Even with this evidence before them the doctors went on faithful to their theory of humours. Linnæus supported the view of Bonomo and Cestoni, but made the mistake of identifying the itch parasite with the cheese mite. The great medical authorities of the eighteenth century, such as Hoffmann and Boerhaave, still recommended general treatment, and a long list of drugs might be compiled which were supposed to be suitable in the treatment of itch. Among these, luckily, some parasiticides were included, and, consequently, the disease did get cured by these, but the wrong things got the credit. About the end of the eighteenth century Hahnemann promulgated the theory that the “psoric miasm” of which the itch eruption was the symptomatic manifestation, was the cause of a large proportion of chronic diseases.
Some observers thought there were two kinds of itch, one caused by the acarus, the other independent of it. Bolder theorists held that the insect was the product of the disease. The dispute continued until 1834, in which year Francois Renucci, a native of Corsica, and at the time assistant to the eminent surgeon d’Alibert at the Hôpital St. Louis, Paris, undertook to extract the acarus in any genuine case of itch. As a boy he had seen the poor women extract it in Corsica, as Bonomo and Cestoni had seen others do it at Leghorn, though his learned master at the hospital remained sceptical for some years. It was near the middle of the nineteenth century before the parasitic character of itch was universally acknowledged.
XI
MASTERS IN PHARMACY
We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence towards those great nations to which the human race owes art, science, taste, civil and intellectual freedom, when we say that the stock bequeathed by them to us has been so carefully improved that the accumulated interest now exceeds the principal.
Macaulay: “Essay on Lord Bacon” (1837).
Dioscorides.
It has been a subject of lively dispute whether Dioscorides lived before or after Pliny. It seems certain that one of these authors copied from the other on particular matters, and in neither case is credit given. Pliny was born A.D. 23 and died A.D. 79, and would therefore have lived under the Emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. Suidas, the historian, who probably wrote in the tenth century, dates Dioscorides as contemporary with Antony and Cleopatra, about B.C. 40, and some Arab authorities say he wrote at the time of Ptolemy VII, which would be still a hundred years earlier. But Dioscorides dedicates his great work on materia medica to Areus Asclepiades, who is otherwise unknown, but mentions as a friend of his patron the consul Licinius Bassus. There was a consul Lecanius Bassus in the reign of Nero, and it is therefore generally supposed that Dioscorides was in his prime at that period, and would consequently be a contemporary of Pliny’s. It is possible that both authors drew from another common source.
Dioscorides was a native of Anazarbus in Cilicia, a province where the Greek spoken and written was proverbially provincial. Our word solecism is believed to have been derived from the town of Soloe in the same district. The Greek of Dioscorides is alleged to have been far from classical. He himself apologises for it in his preface, and Galen remarks upon it. Nevertheless Dioscorides maintained for at least sixteen centuries the premier position among authorities on materia medica. Galen complains that he was sometimes too indefinite in his description of plants, that he does not indicate exactly enough the diseases in which they are useful, and that he does not explain the degrees of heat, cold, dryness, and humidity which characterise them. He will often content himself with saying that a herb is hot or cold, as the case may be. As an illustration of one of his other criticisms Galen mentions the Polygonum, of which he notes that Dioscorides says “it is useful for those who urinate with difficulty.” But Galen adds that he does not particularise precisely the cases of which this is a symptom and which the Polygonum is good for. But these defects notwithstanding, Galen recognises that Dioscorides is the best authority on the subject of the materials of medicine.
It is generally stated that Dioscorides was a physician; but of this there is no certain evidence. According to his own account he was devoted to the study and observation of plants and medical substances generally, and in order to see them in their native lands he accompanied the Roman armies through Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. This was the easiest method of visiting foreign countries in those days. It is not unlikely that he went as assistant to a physician, perhaps to the one to whom he dedicated his book. That is to say, he may have been an army compounder. Suidas says of him that he was nicknamed Phocas, because his face was covered with stains of the shape of lentils.