Preparation of Guaiacum Remedies and their Administration.
(Etching by Stradanus, 1570.)
Reproduced (by permission) from “The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II.” by H. Carrington Bolton, Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Co., Milwaukee, U.S.A.
Ipecacuanha.
Although several earlier allusions to ipecacuanha have been found, the first being in an account of Brazil by a Portuguese friar given in Purchas’s “Pilgrimes” (1625), where the medicine is named Igpecaya and is described as a remedy for the bloody flux, its effective introduction to European medicine was in the year 1686, when Louis XIV bought from Jean Adrien Helvetius the secret of a medicine with which he had performed a number of remarkable cures of diarrhœa and dysentery.
Helvetius, whose original name was Schweitzer, was the son of a Dutch quack, and had gone to Paris to try to sell his father’s compounds there. Apparently he had also enrolled himself as a student of medicine, for he is reported to have accompanied a physician of note at the period, named Afforty, in his attendance on a merchant variously called Grenier and Garnier. The merchant, having recovered from his illness, wished to present to Afforty a parcel of a new drug which he had received from Brazil. Afforty was not tempted by the offer, but his companion was more open to be influenced by something new. He experimented with the medicine and found it of remarkable efficacy in dysentery. Thereupon he placarded the corners of the streets with his announcements of a new remedy but without stating what the drug was. Colbert, having heard of the success of Helvetius, mentioned the remedy to Louis XIV when the dauphin was ill with dysentery, and the young Dutch quack was sent for. With the consent of the court physician, D’Aquin, Helvetius treated the Dauphin and cured him. As a result the king authorised D’Aquin and his confessor, the Père de la Chaise, to negotiate with Helvetius for the publication of his secret, which he sold for a thousand louis d’or, for a share in which the merchant Garnier unsuccessfully sued. This was the beginning of a successful career which was continued by his son and his grandson. The last became France’s fashionable poet and philosopher in the generation before the Revolution. The discoverer of ipecacuanha was appointed Inspector General of the Hospitals of Flanders, and became physician to the Duke of Orleans.
It appears from a treatise which Helvetius wrote that at first ipecacuanha was given in doses of two drachms, sometimes in decoctions and sometimes in enemas. Hans Sloane in England and Leibnitz in Germany wrote warmly in favour of the new remedy, but it was not till thirty years after it had been introduced that the dose was popularly reduced to some four to ten grains. Dover’s lucky combination of ipecacuanha with opium had a great effect in ensuring its permanent adoption.
Kousso.
Although Bruce, the African traveller and others had described the tree which bears the kousso flowers in Abyssinia (Hagena Abyssinica) and had noted that the natives used these as worm medicine, the first knowledge of them actually made use of came through a French physician named Brayer residing in Constantinople about the year 1820. Brayer was one day in a café where was a waiter extremely emaciated and who suffered cruel pains from tapeworm. An old Armenian came into the café and told this waiter that he possessed a remedy which his son had brought from Abyssinia, and which he was sure would cure him. Brayer ascertained the successful result of the experiment and subsequently tested the remedy himself on other patients with similar results. He sent some of the flowers to the German botanist Kunth, to whom they were new, and who named the tree Brayera anthelmintica. Still it does not appear that much notice was taken of the reports until about the year 1850, when a Frenchman offered the flowers in London for 35s. per ounce. The fancy price attracted attention to the remedy, which proved effectual.