Another peculiar phase of pharmacy in those early days was the instructions of the various apothecaries’ guilds to their members as to prayer. The compounder of prescriptions was directed to go down on his knees and supplicate before he commenced his labours. Many old herbals and works on pharmacy, especially in Germany, contain curious wood-cut illustrations of the apothecary at his devotional exercises. Cyriacus Schnaus, an apothecary of Nuremberg, published a book in 1565, wherein he, in person, is represented as kneeling on a large mortar before a sacred picture. This custom may have been originated by the monks, many of whom followed the art of healing.
A PHYSICIAN FORECASTING FROM THE URINE.
From an engraving, 1517.
A writer of the time states that the itinerant dentist was also a well-known figure at the street corner. For 100 marks he would put out both your eyes, and quite cure your inflammation with one drop of his aqua mirabilis, at twelve-pence a drop. He offered you an antidote from stab or bullet for five marks, and by his side waved a banner stuck all over with horses’ teeth, to show his skill.
He cured your toothache by charms, sometimes writing mysterious words on a paper, and burning it under your nose; or he would sear your teeth with hot wires, most effectively; or make you inhale the hot vapour of henbane seeds, and then show you the worms that he had conjured out, which are certes now wriggling in the water. He wore a chain of molar teeth around his neck, and shook them from time to time as he held up a bottle of liquid and called out: “These are the spirits that pass with the blood into the rheum, to vex the teeth of men”. His descendants may still be seen at the present day working wondrous cures, decked out in similar fantastic garb, or extracting teeth gratis, and by sheer bold impudence reaping a golden harvest.
Having thus shown how the now almost forgotten pioneers of science laid the foundation of the arts of medicine and pharmacy, and how much we owe to their patience and diligence, a brief reference may be made to the class of medicaments in use in the days of Queen Elizabeth, immediately prior to the differentiation in England of the first pharmacists—the apothecaries—and the beginnings of pharmacy as a separate art.