Part 10

Pock disease (small-pox) is dealt with, but not very seriously. It is of interest because the classical writers do not mention it. The Arab Rhazes wrote a treatise on it about A.D. 923. A few herb drinks are prescribed in the Leechbooks, and to prevent the pitting “one must delve away each pock with a thorn, then drip wine or alder drink within them, then they will not be seen.”

Against lice:--One pennyweight of quicksilver and two of old butter.

Against itch:--Take ship tar, and ivy tar, and oil, rub together, add a third part of salt; smear with that.

In case a man should overdrink himself, let him drink betony in water before his other drink.

For mickle travelling over land, lest he tire, let him take mugwort to him in hand or put it in his shoe, lest he should weary, and when he will pluck it, before the upgoing of the sun, let him say these words, “I will take thee, artemisia, lest I be weary on the way.” Sign it with the sign of the cross when thou pullest it up.

HELIAS TO ALFRED.

In one of the Leechbooks translated by Mr. Cockayne is found a letter on medicines from Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to King Alfred the Great. Mr. Cockayne believes it to be authentic. There was a patriarch of that name at Jerusalem contemporary with Alfred, and the medicines he recommends are such as were obtainable in the Syrian drug shops at that date. It is to be presumed that the information was given in reply to a request for some recipes from the king. Helias recommends scammony, ammoniacum, gum dragon, aloes, galbanum, balsam, petroleum, triacle, and alabaster. Of petroleum he writes:--

“It is good to drink simple for inward tenderness, and to smear on outwardly on a winter’s day, since it hath very much heat; hence one shall drink it in winter; and it is good if for anyone his speech faileth, then let him take it; and make the mark of Christ under his tongue, and swallow a little of it. Also if a man become out of his wits, then let him take part of it, and make Christ’s mark on every limb, except the cross on the forehead, that shall be of balsam, and the other on the top of his head.”

The patriarch had strong faith in Theriaca, and the directions he gives for its administration are minute, and would be explicit if he had only explained how much he meant by “a little bit.”

“Theriaca,” he says, “is a good drink for all inward tenderness, and the man who so behaves himself as is here said, he may much help himself. On the day on which he will drink Triacle he shall fast until midday, and not let wind blow on him that day; then let him go to the bath, let him sit there till he sweat; then let him take a cup, put a little warm water in it, then let him take a little bit of the triacle, and mingle with the water, and drain through some thin raiment, then drink it, and let him then go to his bed and wrap himself up warm, and so lie till he sweat well; then let him arise and sit up and clothe himself, and then take his meat at noon (three hours after midday), and protect himself earnestly against the wind that day; then I believe to God it will help the man much.”

EARLY ENGLISH MEDICAL PRACTICE.

In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the great man of science, wrote on medicine, alchemy, magic, and astrology, as well as most other sciences. He believed that a universal remedy was attainable, and urged Pope Clement IV to give his powerful aid to its discovery. Nothing particular remains of his medical studies.

Gilbert Anglicanus, who was a contemporary of Bacon, and wrote a Compendium of Medicine, a tedious collection of the most fantastic theories of disease, was more advanced in pharmacy than in the treatment of disease. He describes at considerable length the manner of extinguishing mercury to make an ointment, recommending particularly the addition of some mustard seed to facilitate the process. He gives particulars of the preparation of the oil of tartar per deliquium, and proposes a solution of acetate of ammonia in anticipation of Mindererus four hundred years later. Gilbert’s formula is thus expressed:--

“Conteratur sal armoniacum minutim, et superinfundatur frequenter et paullatim acetum, et cooperiatur et moveatur, ut evanescet sal.”

Ant’s eggs, oil of scorpions, and lion’s flesh is his prescription for apoplexy, but he does not explain how the last ingredient was to be obtained in England. Several of his formulas are quoted in the first London Pharmacopœia. For the expulsion of calculi he prescribes the blood of a young goat which has been fed on diuretic herbs such as persil and saxifrage.

Chaucer, whose writings belong to the latter half of the fourteenth century, has left on record a graphic picture of the “Doctour of Phisike” of his day, and the old poet is as gently sarcastic about his pilgrim’s “science” as a writer of five hundred years later might have been. “He was grounded in astronomy,” we are told, and--

Well could he fortune the ascendant Of his images for his patient He knew the cause of every malady Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry, And where engendered and of what humour. He was a very perfect practisour.

His library was a wonderful one considering the rarity of books at that time.

Well knew he the olde Esculapius And Dioscorides, and eek Rufus Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galien, Serapyon, Razis, and Avicen, Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn, Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn.

The doctor was careful about his food, “his study was but little on the Bible,” he dressed well, but was inclined to save in his expenses.

He kept that he won in the pestilence. For gold in phisike is a cordialle There fore he loved gold in special.

The original of Chaucer’s “Doctour of Phisike” has been sometimes supposed to have been the well-known John of Gaddesden, physician to Edward II, Professor of Medicine at Merton College, Oxford, a Prebendary of the Church, and the author of “Rosa Anglicana.” This work, although full of absurdities and crude ideas of medicine and pharmacy, became the popular medical treatise in England, was translated into several European languages, and reprinted many times in this country during the two hundred years which followed its first appearance. The author named it the Rose, he says, because, as the rose has five sepals, his book is divided into five parts; and as the rose excels all other flowers, so his book is superior to all other treatises on medicine. It was probably published between 1310 and 1320.

John of Gaddesden’s work well illustrates the pharmacy of the period, for he was great on drugs. He taught that aqua vitæ (brandy) was a polychrest, or complete remedy; that swines’ excrement was a sovereign cure for hæmorrhage; that a sponge steeped in a mixture of vinegar, roses, wormwood, and rain-water, and laid on the stomach, would check vomiting and purging; that toothache and other pains might be cured by saying a Paternoster and an Ave for the souls of the father and mother of St. Phillip; a boar’s bladder, taken when full of urine and dried in an oven, is recommended as a cure for epilepsy; a wine of fennel and parsley for blindness; and a mixture of whatever herbs came into his mind--for example, “apium, petroselinum, endive, scolopendron, chicory, liver-wort, scariola, lettuce, maidenhair, plantain, ivory shavings, sandal wood, violets, and vinegar”--is ordered as a digestive drink. Add to such senseless recipes as these a number of equally unintelligent charms, and a fair idea of the condition of medical science in England in the fourteenth century is obtained. It does not compare at all favourably with the condition to which the Arabs in Spain had elevated the art two and three hundred years before.

Bernard of Gordon, who wrote from Montpellier, but is believed to have been a Scotchman, was the author of the “Lilium Medicinæ,” published about 1307 or 1309. The work was known to John of Gaddesden, for he quotes from it. Perhaps he had it in his mind when he observed that the rose excels all other flowers. Mainly it was a compilation from Arabic writers with the addition of many scholastic subtleties and astrological reveries. It is noticeable in this author and in John of Gaddesden how careful both are to distinguish between the treatment of the rich and the poor. The latter, for example, states that dropsy can be cured by spikenard, but he advises practitioners never to give this costly medicine without first receiving pay for it. Gordon recommends for a poor person’s cough that he should be ordered to hold his breath frequently during the day for as long as possible, and if that does not cure he is to breathe fire.

John Mirfield also wrote his “Breviarium Bartholomei” in the latter part of the fourteenth century. Dr. Norman Moore in his “History of the Study of Medicine” has freely quoted from this old work, and gives several facsimile pages from some of the earliest manuscript copies of it. Dr. Moore regards the Breviarium with special interest as it is the first book on medicine in any way connected with his hospital, the oldest in London. Mirfield, relating some of the cures performed by his master, mentions that a woman came to him having lost her speech. The master rubbed her palate with some “theodoricon emperisticon” and with a little “diacostorium.” She soon recovered. An apothecary brought a youth to the hospital with a carbuncle on his face, and his throat and neck swollen beyond belief. The master said the youth must go home to die. “Is there then no remedy?” asked the apothecary. The physician replied, “I believe most truly that if thou wert to give tyriacum in a large dose, there would be a chance that he might live.” The apothecary gave two doses of ʒij. each, which caused a profuse perspiration, and in due course the youth recovered. He advises smelling and swallowing musk, aloes wood, storax, calamita, and amber to prevent infection in cold weather, and in warm weather sandal wood, roses, camphor, acetositas citri, sour milk, and vinegar, taking syrup of vinegar in the morning and syrup of violets at midday. For gout he prescribes an ointment the principal constituent of which is goose grease. The preparation of this remedy is explained metrically. The verses begin thus:--

Anser sumatur, Veteranus qui videatur, Post deplumetur, Intralibus evacuetur.

Rheumatism was to be treated with olive oil, and the pharmacist is directed to warm it while he repeats the Psalm “Quare fremerunt gentes” as far as “Postula a me et dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam,” then the Gloria and two prayers. This recitation was to be repeated seven times. There were no clocks available at that time, and this therefore was the method of prescribing the length of an operation. Dr. Moore says he finds this direction would cover about a quarter of an hour.

Medical treatises in verse were frequent and popular in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are several in the British Museum. A curious specimen is preserved in the Royal Library at Stockholm, and it is reproduced in readable English in “Archeologia,” Vol. XXX, with notes by the translator, Mr. George Stephens, and by Dr. Pettigrew. They both believe it was written in the fourteenth century. It consists of 1485 lines. Of these it will suffice to give the first four, and one specimen of its sections. It begins thus:--

In foure parties of amā Be gynneth ye sekenesse yt yie han In heed, in wombe, or i ye splene Or i bleddyr, yese iiij I mene.

The following is entitled in the margin “Hed werk.”

Amedicyn I hawe i Myde For hedwerk to telle as I fynde To taken eysyl pulyole ryale And camamyle to sethe wt all; And wt ye jous anoyte yi nosthryll well A make aplaister of ye toyerdel; And do it in a good grete clowte And wynde yi heed yer wt abowte; As soon as it be leyde yeron All yi hedwerk xal away gon.

Two other specimens of these early poetical recipes from other authors may be quoted:--

ffor defhed of ye hed. For defhed of hed & for dullerynge I fynde wrete dyuers thynge Take oporcyon (a portion) of boiys vryne And mege it wt honey good & fyne And i ye ere late it caste Ye herynge schal amede in haste.

ffor to slepe well Qwo so may not slepe wel Take egrimonye afayre del And ley it vnder his heed on nyth And it schall hym do slepe aryth For of his slepe schal he not wakyn Tyll it be fro vnder his heed takyn.

THE EARLY ENGLISH DRUG TRADE.

The development of pharmacy as a separate organisation was later in England than on the Continent, and was very gradual. In the Norman period the retail trade in drugs and spices and most other commodities was in the hands of the mercers. These were, in fact, general shopkeepers, deriving their designation from merx, merchandise. They attended fairs and markets, and in the few large towns had permanent booths. Under the Plantagenets a part of the south side of “Chepe” roughly extending from where is now Bow Church to Friday Street was occupied by their stores, and was known as the Mercery. Behind these booths were the meadows of Crownsild, sloping down to what it may be hoped was then the silvery Thames. Probably sheep and cattle fed on the pastures which Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street have since usurped.

But English traders were beginning to feel their feet, and other guilds were pushing forward. The Easterlings (East Germans from the Baltic coasts and the Hanse towns) brought goods from the East and placed them on the English market, and the Pepperers and Spicers distributed them to the public. The Easterlings, it may be mentioned, have left us the word sterling to commemorate their sojourn among us. The Mercers meanwhile were getting above the shop. They were becoming merchant adventurers, and had no desire to contest the trade in small things with the Pepperers of Sopers’ Lane, or the Spicers of Chepe. Their other small wares fell into the hands of the Haberdashers.

There is evidence of a guild of Pepperers in London as early as 1180. As a company they appear to have been ruined by the demands of Edward III for subsidies for his French and Scottish campaigns. From their ashes, including those of the Spicerers, arose the Grocers, the sellers “en gros.” They are heard of in the fourteenth century, and were apparently incorporated by letters patent from Edward III in 1345, but their first known charter was granted by Henry VI in 1429, while in 1453 that King conferred on them the charge of the King’s beam, by which all imported merchandise was weighed, a charge of 1d. per 20 lbs. being authorised for the service. In 1457 they were given the exclusive power of garbling (cleansing and separating) drugs, spices, and other imported merchandise, and they also had the duty of examining the drugs and medicinal wares sold by the apothecaries. The law requiring certain drugs to be officially “garbled” before they could be sold was repealed by an Act passed in the sixth year of Queen Anne’s reign.

The earliest record of the exercise of their authority over apothecaries is found in 1456, when the minutes of the Company show that they imposed a fine on John Ashfield “for making untrue powder of ginger, cinnamon, and saunders.” Other similar items appear from time to time. In 1612 Mr. Lownes, apothecary to Prince Charles, complained to the Company that Michael Easen, a grocer-apothecary, “had supplied him with divers defective apothecaries’ wares,” and the offender was committed to the Poultry Comptoir.

BUCKLERSBURY.

Bucklersbury was the centre and headquarters of the London drug trade, at least from the Tudor to the Hanoverian periods. Shakespeare in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” makes Falstaff refer to “the lisping hawthorn buds that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in sample time.” Stow (1598) says of this thoroughfare that “This whole street on both sides throughout is possessed of grocers and apothecaries.” Ben Jonson calls it “Apothecarie Street.” This dramatist in “Westward Ho!” makes Mrs. Tenderhook say “Go into Bucklersbury and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it.” Later in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, Ben Jonson says of one of his books, objecting to vulgar advertising methods,

If without these vile arts it will not sell, Send it to Bucklersbury, there ’twill well.

In Charles II’s reign Mouffet speaks of Bucklersbury being replete with physic, drugs, and spicery, and says it was so perfumed at the time of the plague with the pounding of spices, melting of gums, and making of perfumes, that it escaped that great plague. A quotation from Pennant in Cassell’s “Old and New London” shows that in the reign of William III Bucklersbury was the resort of ladies of fashion to purchase teas, furs, and other Indian goods; and the king is said to have been angry with the queen for visiting these shops, which appear from some lines of Prior to have been sometimes perverted to places of intrigue.

The street acquired its name from a family called the Bokerells or Buckerells, who lived there in the thirteenth century. Stow gives a different account. He states that there was a tower in the street named Carnet’s Tower, and that a grocery named Buckle who had acquired it was assisting in pulling it down, intending to erect a goodly frame of timber in its place, when a part fell on him, which so sore bruised him that it shortened his life.

A CHEMIST’S ADVERTISEMENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

A London chemist’s advertisement (about 1680-1690) runs thus:--

“Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, chemist in London, Southampton Street, Covent Garden, continues faithfully to prepare all sorts of remedies, chemical and galenical. He hopes that his friends will continue their favours. Good cordials can be procured at his establishment, as well as Royal English drops, and other articles such as Powders of Kent, Zell, and Contrajerva, Cordial red powder, Gaskoins powder, with and without bezoar, English smelling salts, true Glauber’s salt, Epsom salt, and volatile salt of ammonia, stronger than the former. Human skull and hartshorn, essence of Ambergris, volatile essence of lavender, musk and citron, essence of viper, essence for the hair, vulnerary balsam, commendeur, balsam for apoplexy, red spirit of purgative cochliaria, spirit of white cochliaria, and others. Honey water, lavender water of two kinds, Queen of Hungary water, orange flower water, arquebusade.

“For the information of the curious, he is the only one in London who makes inflammable phosphorus, which can be preserved in water. Phosphorus of Bolognian stone, flowers of phosphorus, black phosphorus, and that made with acid oil, and other varieties. All unadulterated. Every description of good drugs he sells, wholesale and retail.

“Solid phosphorus, wholesale, 50s. an ounce, and retail, £3 sterling, the ounce.”

THE ENGLISH APOTHECARIES.

Although the Grocers were the recognised drug dealers of this country, apothecaries who were associated in their Guild were also recognised. Some authorities name Richard Fitznigel as apothecary to Henry II before he was made Bishop of London. But this evidence cannot be trusted. The first definite allusion to an apothecary in England occurs in 1345, when Edward III granted a pension of sixpence a day for life to Coursus de Gangeland, an apothecary of London, in recognition of his services in attending on the king during his illness in Scotland. The record of this grant is found in Rymer’s “Foedera,” which was not published until 1704, but Rymer was historiographer royal, appointed by William III, and his work was a compilation from official archives. An earlier mention of an apothecary is found in the Scottish Exchequer Rolls wherein it appears that on the death of Robert the Bruce, in 1329, payments were made to John the Apothecary, presumably for materials for embalming the king’s body. Dr. J. Mason Good, who wrote a “History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the Profession of the Apothecary,” in 1795, mentions, on the authority of Regner, that J. de Falcand de Luca publicly vended medicines in London in 1357, while Freind (“History of Medicine,” 1725) states that Pierre de Montpellier was appointed Apothecary to Edward III in 1360.

It is clear, therefore, that the apothecary was a familiar professional personage in England five hundred years ago. Conclusive evidence of his practice is given by Chaucer, who, in the Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales” (written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century), describing a “Doctour of Phisike” says--

Ful reddy hadde he his apothecaries To send him dragges and his lettuaries For eche of hem made other for to Winne.

The satirical suggestion of the mutual obligations of physicians and apothecaries has been familiar for all these centuries.

It seems certain that in Henry VIII’s reign the apothecaries were doing a considerable amount of medical practice, besides selling drugs. The Act of 1511 incorporating the College of Physicians and giving them the exclusive right to practise physic in London and for seven miles round, was largely used, if not intended, against apothecaries. In 1542, however, an Act was passed which rather modified the severe restrictions of the original statute, and under the new law apothecaries became more aggressive. In Mary’s reign the Physicians again got the legislative advantage, and there is a record in the archives of the College of Physicians (preserved by Dr. Goodall, who wrote “A History of the Proceedings of the College against Empiricks,” in 1684) stating that in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the President and Censors of the College summoned the Wardens of the Grocers’ Company and all the apothecaries of London and the suburbs to appear before them, “and enjoyned them that when they made a dispensation of medicine they should expose their several ingredients (of which they were composed) to open view in their shops for six or eight days that so the physicians passing by might judge of the goodness of them, and prevent their buying or selling any corrupt or decayed medicines.” The grocers and apothecaries do not appear to have raised any objection to this decree. Whether they obeyed it or not is not stated.

INCORPORATION OF THE APOTHECARIES.

The first Charter of Incorporation was granted to the apothecaries by James I in 1606, but this did not separate them from their old foes, the grocers. They continued their efforts, however, and with the aid of friends at Court they obtained a new Charter in 1617, which gave them an entirely independent existence as a City Guild under the title of the Society of the Apothecaries. This is the only London guild which has from its incorporation to the present time admitted only actual apothecaries to its fraternity.

Another peculiarity claimed by one of the Company’s historians (Dr. J. Corfe: “The Apothecary”) is that the Guild of Apothecaries is the only City Company which is called a Society. He believes that this may be attributed to the supposed fact that the corporation was modelled on a similar association founded at Naples in 1540 under the name of Societa Scientifica.