This passage is quoted from Pechey’s translation of Sydenham’s works. The allusion to “the solid laudanum of the shops” confirms the opinion that Sydenham’s was the first liquid preparation generally designated laudanum. Among the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum is included what is described as “The Commonplace Book of an Apothecary at Great Dunmow,” which contains several more or less similar recipes for laudanum. The book is dated 1644–5. The most elaborate formula is headed “Laudanum Josephi Michælis,” and lengthy directions for making this are given. The ingredients were opium, extract of henbane, species diambræ (a compound of most of the known spices), pearls, coral, amber, musk, mummy, cloves, and oil of cloves. Some of these were to be extracted with spirit of wine, and the spirituous extracts were to be distilled. Ultimately the whole was to be set aside to ferment for three months. The dose was stated to be 4 or 5 grains at bedtime.
Rousseau’s laudanum, which also became famous among opium preparations, differed from others in being a fermented compound. It was made by dissolving 12 oz. of honey in 3 lb. of warm water, and setting the mixture in a warm place. When it began to ferment, 4 oz. of opium mixed with 12 oz. of water were added, and the fermentation was allowed to continue at a moderate temperature for a month. After straining, the liquid was evaporated to 10 oz., and 4½ oz. of alcohol were added.
Rousseau was a Capuchin monk and was destined for mission work in Asia. Sent from Rome to Paris to study medicine so that he might be better fitted for his life’s work, he carried a letter of introduction to Colbert, the first minister of Louis XIV. Rooms were provided for him in the Louvre, and there before long he set up a laboratory and began to prepare and sell medicines. The Capucin of the Louvre became the fashionable quack, and Louis ordered the Faculty of Medicine to confer on him a degree. The life was so agreeable that, when orders came from Rome that he was to proceed on his mission, Rousseau refused, and, having transferred his allegiance to the order of Cluny, he continued his medical practice in Paris. Falling ill he refused medical aid, treated himself with his own compounds, and died. After his death his brother published his “Remédes et Secréts Eprouvés” (1697).
Black Drop was the name of a celebrated proprietary medicine very popular from the first half of the eighteenth, until the early part of the nineteenth century. Its inventor was one Edward Runstall of Bishop Auckland in the county of Durham, but it also came to be known as the Lancaster or the Quaker’s Black Drop. A formula for it was found by a Dr. Armstrong among the papers of a relative of the proprietor, and was published in a treatise on fevers in the early part of the nineteenth century. The recipe was as follows:—Opium, ½ lb.; good verjuice (the juice of the wild crab), 4 pints; nutmegs, 1½ oz.; saffron, ½ oz. Boil to a proper consistence, set in a warm place, add two spoonfuls of yeast, set in a warm place for six or eight weeks, then in the open air until it becomes of the consistence of syrup. Decant, filter, and bottle, putting a little sugar into each bottle.
This preparation was three times the strength of laudanum. The acetum opii of the Edinburgh and Dublin Pharmacopœias was intended as a substitute, but closer approximations to the original formula were given in the Hamburg Codex of 1845 and in the U.S. Pharmacopœia of 1851. The growing favour with which morphine was regarded gradually destroyed the popularity of the Black Drop.
Tinctura Lavandulæ Composita
has much fallen from its earlier glories. In the P.L., 1721, it was made with French brandy and twenty-seven other ingredients, including besides lavender, sage, rosemary, betony, borage, lilies of the valley, cowslips, balm, orange flowers, bay berries, cinnamon, mace, nutmegs, cardamoms, cubebs, aloes wood, ambergris, saffron, musk roses, and a few other less familiar flowers or cordials. The preparation was known as Palsy Drops, but I am not sure whether the official compound acquired this title, or whether it was an imitation of a tincture previously known as such.
Lenitive Electuary.
The formula prescribed in the first London Pharmacopœia was as follows:—Raisins (stoned), polypody of the oak, Eastern senna, of each 2 oz.; herb mercury, 1½ handful; jujubes and sebestens, of each 20; maidenhair, violets, and cleaned barley, of each 1 handful; prunes (stoned), tamarinds, of each 6 drachms; liquorice, ½ oz.
These drugs were to be boiled in 10 lb. of water to one-third of its volume, and to the strained liquor were to be added pulp of cassia fistula, tamarinds, prunes, sugar of violets, of each 6 oz.; sugar, 2 lb.; and at last 1½ oz. of powdered senna was to be incorporated to each pound of the electuary.