But with whatever ingenuity and success the antiquity of chemical knowledge may be advocated, as it relates to the various arts of life, yet it must be allowed that not the most remote trace of its application to physic can be discovered in the medical writers of Greece or Rome. The operation of distillation[[97]] is not even mentioned by Hippocrates or Galen; and the waters of different plants, as described by some later authors, are to be understood, as we are informed by Gesner, merely as simple decoctions, and not as the products of any chemical process; while the Essences of Dioscorides, Galen, Oribasius, and others, were only the extracts produced by the evaporation of such infusions.
Upon the downfall of the Roman Empire, all the sciences, the arts, and literature, were overwhelmed in the general wreck, and the early Mahometans, in the first paroxysms of their fanaticism, endeavoured to destroy every record of the former progress of the human mind; consigning to destruction, by the conflagration of the Alexandrian library, no less than seven hundred thousand volumes, which comprised the most valuable works of science and literature.[[98]] It is not a little extraordinary that this same people were destined at a more advanced period, to rekindle the light of letters,[[99]] which they had taken such pains to extinguish, and to become the inventors and cultivators of a new science, boundless in its views, and inexhaustible in its applications. The medical profession too was more particularly selected as an object of reward and encouragement; and we may say, with much truth, that our Materia Medica is more indebted to the zeal and industry of the Arabians, than to the learning of the Greeks, or to the refinement of the Romans. From this source we have acquired the milder purges of Manna, Cassia, Senna, Rhubarb, and many plants and oriental aromatics, amongst, which we may notice Musk, Nutmeg, Mace, and Cloves; the introduction of which into medicine was greatly facilitated by the situation of Bagdat, and its connection with India; and although Archigenes and Aretæus had long before applied Blisters, yet it is to the Arabian physicians that we are indebted for a practical acquaintance with their value, for in general, the Greeks and Romans prescribed acrid Sinapisms for such a purpose. We are also indebted to the Arabians for our knowledge respecting Camphor, as its name imports, for the original word was Cafur or Canfur.[[100]] They are also the first upon record, who speak of sugar, and sugar-candy, extracted from the sugar-cane, which they call honey of cane; and they ushered into practice Syrups, Juleps, and Conserves. At the same time, it is but just to allow, that from the disgusting ostentation of this people, and their strong attachment to the marvellous, many absurd medicines have been introduced. Gold, Silver, Bezoars, and precious stones were received into their materia medica, and surprising virtues were attributed to them. Amongst a people thus disposed to magnificence, and from the very spirit of their religion credulous and romantic, it is not a matter of surprise that their first researches into the nature of bodies should have raised a hope, and excited a belief, that the baser metals might be converted into gold.
They conceived that gold was the metallic element, in a state of perfect purity, and that all the other metals differed from it in proportion only to the extent of their individual contamination, and hence the origin of the epithet base, as applied to such metals; this hypothesis explains the origin of alchemy; but, in every history, we are informed that the earlier alchemists expected, by the same means that they hoped to convert the baser metals into gold, to produce a universal remedy, calculated to prolong indefinitely the span of human existence.
It is difficult to imagine what connection could exist in their ideas between the “Philosopher’s Stone,” which was to transmute metals, and a remedy which could arrest the progress of bodily infirmity: upon searching into the writings of these times, it clearly appears that this conceit originated with the alchemists from the application of false analogies, and that the error was subsequently diffused and exaggerated by a misconstruction of alchemical metaphors.[[101]]
An example of reasoning by false analogy is presented to us by Paracelsus, in his work de vita longa, wherein, speaking of anatomy, he exclaims: “Sicut antimonium finit aurum, sic, eadem ratione et forma, corpus humanum purum reddit.”
The processes of alchemy were always veiled in the most enigmatic and obscure language; the earliest alchemist whose name has reached posterity, is Geber, an Arabian prince of the seventh century, whose language was so proverbially obscure, that Dr. Johnson supposes the word gibberish or geberish to have been derived from this circumstance; sometimes the processes of alchemy were expressed by a figurative and metaphorical style of description; thus Geber exclaims, “Bring me the six lepers that I may cleanse them;” by which he implied the conversion of the six metals,[[102]] the only ones then known, into gold. From the works of later alchemists it also appears that they constantly represented gold as a sound, healthy, and durable man, the imperfect metals as diseased men, and the means or processes by which the latter were to be transmuted into the former, they designated by the name of medicines; and hence, those who were anxious to dive into the secrets of these magicians, or Adepts, as they termed themselves, without possessing a key to their language, supposed that these descriptions were to be understood in a literal sense, and that the imperfect metals might be changed into gold, and the bodies of sick persons into healthy ones, by one and the same chemical preparation.
The hieroglyphical style of writing adopted by the earlier alchemists, was in a great degree supported by the prevailing idea that the elements were under the dominion of spiritual beings, who might be submitted to human power; and Sir Humphry Davy has observed that the notions of fairies, and of genii, which have been depicted with so much vividness of fancy and liveliness of description in The Thousand and One Nights, seem to have been connected with the pursuit of the science of transmutation, and the production of the elixir of life. That the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment admits of a mystic interpretation, is an opinion which I have long entertained. How strikingly is the effect of fermented spirit, in banishing the pressure of the melancholy which occurs in solitude, depicted in the story of Sinbad when he encountered the withered and decrepid hag, on the uninhabited island—but, to return from this digression to the subject of medical chemistry.
It was not in fact until several years had elapsed in the delusive researches of alchemy, that the application of chemical knowledge became instrumental in the advancement of the medical art. Rhases and Avicenna, who were the celebrated physicians of the age, are the first who introduced pharmaceutical preparations into their works, or made any improvement in the mode of conducting pharmaceutical processes. Avicenna describes, particularly, the method of conducting Distillation; he mentions also, for the first time, the three Mineral Acids, and distinguishes between the vegetable and mineral Alkalies; he speaks likewise of the Distilled Water of Roses, of Sublimed Arsenic, and of Corrosive Sublimate.
In the year 1226, Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester in Somersetshire, and a Franciscan monk of Westminster Abbey, laid the foundations of chemical science in Europe; his discoveries were so extraordinary that he was excommunicated by the Pope, and imprisoned ten years for supposed dealings with the devil; it appears that he was a believer in an universal Elixir, for he proposed one to Pope Clement the Tenth, which he extolled highly, as the invention of Petro de Maharncourt.
This wonderful man was succeeded at the end of the same century by Arnoldus de Villa Nova, a Frenchman, or as others assert, a Spaniard, who deserves to be noticed on this occasion, as being the first to recommend the distilled spirit of wine, impregnated with certain herbs, as a valuable remedy; from which we may date the introduction of Tinctures into medical practice; for, although Thaddæus, a Florentine, who died in 1270, at the age of eighty, bestows great commendation upon the virtues of Spirit of Wine, yet he never used it as a solvent for active vegetable matter.