Part 30

The ideas entertained of zinc by the chemists who studied it were curious. Albertus Magnus held that it was a compound with iron; Paracelsus leaned to the idea that it was copper in an altered form; Kunckel fancied it was congealed mercury; Schluttn thought it was tin rendered fragile by combination with some sulphur; Lemery supposed it was a form of bismuth; Stahl held that brass was a combination of copper with an earth and phlogiston; Libavius (1597) described zinc as a peculiar kind of tin. The metal he examined came from India.

The white oxide of zinc was originally known as pompholyx, which is Greek for a bubble or blister, nihil album, lana philosophica, and flores zinci. The unguentum diapompholygos, which was found in the pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century, and was a legacy from Myrepsus, was a compound of white lead and oxide of zinc in an ointment which contained also the juice of nightshade berries and frankincense. It was deemed to be a valuable application for malignant ulcers.

Oxide of zinc as an internal medicine was introduced by Gaubius, who was Professor of Medicine at Amsterdam about the middle of the eighteenth century. It had been known and used under the name of flowers of zinc from Glauber’s time. A shoemaker at Amsterdam, named Ludemann, sold a medicine for epilepsy which he called Luna fixata, for which he acquired some fame. Gaubius was interested in it and analysed it. He found it to be simply oxide of zinc, and though he did not endorse the particular medical claim put forward on its behalf he found it useful for spasms and to promote digestion.

END OF VOL. I

R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BREAD ST. HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Schelenz in “Geschichte der Pharmacie,” 1904, has collected a remarkable number of facts and documents illustrative of the development of pharmacy in Germany. He quotes a Nuremberg ordinance of 1350 which forbids physicians to be interested in the business of an apothecary, and requires apothecaries to be satisfied with moderate profits.

[2] Dr. Monk gives a copy of the Latin minute in the books of the College referring to this curious recantation. The actual words which Geynes signed were these:--“Ego, Johannes Geynes, fateor Galenum in iis, quae proposui contra eum, non errasse.”

[3] “Free Phosphorus in Medicine,” 1874.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious spelling, punctuation and printers’ errors have been silently corrected.

2. Where appropriate, original spelling has been retained.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated words have been kept as in the original.

4. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r.