Pharmacologia / Fourth American, from the Seventh London Edition

by John Ayrton Paris

[105]. It has been already stated, that we are indebted to an Indian for the discovery of Bark, and it now appears we derived our knowledge of Mercury to the wildest of the alchemists. May it not then be said that we are indebted to a savage, and a madman, for two of our most powerful remedies?

[106]. Erasmus, the friend, the correspondent, and the patient of our own Linacre! Had not modern times, says Sir George Baker, furnished similar instances, it would have been a matter of astonishment to us to have heard that Erasmus should have deserted an accomplished physician whom he so greatly extols in his Epistles, in order to consult so wild and illiterate an enthusiast as Paracelsus.

[107]. Paracelsus maintained that the human body is composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, and that in these “three first substances,” as he calls them, health and disease consist: that the mercury, in proportion to its volatility, produces tremors, mortifications in the ligaments, madness, phrensy, and delirium, and that fevers, phlegmons, and the jaundice, are the offspring of the sulphureous principle, while he supposed that the cholic, stone, gravel, gout, and sciatica derive their origin from salt.

[108]. Amongst the writers engaged in this contest, no one was more animated with party spirit than Guy Patin, who was profuse in his personalities against those who defended the use of Antimony; he drew up a long register of the unsuccessful cases in which this medicine had been employed, which he published under the title of “Antimonial Martyrology.”

[109]. In the year 1644 Schroeder published a Chemico-medical Pharmacopœia, which delineates with accuracy the pharmacy of these times, and enumerates almost all the chemical medicines that were known towards the close of this period.

[110]. The Dispensatories of London and Edinburgh, the former by Mr. A. T. Thomson, and the latter by Dr. Duncan, are works which reflect credit on the age and country in which they were written.

[111]. The first Pharmacopœia was published at Nuremburg, under the sanction of its Senate, in the year 1542; for this important act we are indebted to Valerius Cordus, a young student, who during a transient visit at that place, accidentally produced a collection of medical receipts which he had selected from the works of the most esteemed writers, and with which the physicians of Nuremburg were so highly pleased that they urged him to print it for the benefit of the apothecaries, and obtained the sanction of the Senate to the undertaking; so casual was the circumstance to which we owe the institution of Pharmacopœias. The London College were among the last to frame a standard Code of Medicines; most cities in Europe having anticipated us in the performance of this task; our first Pharmacopœia was not published until the reign of James the first, A. D. 1618, exactly a century after the College had received their Charter from Henry. Successive editions appeared in the following years, viz. in 1650; 1677; 1721; 1746; 1787; 1809.

[112]. What would be the surprise and gratification of the Pharmaceutist who lived a hundred years ago, if he could now visit Apothecaries Hall? the application of steam for the various purposes of pharmacy, and for actuating machinery, for levigation, trituration, and other mechanical purposes, is no less useful, in ensuring uniform results, than it is in abridging labour and economising time. The greatest credit is due to the gentlemen under whose guidance this national laboratory is conducted, and more especially to their worthy and public spirited Treasurer, William Simons, Esq. whose zeal and liberality suggested and promoted the fitting up of the Steam Laboratory, as well as the ingenious machine for triturating mercury with lard, or conserve.

[113]. Since the publication of the last edition of this work, Mr. Archdeacon Wollaston has paid the debt of nature; his name will be cherished in grateful remembrance by those who had the good fortune to have been his pupils; as one of that number I will venture to say, that there never existed a lecturer on Experimental philosophy, who was more eminently gifted with those qualifications, upon which the success of a public teacher must depend. He possessed a peculiar method of demonstration, a singular vivacity in the manner of conducting the experiments, and of keeping awake the attention of his auditors during their progress; while those details of manipulation which would have proved, in other hands, a source of tedium, he converted into subjects of the most lively interest.

[114]. The Chemical Laboratory at Cambridge has produced some valuable discoveries. Ex pede Herculem, let me remind the chemist of the formation of Nitrous Acid, by passing a current of ammoniacal gas through the heated Oxyd of Manganese, for which we are indebted to Dr. Milner. I mention it merely as a whimsical circumstance, that the greatest degree of cold ever produced, was effected at Oxford, and the highest temperature, lately, at Cambridge. The researches of Dr. Clark are highly interesting and important, a succinct account of which has been published in a small work, entitled, “The Gas Blowpipe, or the Art of Fusion, by burning the Gaseous constituents of Water.”