Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
The Menecrates to whom we owe Diachylon is alleged to have written 155
works, and Galen gives a number of his formulas, but no other than
Diachylon has survived. He must not be confounded with the perhaps
more celebrated Menecrates who was physician to Philip of Macedon.
This one was particularly noted for his vanity, which amused the king.
Once he wrote a letter to Philip commencing “Menecrates-Jupiter to
King Philip, greeting.” The king replied, heading his letter, “Philip
to Menecrates, Health and Common Sense.” Menecrates got himself up
to look like Jupiter, and had attendants who were made to figure as
Apollo, Æsculapius, and Mercury. Philip gave a banquet in his honour. A
separate table was reserved for him, and instead of viands only incense
was served to him, while the other guests were gloriously feasted.
Menecrates was offended at the joke and left the table in anger. He is
credited with having written a Book of Remedies, but it has been lost.
DOVER’S POWDER.
Thomas Dover, to whom we owe “Dover’s Powder,” practised as a doctor
in London in the first half of the eighteenth century. He was born
and buried at Barton on the Heath in Warwickshire in 1660. How he got
his medical training is not on record, but some time in his youth he
lived in the house of Thomas Sydenham, the famous physician, from
whom probably he acquired his independent ideas of medical treatment,
and possibly the germ of his lack of reverence for the College of
Physicians. While living with Sydenham he had small-pox, and forty or
fifty years later he described how the doctor treated him. First he was
bled to the extent of 22 oz.; then he took an emetic. He only took to
his bed when he became blind with the disease. In his bedroom he had
no fire, the windows were always kept open, and the bedclothes were
only allowed up to his waist. This was in the middle of January. For
medicine, Dover says, “he made me take twelve bottles of small beer
acidulated with spirit of vitriol every twenty-four hours,” and he
concludes, “I never lost my senses one moment.”
Having resisted both the disease and the treatment, Dover is first
heard of in practice in Bristol in 1684. He plodded along there until
1708, when at the age of forty-eight he set out with a privateering
party on a voyage round the world. The expedition consisted of two
ships, the _Duke_ and the _Duchess_. Captain Woodes-Rogers,
who has left an account of the voyage, was in chief command, and Dover
on the _Duke_ was his lieutenant. He must have had previous
experience of seafaring life or he would never have been entrusted with
the command of a vessel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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