Part 21

Opiates were originally electuaries containing opium or some other narcotic. Gradually, however, the word lost its significance and was used to indicate any medicinal substance of the same character. It is sometimes used for tooth pastes.

Oxycroceum was the name of a plaster among the ingredients of which were vinegar and saffron.

Panchrest. A remedy for all complaints.

Panchymagogon. A medicine to purify all the humours. Pulp of colocynth, black hellebore, diagrydium, of each 2½ ounces; senna, rhubarb, of each 4 ounces; species of diarrhodon abattis, hermodactils, turbith, agaric, aloes, of each 1 ounce. Make an extract with cinnamon water, adding the salt from the fæces. Dose, 20 to 30 grains. Calomel was called “mineral panchymagogon.”

Pedilavium. A decoction of herbs intended to bathe the feet with to induce sleep.

Pelican. A glass vessel with a tubular neck and provided with two beaks, one opposite the other, which conducted the vapour back to the lower part of the vessel, so that cohobation or redistillation was continually being carried on.

Periapt. An amulet hung round the neck, or applied to some other part of the body, to preserve the wearer from contagion, or to drive away evil spirits.

Pessary, from Greek “pessos,” a little round stone used in a game. Pessaries were in very common use by the Greek women for every kind of vaginal complaint. They were little balls of wool or lint which were medicated in various ways.

Pill. The word “pilula” is first found in Pliny, who says “Pharmaca illa in globulos conformata vulgo pilulæ nominamus.” See “Katapotia.”

Poison is the same word as “potion.” Both originally meant a draught.

Polychrest. A medicine of many virtues,

Pomatum. Originally an ointment made from the pulp of apples, lard and rose water, and used as an application for beautifying the face.

Populeum. An ointment made from the buds of the black poplar. It was prescribed by Nicolas of Salermo as a narcotic and resolvent application.

Poultice, from the Latin “puls (pult-)” through the Italian “polta,” meaning pap, pottage, pulse. “Poltos” was the Greek term for pottage. The intrinsic purport of the word was something beaten. The Latin “pulsare,” to beat, represents the idea, and it is found in our word “pulse,” which indicates the heart-beats, and also in such words as impulse, compulsory, and the like. In old medical books, “poultice” is generally spelt “pultesse” or “pultass,” and this form was retained until the eighteenth century. In the first quarto of “Romeo and Juliet” (Act II., Sc. 5) the Nurse asks Juliet, “Is this the poultesse for my aking boanes?”

Propomata were drinks made of wine and honey in the proportion of four to one according to Galen.

Psilothrum. A depilatory.

Salamanders’ Blood. The red vapours of nitrous acid.

Salia. Salt was a term very vaguely applied in old chemistry. Anything soluble and possessing a marked taste was called a salt. Thus grew the practice of describing substances as salia acida, salia alkalina, and salia salsa. Sal fixum was a salt not affected by heat.

Scutum. See Ecusson.

Sinapisms were a form of poultices or cataplasms used by the Romans as counter irritants. They were generally made with crushed mustard, sometimes with cantharides and crumb of bread, and often with dried figs wetted and reduced to a pulp.

Smegma was an application to the skin composed of some active remedy such as verdigris, alum, sulphur, pepper, hellebore, or stavesacre.

Sparadrap. An adhesive plaster on linen or paper.

Suffumenta or Suffumigia. Gums, aromatics, or other substances burned and inhaled to fortify the brain.

Supplantalia. Remedies applied to the soles of the feet, believed to attract the vicious humours. Live pigeons cut in two, and other animals were sometimes thus applied.

Suppositories are at least as old as Hippocrates, who called them Prosdita or Balanoi. Suppository is from the Latin sub-ponere, and is stated by modern etymologists to mean to place under; but older writers say the meaning was to substitute. That is, the suppository was employed instead of an enema.

Syrup. An Arabic introduction. The Arabic word is Sharab or Shurab, and our words sherbet and shrub as well as syrup are derived from it.

Tisanes, formerly Ptisans, are mentioned as favourite forms of administering the simpler kinds of remedies by Celsus. The word was derived from “ptissein,” to crush, and was applied first to barley water, made from crushed barley. In French pharmacy Tisanes, mostly infusions of herbs, are still very familiar. Celsus uses the term “sorbitio” for gruel. Apozems were stronger than Tisanes.

Troches, from the Greek trochiscos, a cone. Medicines in a hard form. Subsequently called in Latin, pastilli, and in English, lozenges. They were first made in the shape of cones. Trochisci plumbi were compounds of white lead, camphor, gum, etc., like oat grains, invented by Rhazes for application to the eyes. Named also trochisci Rhasis, and Arab soap.

APOTHECARIES’ WEIGHTS AND MEASURES SIGNS.

It is not possible to ascertain with certainty the origin of the familiar signs ℈, ʒ, ℥, used in formulas and prescriptions to represent the scruple, drachm, and ounce respectively. A few guesses may be quoted, but actual historic evidence is not available.

Dr. C. Rice, New York, an accomplished scholar and pharmaceutical authority, supposed that the scruple sign was a slightly modified form of the Greek gamma, γ, the first letter of “gramma,” the nearest Greek equivalent weight, and the original of the modern gramme. The same author associated the ounce sign with the Greek x, ξ, which was certainly used in ancient times, often with a tiny ° against it, thus, ξ°, to represent the “oxybaphon,” or vinegar vessel, which became a fluid measure equal to about 15 fluid drachms. There is some evidence that the same sign was used for the later Greek (or Sicilian) ungia, Latin uncia, the original of our ounce. The oxybaphon, it may be added, was translated into Latin “acetabulum,” which was also a vinegar vessel and a measure.

It has been guessed that the scruple sign may have been a slurred Greek ς, written thus, [symbol] (see Dr. Wall’s “Prescription,” published at St. Louis, 1888). Apuleius, who wrote in the second century, gives [symbol] as a sign for an obolus which was equal to about 14 grains. That symbol could easily have drifted into our ℈. Hermann Schelenz (“Geschichte der Pharmacie,” 1904, page 153) makes up a table of medicinal weights and measures from Celsus, Pliny, and Galen, and quotes the following signs as being then used: ~, sextans or obolus; ℈, gramma or scruple = about 20 grains; <, drachme or Holea = 3 scruples; γο, oungia or uncia = ounce; λι, libra = pound.

The drachm sign in Dr. Wall’s opinion is a reminiscence of an Egyptian symbol for half, somewhat similar to our figure 3, ʒ. He supposes that the Greeks adopted this sign to represent the half of the Egyptian medicinal weight unit, which according to the best authorities was equivalent to a double drachm. In a treatise by Ebers on the Weights and Measures of the Ebers Papyrus, he estimates the weight unit at 6·064 grammes (say 103 grains). He explains, however, that the name of the weight is nowhere given in the Papyrus. I cannot say whether there is any evidence of the transfer of the Egyptian weights to Greek pharmacy, but the usual course of the travels of such characters was from the Egyptian hieratic or demotic writing to the Coptic, and thence to the Arabic. It appears certain, however, that the Arabic “dirhem” was adopted from the Greek “drachma.”

The sign [symbol], which frequently occurs in the Ebers Papyrus, might quite easily and almost inevitably come to be written something like our ʒ; but Ebers values it at two-thirds of a litre, where it is named as a fluid measure. He deduces this from the hypothesis that the [symbol] is the hieratic equivalent of the hieroglyphic [symbol], dnat, or tenat.

Scribonius Largus, in the first century, and Apuleius in the second, both give Ζ as the Greek sign for a drachm in medical formulas. The former says this was equivalent to the Roman denarius, or one eighty-fourth of a pound.

A writer in the _Lancet_ of August 18, 1906, very confidently attributed these signs to the abbreviations made by the copyists of ancient manuscripts in the Middle Ages. One of the old abbreviation marks is still familiar in the z, which appears in “oz.” and “viz.” The z was formerly a ʒ, which was largely used to indicate that the word had been abbreviated; in the cases quoted from onza and videlicet. Palæontologists say that the ʒ was itself a modification of the mark “;” which was a common contraction at the end of words ending in bus or que. Thus, for instance, omnibus and quaque would be written omni; and qua;. It is alleged that in writing; without removing the pen from the paper, something like ʒ will result. This is interesting, but it does not explain how the abbreviation came to signify drachm.

The _Lancet_ writer further stated that the ℥ was a slurred form of writing oz., and that the scruple sign was a ligature representing the letters sr.

It may be added that among the old manuscript signs ℈ is often used for ejus. I am not, however, prepared to suggest any connection between this word and a scruple.

℞

Paris, in “Pharmacologia,” pages 13 and 14, makes the statement that “such was the supposed importance of planetary influence that it was usual to prefix a symbol of the planet under whose reign the ingredients were to be collected; and it is not perhaps generally known that the character which we at this day place at the head of our prescriptions, and which is understood and supposed to mean Recipe, is a relict of the astrological symbol of Jupiter.”

I have not met with that statement in any earlier writer, but it has been quoted by scores of compilers since. It is very confidently asserted, but I think its accuracy is questionable. As an excuse for my temerity in challenging such an eminent authority it may be mentioned that on the same page the author informs us that the word “crucible” was derived from the circumstance that the alchemists were in the habit of stamping the figure of a cross on the vessel from which they were to obtain their long sought prize. No modern philologist would endorse that etymology.

Paris quotes, in support of the Jupiter theory, a few instances of directions for gathering specific plants “at the rising of the moon,” “when the dog-star is in the ascendant,” and so on. But these have no reference to a compound of several ingredients. It would have been of no use to invoke Jupiter alone for any of the ancient prescriptions. Every plant, said Paracelsus, has its special star. It would have stirred up discord in Olympus if any had been neglected.

Pereira adopts Paris’s theory, but makes it almost impossible to accept it. In “Selecta et Prescriptis,” he says it was usual in old prescriptions to prefix to the formula a pious invocation such as “D. J.” (Deo Juvante), “J. J.” (Jesu Juvante), the figure of a cross, or some similar Christian sign. The suggestion is that we have progressed from Christian to heathen symbols. It would be particularly interesting to know when the physicians of Christendom substituted the appeal to Jupiter for that which their own religion had pressed upon them.

Greek and Roman physicians wrote prescriptions, no doubt; but I am not aware that any of these have been preserved to us. Our prescriptions are the direct descendants of the “bills” which the physicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scribbled in coffee houses when they met their apothecaries. “Physitians bylles not Patients but Apothecaries know” (Warner, 1612, quoted in “Murray’s Dictionary”). It is too much to ask us to imagine that these scribes were in the habit of sketching the symbol of Jupiter at the head of these documents.

PLANETS AND METALS.

There are no historic records of the origin of the association of the seven metals with the seven planets nor of the connection of either with the deities of antiquity.

That Greece transmitted the mythological connection to Rome is clear enough, but it is not so certain whence Greece obtained the idea. Traces of it can be discovered in both Persia and Egypt, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the circle of imagery may have developed from the worship of the sun. Allowing that heavenly body to have been the supreme divinity, or at least the residence of such a being, it would be natural to assign to the moon and the five principal planets apparently in attendance on the earth similar though lower dignities. The tendency to group gods and planets and metals into sevens would be an obvious link between the last two, and the characters of the deities named would naturally be extended to the materials named after them.

Berthelot considers that Babylon and Chaldea were the localities where imagination was first most abundantly applied to the elucidation of science. There and elsewhere in the East the mystic relations of the number seven came to be recognised. Perhaps it was the regular appearance of the seven planets, visible to the naked eye, from which those early notions were based. Then the moon’s phases consisted of four equal periods of seven days each. The seven stars in the Great Bear, the seven colours, the seven tones in music, the seven vowels in the Greek alphabet, the seven sages, and, naturally also, the seven known metals, were all evidences of this order of the universe. Out of this correspondence grew the Chaldean and Persian ideas of seven heavens, each with its gate of a different metal; the first of lead, the second of tin, the third of brass, the fourth of iron, the fifth of a copper alloy, the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold.

The philosophers of Chaldea attributed to the heavenly bodies, or rather to the deities who had made these their homes, extensive control over the products of the earth. The sun-god produced gold, the moon-god silver, and so forth; and this view was prevalent certainly until the sixteenth century. Naturally all the early investigators had to picture their fancies more or less crudely, and thus alphabets originated. The Egyptian ideograms are the most familiar of this ancient poetry to us, and among these are some which are intelligible to us to-day. The sun and gold, ☉, are still represented by that sign; water, [symbol], was so indicated in the papyri and in the alchemical books of three or four hundred years ago; and the sign still used for the planet and the metal mercury, ☿, differs but little from the hieroglyph of Thoth, whom the Greeks called Hermes and the Romans Mercury. Greek students have imagined that this sign was derived from the caduceus or winged staff of the god, but some Egyptologists have claimed it as a picture of the “sacred ibis.”

It need not be supposed that any definite table of the planetary symbols was ever drawn up and agreed to. These only very gradually became uniform. Even the association of the planets and the metals was by no means invariable in different nations. Among the Persians, for example, copper was assigned to Jupiter; but the Egyptians dedicated a compound of gold and silver called electron to him, while in more recent systems Jupiter and tin are allied. Venus controlled tin according to Persian lore; but the Egyptian attribution of brass or copper to her has prevailed. Iron belonged to Mercury before quicksilver was recognised as a metal and at that time Mars was the god-father of an alloy similar to bronze. The oldest table known is one given by Olympiodorus in the fifth century, and in that electron is still associated with Jupiter and tin with Hermes (Mercury).

Berthelot’s laborious researches into the origin of alchemy, and his reproductions of ancient manuscripts show that while signs were used by the ancient Greek writers of about the first century of our era, they were not used by the Latin authors, but seem to have been in full adoption in the Middle Ages. The manuscript of St. Mark at Venice, which Berthelot believed was written about the year A.D. 1000, probably for some prince, contains a multitude of these symbols. A regular system is followed. Gold, for example, is represented by [symbol]; gold filings by [symbol]; gold leaf, thus [symbol]; and a combination of gold and silver by [symbol]. A similar modification of the original symbols is found in connection with the other metals.

There is scarcely any allusion to the symbols in the Arabic manuscripts, for that race had a holy horror of all forms of Greek paganism, though it may be noted that their physicians made a superstition of the practice of bleeding on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only, unconscious perhaps of the origin of this ritual, which depended on the fact that Mars, the god of blood and iron, superintended Tuesday’s operations, and Mercury, who had the management of the humours, was in charge on Wednesdays. It was really not until the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when the European alchemists were trying to find a way to transmute the baser metals into gold, that the code became “conventionalised.”

As already stated, the signs for the seven metals have not been invariable, but for many centuries they have been distributed thus:--

☉ Sol, the Sun, Gold. ☽ Luna, the Moon, Silver. ♃ Jupiter, Tin. ♀ Venus, Copper. ♂ Mars, Iron. ☿ Mercury, Quicksilver. [astrological symbol] Saturn, Lead.

It may be noted in passing how these old-time fictions have influenced our language, our literature, and especially our medicine. Lunatic, jovial, saturnine, martial, venereal, and mercurial, are etymological reminiscences of the time when temperaments and diseases were associated with the heavenly bodies, and the extent to which metallic compounds acquired their medical reputations from their artificial relationship with the powers which were assumed to have adopted them, is curious. Nitrate of silver was given in brain disorders originally because of the belief in the control of the mental faculties by the moon. The administration of iron for the purpose of invigorating the constitution was largely due to its connection with Mars, whose fame for virility assured the possession of similar virtue in his metallic god-son.

To the ancient planetary symbols the alchemists added a number of other signs to represent chemicals of later discovery, and to make their jargon even more incomprehensible than it would have been without them. Thus they indicated earth, air, fire, and water by the signs

These were a few of their other characters:

The introduction of any kind of mysticism was dear to the alchemical fraternity, some of whom, perhaps, really believed there was some hidden meaning in the symbols, for there were among the adepts clever men, true discoverers, who cannot be accused of fraudulent intentions, and yet can hardly have accepted literally the poetry they devised. Glauber, contemporary with our James I. and Charles I., was one of these. According to him the symbols were invested with a special mysterious meaning. He showed them in squares, thus:

and explained that the extent to which the symbol touches the four sides of the square indicates how near it approaches perfection. Gold, it will be observed, touches all four sides, silver three, and the other metals only two each.

INTERPRETING THE SIGNS.

Interpretations of these symbols have often been attempted, but they are for the most part mere guesses. Those representing the sun and moon are easy, but the others may generally be read in various ways. The sign for Jupiter is alleged to represent one of his thunderbolts; that for copper is supposed to illustrate the looking-glass of Venus; the iron sign is the shield and spear of Mars; the caduceus of Mercury and the scythe of Saturn are likewise traced in their respective signatures. It has also been fancied that the three signs of which a circle forms part--namely, those for quicksilver, copper, and iron--were intended to suggest that gold could be formed from them, the cross or spear attached being in fact the Egyptian phallus, or organ of generative vigour. In tin and lead there are evidences of the presence of silver. Perhaps more probable is the idea that these signs were originally combinations of letters--monograms, in fact, indicating the name which the planet bore in the country where the symbol was first adopted. Thus, in the sign for Jupiter, [symbol], the Greek initial for Zeus, has been traced; in that of Venus, [symbol], we have the initial of phosphorus; ♂, has been supposed to be [symbol], and [symbol], the first and last letters of Thouros, one of the names of Mars; while [symbol] represents the first and second letters of Chronos (Saturn) welded together. But the interpretation depends largely on the period when the signs were first used. Pictures preceded alphabets; they were in fact the originals of the phonetic sounds which ultimately the letters indicated.

The mysteries which made up so large a part of the science of alchemy passed from its votaries to the practitioners of physic and pharmacy, and are hardly dead in those professions yet. Pretended solutions of gold, vaunted as universal cures, were sold under the title of solar elixirs; the popular name of nitrate of silver to this day is lunar caustic; a black oxide of iron is called Ethiops martial; a solution of sugar of lead is extract of Saturn; sulphate of copper was once known as vitriol of Venus; muriate of tin was famous for the expulsion of worms under the name of Salt of Jove; and ointment of quicksilver is still universally labelled mercurial ointment.

INDEX

A

Ablathanabla, 166

Abracadabra mystery, 164

Abraxas, mystic word, 165

Absorbent ethiops, 351

Abtinas, incense makers, 57

Acetabulum, ii, 278

Acetanilide, discovery, ii, 273

Acetic acid, synthetic, ii, 271. _See also_ Pyroligneous acid

Acetum Philosophicum, ii, 279

Achillea milfoil, virtues discovered, 16

Achilles, medical discoveries, 16

Acids, how first made, 323

Acidum causticum, 325

Acidum Pingue, 325 (_For other acids see specific names._)

Aconite, discovery, ii, 221; as poison, ii, 223

Acopa, 91; ii, 279; ii, 290

Adders. _See_ Vipers

Adept, ii, 279

Adrenaline, synthetic, ii, 269

Adrian’s antidote, 288; dropsy cure, 299

Adulteration, early methods of detecting, 210

Adust, ii, 279

Advertisement, early, 141

Ægyptiacum 16; ii, 52

Aërated cod-liver oil, ii, 167

Æsculapius, Greek physician, 7; portraits, 8; death, 8; descendants, 10; temples, 11, 79

Æthiops. _See_ Ethiops

Aetius, medical writer, 215

Aggregatives, ii, 279

Ague, cures, 50; ii, 133

Agyrtoi, 93

Alabaster, ii, 279

Albucasis of Cordova, 110, 329

Album Græcum, ii, 10

Album Rhasis, ii, 279

Alchemy, invention, 4. _See also_ Chemistry

Alcohol, constitution, 330; formula, ii, 270; etymology, 103, 326; early references, 328, 329; synthesis, 330; ii, 271

Alcohol of Mars, 327

Alcohol of sulphur, 327

Aldehyde, preparation, ii, 271

Alembic, etymology, ii, 279

Alembroth salt, 243, 417; etymology, ii, 279

Alexander of Tralles, 216; Hiera, ii, 141

Alexandria library, 88, 98

Alexandrinus, Nicolas, 219

Alexipharmic, ii, 279

Alexiteria, ii, 279

Alfred the Great, letter to, 114, 131

Alga nostoch, 375

Algaroth’s powder, 381

Algarotti, note on, 381

Alhandal, ii, 279

Alkahest, Glauber’s 264; ii, 279