Paris says, “we have heard of a lady who, having swallowed one of these pills, became seriously alarmed at its not passing through”. “Madam,” said her physician, “fear not; it has already passed through a hundred patients without any difficulty.”
It is said to have been the constant custom of Cardinal Wolsey to carry in his hand an orange deprived of its contents and filled with a sponge soaked in vinegar, impregnated with various spices, in order to protect him from infection when passing through the crowds of people which his splendour of office attracted.
An old writer, one James Penrose of the middle ages, questions if Cleopatra applied the asp to her breast as is commonly supposed, because, as he remarks, “the veines are so very slender”.
“Petrus Victorius blames the painters who depict the Egyptian queen applying the asp to her breast, seeing it is manifest out of Plutarch in the life of Antonius, and out of Plinie likewise, that she applied it to her arme.”
“Zonares relates, that there appeared no signe of death upon her, save two blew spots on her arme.”
“Cæsar also in her statue, which he carryed in tryumph, applyed the asp to her arme; for in the armes there are great veines and arteries which doe quickly and in a straight way convey the venom to the heart, whereas in the papps the vessels are slender.”
Gesnerus gives a method used by the apothecaries for changing the colour of the hair which is somewhat singular. It is by means of one of the many waters of the philosophers, and is made as follows, in the language of the text: “Take a moule which serveth unto the dying or coloring of heares whyte, eyther of man or beast; let the moule be artely brought to powder with Brimstone, adde to it the juice of celandine which orderly be myxed, let to stande for certaine dayes, after dystill the whole according to taste. The virtue of this water is in such wise, that if a beast wholy blacke of heare shall be washed all over with this water, the heare shall in that time became so whyte as snowe.”
The aloe mentioned in the Bible, usually in connection with myrrh and frankincense, is not the same drug as that used in medicine to-day, and is even without its bitterness. It is the product of the Aquilaria Agallocha, a tree of large size growing in the Laos country and Assam. The wood is light in colour and inodorous, but under certain conditions a change takes place in it, and it becomes charged with a dark aromatic juice. It was formerly used as a spice in embalming, and is employed in China and the East as incense in the temples.
A curious little work, entitled The House Apothecary written by Dr. Gideon Harvey, physician-in-ordinary to his Majesty, and printed in 1670, affords a further interesting glimpse at pharmacy 200 years ago. It would appear that the apothecaries then, like some of their descendants of the present day, excited a considerable amount of jealousy among the physicians by prescribing in certain cases, and meddling generally “in matters which they did not understand”.