, who lived in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, and who invented a famous tooth powder, a number of malagmata, (emollient poultices), acopa (liniments for pains), electuaries, and plasters; and Herennius Philon, a physician of Tarsus (about A.D. 50), whose fame rests on his philonium, a compound designed to relieve colic pains, which appear to have been specially frequent at that period. This philonium was composed of opium, saffron, pyrethrum, euphorbium, pepper, henbane, spikenard, and honey.

Menecrates, physician to Tiberius, and said to have written 155 works, was the inventor of diachylon plaster, but his diachylon was a compound of many juices (as the name implies) along with lead plaster.