Lemon juice was first spoken of as a remedy for scurvy in 1564. Its use was discovered by some Dutch sailors whose ship was laden with lemons and oranges from Spain.[868]
The virtues of sassafras as a medicine for scurvy were discovered, according to Cartier, in 1536, on a voyage to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence. The natives advised the sailors afflicted with the malady to use the wood of the tree ameda, which was thought to have been sassafras.[869]
Sarsaparilla was first brought to Europe by the Spaniards, in the middle of the sixteenth century, from Peru and Brazil.
Guaiacum was introduced into Europe in 1509, and in 1519 its use became common.
Holinshed complained[870] that estimation and credit given to compound medicines made with foreign drugs in his time was one great cause of the prevailing ignorance of the virtues and uses of “our own simples,” which he held to be fully as useful as the “salsa parilla, mochoacan, etc.,” so much in request. “We tread those herbs under our feet, whose forces, if we knew and could apply them to our necessities, we would honour and have in reverence.—Alas! what have we to do with such Arabian and Grecian stuff as is daily brought from those parts which lie in another clime?—The bodies of such as dwell there are of another constitution than ours are here at home. Certes, they grow not for us, but for the Arabians and Grecians.—Among the Indians, who have the most present cures for every disease of their own nation, there is small regard of compound medicines, and less of foreign drugs, because they neither know them nor can use them, but work wonders even with their own simples.”
Carlo Ruini, of Bologna, published in 1598 a work on the anatomy of the horse, in which Ercolani has found evidence that he, to some extent, anticipated Harvey’s discovery.[871]
Nicholas Houel (1520-1585) was born at Paris, 1520. He was a famous and learned pharmacien, who devoted the fortune which he acquired by his industry and skill to philanthropic and scientific purposes. He founded a great orphanage in Paris, and the School of Pharmacy of that city owes its origin to him. He wrote a Treatise on the Plague, and one on the Theriacum of Mithridates, both published in 1573. It is to his enlightened and charitable suggestion that dispensaries arose in Paris. His “Garden of Simples” inspired the creation of the Jardin des Plantes.[872]
Even at the close of the sixteenth century careful and sober men, as Mr. Henry Morley says,[873] believed in the miraculous properties of plants and animals and parts of animals. When the century commenced, the learned and unlearned alike believed in the influences of the stars and the interferences of demons with diseases, and in the mysteries of magic. The reason why students of such sciences as existed were punished and persecuted was the dread which men had that the knowledge of the occult powers of nature would afford the learner undue and mysterious power over them.
Legal Medicine.
That most important branch of medical science known as Medical Jurisprudence, or Forensic Medicine, first took its rise in Germany, and, later, was recognised as a necessary branch of study in England. Briefly this science may be described as “that branch of State medicine which treats of the application of medical knowledge to the purposes of the law.” It embraces all questions affecting the civil or social rights of individuals, and of injuries to the person. Although we find traces of the first principles of this science in ancient times, especially in connection with legitimacy, feigned diseases, etc., it is by no means certain that even in Rome the law required any medical inspection of dead bodies. The science dates only from the sixteenth century. The Bishop of Bamberg, in 1507, introduced a penal code requiring the production of medical evidence in certain cases. In 1532, Charles V. induced the Diet of Ratison to adopt a code in which magistrates were ordered to call medical evidence in cases of personal injuries, infanticide, pretended pregnancy, simulated diseases, and poisoning. The actual birth of forensic medicine, however, did not take place until the publication, in Germany, in 1553, of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina.[874] The difficulties which the infant science had to contend against may be estimated from the fact that a few years later a physician named Weiker, who declared that witches and demoniacs were simply persons afflicted with hypochondriasis and hysteria, and should not be punished, was with difficulty saved from the stake by his patron, William, Duke of Cleves.