Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
Having accomplished that journey he visited several of the cities of
North Africa on his way back, and at Bougia, after preaching with his
usual vehemence against the Mohammedan heresy, he was stoned by the
Moors and left for dead. Some friendly merchants took his body on their
ship bound for his native Majorca. He revived, but died on the voyage
in his eightieth year, A.D. 1415. His tomb is still shown in
the church of San Francisco in the City of Palma.
[Illustration: RAYMOND LULLY.
(From a portrait in the Royal Court and State Library, Munich.)]
Raymond Lully is particularly famous in pharmaceutical history for
the general use of the aqua vitae or aqua ardens which he introduced.
He had learned the process of distilling it from wine from Arnold of
Villanova, who had himself probably acquired it from the Arab chemists
of Spain, but Lully discovered the art of concentrating the spirit
by means of carbonate of potash. Of the aqua vitae which he made he
declared that “the taste of it exceedeth all other tastes, and the
smell of it all other smells.”
FRASCATOR.
Hieronymo Frascatoro, generally known as Jerome Frascator, was a
physician and poet of high repute in the early part of the sixteenth
century. Frascator was born at Verona in 1483 and died near that city
in 1553. As a physician he aided the Pope, Paul III, to get the Council
of Trent removed from Germany to Italy by alarming the delegates into
believing that they were in imminent danger of an epidemic. They
therefore adjourned to Bologna. Frascator especially studied infectious
diseases, and his celebrated Diascordium, which is described in the
section entitled “The Four Officinal Capitals,” was invented as a
remedy for the Plague. His great literary fame depended principally on
a Latin poem he wrote with the now repellent title of “Syphillides,
sive Morbi Gallici,” in three books. This was published in 1530. The
author did not accept the view that this disease had been imported from
America. He held that it had been known in ancient times, and that it
was caused by a peculiar corruption of the air. His hero, Syphilis,
had given offence to Apollo, who, in revenge, had poisoned the air he
breathed. Syphilis is cured by plunging three times in a subterraneous
stream of quicksilver. The best classical scholars of the age regarded
the poem as the finest Latin work written since the days when that
language was in its full life, and they compared it appreciatively with
the poems of Virgil. The following lines will serve as a specimen:--
... nam saepius ipsi
Carne sua exutos artus, squallentia ossa
Vidimes, et foedo rosa era dehiscere hiatu
Ora, atque exiles renentia guttura voces.
The name of the disease was acquired from this poem, and though it
has a Greek form and appearance, no ancient derivative for it can be
suggested. Frascator also wrote a poem on hydrophobia.
BASIL VALENTINE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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