The Pharmacy (and Alchemy) of the Past, article in Chemist and Druggist 1886
THE first drugs were naturally those of vegetable origin. Many of the lower animals have been known to select certain plants and consume them for their medicinal effect; and man with that reason which is so much loftier than instinct, long before the botanical explorations of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Gesner, or Linnaeus, also selected certain plants for specific diseases. Amongst the very earliest plants used were cassia, hellebore, the fig, the vine, flax, garlic, and a species of bulbous plant which Pereira considered may have been squilla. This latter plant was worshipped at one time by the Egyptians, who erected a temple in its honour. The knowledge of the first medicinal plants was confined to a comparative few, and these professors sought, by ghostly injunction and mystification of the patient, to add to their effectiveness. Amongst the external applications used about 2000 B.C. were, the slime of the Nile and friction in rheumatism, carbonate of soda (probably), salt, alum, plasters, unguents, white lead, and verdigris. As civilisation advanced disease unfortunately increased, and the number of remedies multiplied. Aesculapius, about 1263 B.C., with an increased materia medica, used potions and incisions, with the ever indispensable amulets, incantations, or charms. One of the sons of Aesculapius, Podalirius, practised venesection. Homer, about 907 B.C., mentions papaver somniferum, and sulphur fumigations. Hippocrates, about 400 B.c, according to Alston, refers in his works to about 36 mineral, 300 vegetable, and 150 animal substances. Heraclides, about 230 B.C., employed conium, opium, and hyoscyamus. Themison, about 100 B.C., had recourse to leeches, and in Ad. 54 Alston tells us that Galen gives the names of 540 plants, 180 animal and 100 vegetable substances.
Nor were the early drugs always of a material nature, but frequently were of a spiritual kind. Thus we find music included in the materia medica non scripta of the ancients. Orpheus, we are asked to believe, could draw all animate and even inanimate creation after him by the melodies obtainable from his lute; and the belief in the power of music to soothe the savage breast is an exceedingly antiquated creed. King Saul, for instance, in one of his illnesses had this remedy prescribed for him, and the youthful David was the dispenser.
Whilst it is impossible to say by whom the earliest knowledge of vegetable drugs was obtained, there is no doubt that the alchemists obtained the first acquaintance with the metals. The belief of the alchemists in the magical power of chemistry can to a great extent be condoned when we consider that certain, to them marvellous, effects were produced by chemical action. When such inexplicable, and consequently apparently magical, effects were produced, it was fair to assume that by investigation they could produce some still more wonderful results. Thus the "well of the philosophers," or nitro-hydrochloric acid, dissolved all the metals, and they considered that in it lurked some great hidden power. Gold was the most durable of the metals, and they considered that by its proper introduction into the human frame man would partake at least something of the nature of gold in withstanding the havocs of time. Alchemists merely partook of the general superstition of the age, for to the ancients thunder was the voice of Jove speaking in anger, and the lightning his thunderbolts; earthquakes were the fury of Neptune; and storms were produced at the caprice of Aeolus. The great pursuit of the alchemists was, as everyone knows, the philosopher's stone, which was not only to have transmuted all the baser metals into gold, but also "through the permission of the Omnipotent, the greatest disease was to be cured, and sorrow, distress, evil, and every hurtful thing evaded; by help of which we were to pass from darkness to light, from a desert and wilderness to a habitation and home, and from straitness and necessities to a large and ample estate." The prolonging of life was a great feature of this mystic compound. One Artephius is recorded to have lived to the age of 1,025 years by means of it. This latter report proves conclusively that the alchemists beat modern liars, if they did not eclipse modern chemists. Raymond Lully is said by Bergman to have transmuted iron into gold in the presence of Edward I. in London (fourteenth century). Another case of actual transmutation which at one time had many believers was that of Elias the artist, who was said to have converted by means of a piece of the stone less than the size of a pin's head half-an-ounce of lead into the finest gold. Many authors detail the processes followed in the attempts to manufacture this wonderful stone or metal, but it is not necessary for me to select a quotation.
In looking at the history of early pharmacy throughout the world, we find Great Britain suffers seriously by comparison. In Arabia pharmacy was a distinct profession in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century apothecaries' shops were to be found in France and Germany, having gardens attached in which the proprietors' cultivated the indigenous plants. And while in the sixteenth century various laws were passed in France for the regulation of pharmacy, it was not until three centuries later that pharmacy received any legislation in England.
But although pharmacy in England as a distinct profession had no political existence until about four decades ago, the powers that were in the sixteenth century commenced to recognize the unfortunate state of the healing art which prevailed. In 1511 the first Act of Parliament relating to the profession of medicine was passed. It was entitled "An Act for the appointing of Physicians and Surgeon." This Act recognised that hitherto the "science and cunning of physic and surgery" had been exercised by ignorant persons who used sorcery and witchcraft and very noxious drugs, "to the grevious hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the king's liege people," but it did not effect much exorcism of that sorcery and witchcraft. Even the physicians and surgeons who qualified under the Act—who at that time also practised pharmacy, the grocers supplying the crude drugs—partook of the rampant superstition and used it largely in their practice. The faith of the patient was still worked upon, beneficially sometimes, prejudicially much more frequently. Cures by faith date from a very early period of the world's history; deaths from the same cause boast an equal antiquity. Sorcery and witchcraft died hard; there are even some symptoms of life in them at the present time.
It was not until the seventeenth century that the clouds began to roll away from the scientific sky. In that century chemistry first began to assume the dignity of a science, and pharmacy commenced to evolve itself out of chaos. Although in Germany a pharmacopoeia was published in 1538, the first London pharmacopoeia did not see the light until 1618, by which event Londoners proved themselves twenty-one years in advance of their Parisian confreres. Poly-pharmacy was a great feature of all the early pharmacopoeias; one preparation alone, the mithridate, so called after Mithridates, who lived 135-63 B.C., and of whose original preparation it was a modification, containing seventy-two ingredients. Some compounds contained even more, and the chemistry was such that if they had an Umney, a Martindale, or a Symes in those days, fearful would have been their criticisms. But bearing in mind a recent issue of the British Pharmacopoeia, I think it would be misleading to judge the pharmaceutical enlightment of a particular epoch by its pharmacopoeia.
Among the things used as medicaments in the first pharmacopoeias were, so Culpeper translates: the fat, grease, or suet of a duck, goose, eel, bone, heron, thymallos (If you know where to get it), dog, capon, beaver, wild cat, stork, hedgehog, hen, man, lyon, hare, kite, jack, wolf, mouse of the mountains (if you can catch them), &c. Also were inserted "the excrement of a goose, of a stag, of a goat, of pidgeons, of a stone horse, of swallows, of men, of women, of mice, of peacocks," &c. Culpeper remarks, parenthetically, that the college should have included the rennet of an ass to make medicine for their addle brains. Culpeper, however, was not the only man who has deplored a fault in others which he himself possessed. Dispensing according to the pharmacopoeia must have been not always the most enviable of occupations In those days, and the neat and dapper chemist's assistant of to-day may grow philosophical when he thinks so.
In 1617 the apothecaries, who had hitherto been incorporated with the grocers, obtained a charter, and the Society of Apothecaries then formed soon became a prosperous and wealthy concern. The apothecary, whom our greatest English poet describes in anything but flattering language, practised medicine as well as pharmacy, and the prices then obtainable are sufficient to make us think with a sigh of the "good old times." For example, a draught was 4s. 2d. or 2s. 6d., a blister 5s., a bolus 2s. 6d. and so on. It was not unfrequently the case that as much as 2l. or 3l. was charged for a supply of physic for one day's consumption, the profit being about 19s. in the pound. Each dose was then of more value than our bottle of to-day containing eight or sixteen doses.
It is impossible to say exactly when the title of "Chemist and Druggist" was first used, but it was probably about the middle of the seventeenth century. The first chemists, who derived their title from the alchemists, chiefly prepared those chemicals which Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and Glauber had laboured to introduce into the practice of medicine; but subsequent chemists extended the sphere of their operations, and it does not appear to have been very long before the "upstart chemist" began to evince that ardour for monopoly for which he has since been noted. The chemist and druggist, having entered successfully the commercial realms of the apothecary, also invaded his professional domains, as well as those of the physician and surgeon, and attempted the marvellous in the alleviation, or aggravation, of human suffering.
The pharmacies of the early chemists contained incongruous suggestions of the material and ethereal; there were the consulting room, in which prescribing and minor surgical operations took place; the laboratory, with its furnaces, alembics, retorts, receivers, stills, and numerous complex vessels, which had been inherited from the alchemists; and the shop, or pharmacy proper, which, while It did not present that regular and goodly array of shop-rounds bedecked with gold and red and black to which we are now accustomed, was perhaps more awe-inspiring with its astronomical devices, drugs in statu natura and in various processes of manufacture, and "skins of ill-shaped fishes " in bold relief, with
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and misty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses.
But just as at first conflicts took place between the physicians and surgeons, and at a later period between the physicians and surgeons and the apothecaries, so the apothecaries proceeded to wage war on the chemists and druggists. The apothecaries, who themselves had so largely practised adulteration that laws had to be passed for the searching of their shops and the examination of their drugs, first began to impugn the purity of the drugs sold by the druggists, but failed in almost every case to substantiate their charges. "Suspicion haunts the guilty soul," and the apothecary, who had almost brought the sophistication of drugs to a fine art, could not believe in the honesty of the chemists. Although the apothecaries distinguished themselves in this particular class of malefaction, yet we cannot accord to them the high honour of being the first to introduce adulteration, as it was an ancient institution even in the days of the Plinys.
Notwithstanding these attacks, the rising class of pharmaceutists continued to gain public and professional confidence, and by exhibiting a rapidly increasing superiority in the knowledge of drugs and their preparations gave "the lie direct" to their calumniators. One of the last dying efforts of those enemies of the chemist culminated in the formation of "The General Pharmaceutical Association of Great Britain." This association, which collapsed ignominiously after a shady existence of a few months, was to have exterminated the new class of dispensers of medicines, but had the unlooked-for effect of consolidating them as a body, and in 1802 the two opposing hosts coalesced in the face of a danger promising injury to both. This danger was the Medicine Act of that year, which the coalition managed to emasculate.
The first half of the present century is a time for ever memorable in the history of chemistry and pharmacy, gigantic strides having been made in both sciences. The discoveries of Priestley and Lavoisier at the end of last century opened great fields for succeeding chemical explorers. Hand in hand with the advancement of chemistry marched the sister science pharmacy. The pharmacist then acquired the reputation which he holds at the present day, as that of a man engaged in a mystic calling partaking both of the nature of a profession and a trade, and yet being neither.
THE first drugs were naturally those of vegetable origin. Many of the lower animals have been known to select certain plants and consume them for their medicinal effect; and man with that reason which is so much loftier than instinct, long before the botanical explorations of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Gesner, or Linnaeus, also selected certain plants for specific diseases. Amongst the very earliest plants used were cassia, hellebore, the fig, the vine, flax, garlic, and a species of bulbous plant which Pereira considered may have been squilla. This latter plant was worshipped at one time by the Egyptians, who erected a temple in its honour. The knowledge of the first medicinal plants was confined to a comparative few, and these professors sought, by ghostly injunction and mystification of the patient, to add to their effectiveness. Amongst the external applications used about 2000 B.C. were, the slime of the Nile and friction in rheumatism, carbonate of soda (probably), salt, alum, plasters, unguents, white lead, and verdigris. As civilisation advanced disease unfortunately increased, and the number of remedies multiplied. Aesculapius, about 1263 B.C., with an increased materia medica, used potions and incisions, with the ever indispensable amulets, incantations, or charms. One of the sons of Aesculapius, Podalirius, practised venesection. Homer, about 907 B.C., mentions papaver somniferum, and sulphur fumigations. Hippocrates, about 400 B.c, according to Alston, refers in his works to about 36 mineral, 300 vegetable, and 150 animal substances. Heraclides, about 230 B.C., employed conium, opium, and hyoscyamus. Themison, about 100 B.C., had recourse to leeches, and in Ad. 54 Alston tells us that Galen gives the names of 540 plants, 180 animal and 100 vegetable substances.
Nor were the early drugs always of a material nature, but frequently were of a spiritual kind. Thus we find music included in the materia medica non scripta of the ancients. Orpheus, we are asked to believe, could draw all animate and even inanimate creation after him by the melodies obtainable from his lute; and the belief in the power of music to soothe the savage breast is an exceedingly antiquated creed. King Saul, for instance, in one of his illnesses had this remedy prescribed for him, and the youthful David was the dispenser.
Whilst it is impossible to say by whom the earliest knowledge of vegetable drugs was obtained, there is no doubt that the alchemists obtained the first acquaintance with the metals. The belief of the alchemists in the magical power of chemistry can to a great extent be condoned when we consider that certain, to them marvellous, effects were produced by chemical action. When such inexplicable, and consequently apparently magical, effects were produced, it was fair to assume that by investigation they could produce some still more wonderful results. Thus the "well of the philosophers," or nitro-hydrochloric acid, dissolved all the metals, and they considered that in it lurked some great hidden power. Gold was the most durable of the metals, and they considered that by its proper introduction into the human frame man would partake at least something of the nature of gold in withstanding the havocs of time. Alchemists merely partook of the general superstition of the age, for to the ancients thunder was the voice of Jove speaking in anger, and the lightning his thunderbolts; earthquakes were the fury of Neptune; and storms were produced at the caprice of Aeolus. The great pursuit of the alchemists was, as everyone knows, the philosopher's stone, which was not only to have transmuted all the baser metals into gold, but also "through the permission of the Omnipotent, the greatest disease was to be cured, and sorrow, distress, evil, and every hurtful thing evaded; by help of which we were to pass from darkness to light, from a desert and wilderness to a habitation and home, and from straitness and necessities to a large and ample estate." The prolonging of life was a great feature of this mystic compound. One Artephius is recorded to have lived to the age of 1,025 years by means of it. This latter report proves conclusively that the alchemists beat modern liars, if they did not eclipse modern chemists. Raymond Lully is said by Bergman to have transmuted iron into gold in the presence of Edward I. in London (fourteenth century). Another case of actual transmutation which at one time had many believers was that of Elias the artist, who was said to have converted by means of a piece of the stone less than the size of a pin's head half-an-ounce of lead into the finest gold. Many authors detail the processes followed in the attempts to manufacture this wonderful stone or metal, but it is not necessary for me to select a quotation.
In looking at the history of early pharmacy throughout the world, we find Great Britain suffers seriously by comparison. In Arabia pharmacy was a distinct profession in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century apothecaries' shops were to be found in France and Germany, having gardens attached in which the proprietors' cultivated the indigenous plants. And while in the sixteenth century various laws were passed in France for the regulation of pharmacy, it was not until three centuries later that pharmacy received any legislation in England.
But although pharmacy in England as a distinct profession had no political existence until about four decades ago, the powers that were in the sixteenth century commenced to recognize the unfortunate state of the healing art which prevailed. In 1511 the first Act of Parliament relating to the profession of medicine was passed. It was entitled "An Act for the appointing of Physicians and Surgeon." This Act recognised that hitherto the "science and cunning of physic and surgery" had been exercised by ignorant persons who used sorcery and witchcraft and very noxious drugs, "to the grevious hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the king's liege people," but it did not effect much exorcism of that sorcery and witchcraft. Even the physicians and surgeons who qualified under the Act—who at that time also practised pharmacy, the grocers supplying the crude drugs—partook of the rampant superstition and used it largely in their practice. The faith of the patient was still worked upon, beneficially sometimes, prejudicially much more frequently. Cures by faith date from a very early period of the world's history; deaths from the same cause boast an equal antiquity. Sorcery and witchcraft died hard; there are even some symptoms of life in them at the present time.
It was not until the seventeenth century that the clouds began to roll away from the scientific sky. In that century chemistry first began to assume the dignity of a science, and pharmacy commenced to evolve itself out of chaos. Although in Germany a pharmacopoeia was published in 1538, the first London pharmacopoeia did not see the light until 1618, by which event Londoners proved themselves twenty-one years in advance of their Parisian confreres. Poly-pharmacy was a great feature of all the early pharmacopoeias; one preparation alone, the mithridate, so called after Mithridates, who lived 135-63 B.C., and of whose original preparation it was a modification, containing seventy-two ingredients. Some compounds contained even more, and the chemistry was such that if they had an Umney, a Martindale, or a Symes in those days, fearful would have been their criticisms. But bearing in mind a recent issue of the British Pharmacopoeia, I think it would be misleading to judge the pharmaceutical enlightment of a particular epoch by its pharmacopoeia.
Among the things used as medicaments in the first pharmacopoeias were, so Culpeper translates: the fat, grease, or suet of a duck, goose, eel, bone, heron, thymallos (If you know where to get it), dog, capon, beaver, wild cat, stork, hedgehog, hen, man, lyon, hare, kite, jack, wolf, mouse of the mountains (if you can catch them), &c. Also were inserted "the excrement of a goose, of a stag, of a goat, of pidgeons, of a stone horse, of swallows, of men, of women, of mice, of peacocks," &c. Culpeper remarks, parenthetically, that the college should have included the rennet of an ass to make medicine for their addle brains. Culpeper, however, was not the only man who has deplored a fault in others which he himself possessed. Dispensing according to the pharmacopoeia must have been not always the most enviable of occupations In those days, and the neat and dapper chemist's assistant of to-day may grow philosophical when he thinks so.
In 1617 the apothecaries, who had hitherto been incorporated with the grocers, obtained a charter, and the Society of Apothecaries then formed soon became a prosperous and wealthy concern. The apothecary, whom our greatest English poet describes in anything but flattering language, practised medicine as well as pharmacy, and the prices then obtainable are sufficient to make us think with a sigh of the "good old times." For example, a draught was 4s. 2d. or 2s. 6d., a blister 5s., a bolus 2s. 6d. and so on. It was not unfrequently the case that as much as 2l. or 3l. was charged for a supply of physic for one day's consumption, the profit being about 19s. in the pound. Each dose was then of more value than our bottle of to-day containing eight or sixteen doses.
It is impossible to say exactly when the title of "Chemist and Druggist" was first used, but it was probably about the middle of the seventeenth century. The first chemists, who derived their title from the alchemists, chiefly prepared those chemicals which Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and Glauber had laboured to introduce into the practice of medicine; but subsequent chemists extended the sphere of their operations, and it does not appear to have been very long before the "upstart chemist" began to evince that ardour for monopoly for which he has since been noted. The chemist and druggist, having entered successfully the commercial realms of the apothecary, also invaded his professional domains, as well as those of the physician and surgeon, and attempted the marvellous in the alleviation, or aggravation, of human suffering.
The pharmacies of the early chemists contained incongruous suggestions of the material and ethereal; there were the consulting room, in which prescribing and minor surgical operations took place; the laboratory, with its furnaces, alembics, retorts, receivers, stills, and numerous complex vessels, which had been inherited from the alchemists; and the shop, or pharmacy proper, which, while It did not present that regular and goodly array of shop-rounds bedecked with gold and red and black to which we are now accustomed, was perhaps more awe-inspiring with its astronomical devices, drugs in statu natura and in various processes of manufacture, and "skins of ill-shaped fishes " in bold relief, with
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and misty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses.
But just as at first conflicts took place between the physicians and surgeons, and at a later period between the physicians and surgeons and the apothecaries, so the apothecaries proceeded to wage war on the chemists and druggists. The apothecaries, who themselves had so largely practised adulteration that laws had to be passed for the searching of their shops and the examination of their drugs, first began to impugn the purity of the drugs sold by the druggists, but failed in almost every case to substantiate their charges. "Suspicion haunts the guilty soul," and the apothecary, who had almost brought the sophistication of drugs to a fine art, could not believe in the honesty of the chemists. Although the apothecaries distinguished themselves in this particular class of malefaction, yet we cannot accord to them the high honour of being the first to introduce adulteration, as it was an ancient institution even in the days of the Plinys.
Notwithstanding these attacks, the rising class of pharmaceutists continued to gain public and professional confidence, and by exhibiting a rapidly increasing superiority in the knowledge of drugs and their preparations gave "the lie direct" to their calumniators. One of the last dying efforts of those enemies of the chemist culminated in the formation of "The General Pharmaceutical Association of Great Britain." This association, which collapsed ignominiously after a shady existence of a few months, was to have exterminated the new class of dispensers of medicines, but had the unlooked-for effect of consolidating them as a body, and in 1802 the two opposing hosts coalesced in the face of a danger promising injury to both. This danger was the Medicine Act of that year, which the coalition managed to emasculate.
The first half of the present century is a time for ever memorable in the history of chemistry and pharmacy, gigantic strides having been made in both sciences. The discoveries of Priestley and Lavoisier at the end of last century opened great fields for succeeding chemical explorers. Hand in hand with the advancement of chemistry marched the sister science pharmacy. The pharmacist then acquired the reputation which he holds at the present day, as that of a man engaged in a mystic calling partaking both of the nature of a profession and a trade, and yet being neither.
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