Materia Medica.
Amongst those who, after Willis, laboured to reform pharmacology may be mentioned—
John Zwelfer, a learned physician of Vienna, who published in 1651 a greatly improved Pharmacopœia, which rejected many useless and improper medicines.
Daniel Ludwig in 1671 published a dissertation on useless and unsatisfactory drugs. He denied the virtues of earthworms, toads, and the like.
Moses Charas (1618-1698) was a pharmacist of Paris, who founded the historical establishment known as the Vipères d’or of that city. Seventeenth-century pharmacy owed much to this man, who was “one of the last of the Arabian polypharmacists, one of the last of the adepts of expiring alchemy, and the immediate precursor of the epoch of Lemery.”[908] He studied pharmacy at Montpellier. He was acquainted with natural history.
No history of medicine would be complete without reference to the immense number of loathsome and filthy substances which from the remotest times, even up to the present, have been used as medicines. This subject has been treated in a very complete form by Captain Bourke in his work on Skatological Rites of all Nations, an important section of which is devoted to “Skatological Medicine.”[909] The theory underlying the use of disgusting remedies seems to be this: Nearly all medicines which have any efficacy are unpleasant to take; a bitter infusion of tonic leaves or roots is not usually agreeable; many good medicines are very nasty, but their efficacy is universally acknowledged. Ignorant persons argue that the nastiness is the sign of the efficacy; that the more disgusting the potion or pill, the more good it will do. Even at the present day pauper and hospital patients of the lower classes have no faith in medicines which are not dark in colour and rich in sediment; elegant pharmacy would soon destroy the best East-End practice. The most repulsive sediment in a mixture is readily swallowed, and is usually considered highly “nourishing.” Now from nasty herbal medicines to filthy animal excretions is but a short step. Pliny gives hundreds of instances of skatological remedies in his Natural History, and the ancient writers frequently prescribe them. They consist of such things as the dung and urine of various animals, not excepting those of man, of the catamenial and lochial discharges, of the sweat of athletes, of the parasites of human and animal bodies, of ear wax, human blood, etc.
“Xenocrates of Aphrodisias (about A.D. 70) introduced disgusting filth as medicines; e.g., ear wax, catamenial fluid, human flesh, bats’ blood, etc.”[910]
“Asclepiades Pharmacion (about A.D. 100) recommended even animal excrement as a medicine.”[911]
Quintus Serenus Samonicus (died A.D. 211) prescribed mouse dung in poultices; goats’ urine internally for stone in the bladder; earth and dung from a wagon rut for colic, externally.[912]
Marcellus Empiricus, physician to Theodosius (345-395), prescribed natural pills of rabbit’s dung. Dr. Baas declares that this remedy is in use on the Rhine at the present day, as a cure for consumption.[913]