Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2) — John Shaqi
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
It will be observed from the list of the excrements used in medicine
officially recognised in the early London Pharmacopœias already given
that those from various animals were specified. Excrements as remedies
are at least as old as Dioscorides, whose work contains a special
chapter devoted to an appreciation of the distinguishing virtues of the
various sorts of dungs. Pliny likewise names many sorts, and states
what are their particular properties.
It is evident that these substances became very popular as household
remedies among the peasantry of European countries. In his treatise “On
Salts,” Glauber (about 1650) explains how satisfactorily certain of
these chemical products can take the place of the unpleasant remedies
in use among the peasantry of his time. He says: “They purge the bodies
of boys and girls with mouse dung, horse dung, and goose dung; these
dissolved in wine or beer, and strained through linen cloths, they use
to cure falling sickness by sweat. In the cure of erysipelas or burns
and scalds, they use hogs’ dung; in all kinds of swelling, sheep’s
dung; in a quinsy, dogs’ turd or human dung.”
Glauber states that he had known of wonderful cures effected by these
remedies. But the reason was simple. Human dung, for example, is
nothing but bread and flesh reduced into their first matters, all
their bonds being loosened and rendered fit for the exercise of their
virtues. The essential constituent is a salt not unlike the sal enixon
of Paracelsus.
The mention of this great teacher leads Glauber to relate that once
some physicians and noblemen asked Paracelsus to tell them some great
secret of medicine. In reply he told them that incredible virtues were
hidden in human dung. Whereupon they were very angry and departed,
considering that he was mocking them. Paracelsus made a remedy which
he called Zebethum Occidentale from human dung, dried and powdered.
He also recommended a child’s excrement to be distilled twice, and to
use the oily distillate for fistulas, canker, and as an application for
premature baldness.
Album Græcum, which was dried white dogs’ turds, was regularly stocked
by the apothecaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was
given in colic and dysentery, but more generally applied externally
to abscesses, ulcers, and quinsies. In Robert Boyle’s “Collection
of Medicines,” 1696, “a homely but experienced medicine for a sore
throat,” is said to be one drachm of album græcum made into a linctus
with honey of roses.
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