Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
Glauber complained that he was not appreciated, which was probably
true. “I grieve over the ignorance of my contemporaries,” he wrote,
“and the ingratitude of men. Men are always envious, wicked,
ungrateful. For myself, faithful to the maxim, _Ora et Labora_, I
fulfil my career, do what I can, and await my reward.” Elsewhere he
writes, “If I have not done all the good in the world that I should
have desired, it has been the perversity of men that has hindered me.”
His employees, he says, were unfaithful. Having learned his processes,
they became inflated with pride, and left him. Apparently there was a
good business to be done in chemical secrets at that time. But Glauber
did not give away all he knew, and he found it best to do all his
important work himself. “I have learnt by expensive experience,” he
wrote, “the truth of the proverb, ‘Wer seine Sachen will gethan haben
recht, Muss selbsten seyn Herr und Knecht.’”
Although all Glauber’s books appeared with Latin titles they were
written in German.
GOULARD.
Thomas Goulard was a surgeon of Montpellier with rather more than a
local reputation. He was counsellor to the king, perpetual mayor
of the town of Alet, lecturer and demonstrator royal in surgery,
demonstrator royal of anatomy in the College of Physicians, fellow
of the Royal Academies of Sciences in Montpellier, Toulouse, Lyons,
and Nancy, pensioner of the king and of the province of Languedoc for
lithotomy, and surgeon to the Military Hospital of Montpellier. His
treatise on “The Extract of Saturn” was published about the middle of
the eighteenth century, and his name and the preparations he devised
were soon spread all over Europe. White lead and sugar of lead, and
litharge as the basis of plasters had been familiar in medical practice
for centuries; and Galen and other great authorities had highly
commended lead preparations for eye diseases and for general lotions.
The preparation of sugar of lead is indicated in the works attributed
to Basil Valentine. Goulard’s special merit consisted in the care
which he gave to the production of his “Extract of Saturn,” and in his
intelligent experiments with it, and its various preparations in the
treatment of external complaints.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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