Socotrine aloes, 100; cinnamon, spikenard, xylobalsamum, mastic, asarum, and saffron, of each 6; honey to make an electuary. In the P.L. this was ordered to be kept in the form of species, and was principally used to make a tincture which was called tinctura sacra. In the 1721 edition the mastic and the spikenard were omitted, cardamom seeds being substituted for the latter, and some cochineal was added with a view to colouring the tincture. In 1746 hiera picra became simply a mixture of aloes and canella, and as such it was retained in the following edition (1788), but under the title of Pulv. Aloeticus, which in the Index is given as “olim Hiera Picra.” This was the latest reference to Hiera Picra as such in the London Pharmacopœia. The P.L. of 1788 gave also a Pulv. Aloeticus c. Guaiaco, which consisted of 1½ oz. of Socotrine aloes, 1 oz. of powdered guaiacum, and ½ oz. of aromatic powder (afterwards called Pulv. Cinnamomi Co., and compounded of cinnamon, cardamoms, ginger, and long pepper). The canella mixture did not appear again, but that with guaiacum was repeated in all the subsequent London Pharmacopœias including the last in 1851, but was dropped from the British Pharmacopœias.
Pil. Rufi, our Myrrh and Aloes pill, was originally a Hiera invented by Rufus of Ephesus, who lived in the reign of the Emperor Trajan. The Hiera was made into pills by the Arabs, and were for a long time known as Pilulæ Pestilentiales, which was the name Avicenna gave them. In the early Edinburgh Pharmacopœias they were called Pilulæ Communes.
Scribonius Largus, physician to the Emperor Tiberius, relates (A.D. 52) that one of these noted hieras, the Hiera Pachii, was much sought after, and that large sums had been offered for the formula. When Pachius died at Antioch the Emperor had his library searched, and the true recipe for the famous medicine was there found in a book which Pachius had prepared and had dedicated to the Emperor. Tiberius handed the formula to Scribonius with instructions for its publication. The formula given by Scribonius, which it will be noted contained no aloes, was as follows:—Colocynth, agaric, germander, white horehound, Arabian stœches (a sort of lavender), of each ℥x; opoponax, sagapenum, parsley seeds, round birthwort root, white pepper, of each ℥v; spikenard, cinnamon, myrrh, and saffron, of each ℥iv; despumated honey, 3 lb. 3 oz. 5 drachms, to make an electuary.
It is not necessary to describe the other hieras devised by later authorities, but it may be noted that the Hiera Tralliani compounded by Alexander of Tralles (about 550 A.D.) contained scammony, and that he advises concerning it that the quantity of scammony shall not be increased, as it appears some were inclined to do, not knowing that thereby they make it useless. For he says it is not the intention that the medicine should be carried immediately through the system. It should be detained in the body and conveyed to the remote parts so as to correct the various humours, open the passages, remove the obstructions of the nerves, and make way for the motion of the spirits. This was the formula given in the P.L. 1721 under the name of Hiera Diacolocynthidis, but our present-day hiera picra has descended from the Hiera Simplex of Galen. The old dispensatories up to the eighteenth century give a liberal choice of Hieras, among which were the Hiera Simplex Galeni cum Agarice, Hiera Logadii, Hiera Antiochi, Hiera Archigenes, Hiera Tralliani, Hiera Rufi, Hiera Justi, Hiera Constantini, and others. Originally these were all electuaries made with honey. It became the practice, however, to keep them in the form of “species,” and ultimately electuaries went out of fashion altogether.
Laudanum.
Paracelsus probably invented the name of laudanum, and seems to have called several medicines by that term. In one place he expressly states that his laudanum was made from gold leaf and unperforated pearls; in other places he seems to mean red precipitate, and undoubtedly opium or a compound of it was sometimes intended. Crollius gives a formula for a pill mass, which he designates the laudanum of Paracelsus, which contained one-fourth of its weight of opium, to which were added henbane juice, mummy, salts of pearls and corals, the bone of the heart of a stag, bezoar stone, amber, musk, unicorn, and some species, with a few drops of many of the essential oils. The Anodynum Specificum of Paracelsus was a product obtained by first digesting opium, 4, in a mixture of orange and lemon juices, 180, with distilled frogs’ sperm water, to which cinnamon, 4, cloves, 45, ambergris, 4, and saffron, 45, were added. This mixture was digested for a month, and after pressing and straining, coral, magistery of pearl, and quintessence of gold, of each 2, were added, together with the salt extracted from the marc.
The laudanum of the early London Pharmacopœias was a pill mass made as follows:—Thebaic opium extracted by spirit of wine, ℥i.; saffron, similarly extracted, ℥iss; castorum, ℥i; combined with ℥ss. of species of diambræ made into a tincture with spirit of wine; to these might be added, ex-gratia, ambergris and musk, of each 6 gr., and oil of nutmeg 10 drops. Evaporate the moisture and leave the mass.
One would think that the name laudanum was an echo of laudandum, and that has been the usual opinion. But Professor Skeat is confident that it is a variation of ladanum, which, he says, was a stomachic cordial made and named from gum labdanum, which had been in medical use for centuries. This, of course, is possible, but it must be remembered that Paracelsus was untrammelled by any etymological rules in his invented words, and that the one unlikely thing for him to do would have been to adopt with a slight modification the name of a remedy then in use, if, indeed, a preparation of labdanum was at that time popular, or even known at all in Germany in his time.[2] Adam of Bodenstein, son of the theologian Carolstadt, who wrote both for and against Luther’s doctrines, wrote a treatise in which he professed to explain all the mysterious terms used by Paracelsus. Laudanum, he says, is from a laude, and was a quintessence of mercury and not an opiate.
Sydenham’s Laudanum is the preparation of opium which attained the highest popularity. It has always been the principal liquid preparation of the drug in continental practice, and formulas for it more or less corresponding with the original are in all the principal Pharmacopœias except the British. It was omitted from the P.L. in 1746, or rather a very similar preparation named Tinctura Thebaiaca was substituted for it. Sydenham’s formula, which was given incidentally in his description of the dysentery of 1669–72, prescribed strained opium, 2 oz., saffron 1 oz., cinnamon and cloves of each 1 drachm, and Canary wine, 1 pint.
“I do not think this preparation has more virtue than the solid laudanum of the shops,” he wrote; “but I prefer it before that for its more commodious form, and by reason of the greater certainty of the dose, for it may be dropped into wine or any distilled water, or into any other liquor.”