Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1875-10-29
Costly Medicines.

Costly Medicines.
1t was ridiculous, in the estimation of
our forefathers, to suppose that great
noble or King should dissolve pearls in
his drink, or swallow liquid gold, and yet,
forsooth, be no better after all than a poor
wretch who could afford himself only
little milk or water. Still more incredible
was it that man should submit to some
agonizing scaritlcation or actual cautery,
or should compel himself to bolt some in
expressibly disgusting mess which his
doctor had taken year TO concoct and
distill through a score of furnaces and
retOrts, and yet, when all was over, receive
no more benefit than If he had endured no
hardships, or had only drank some cow
clip juleP or herb tea. Such tame and
impotent conclusions could not be received
for moment. If patients would only pay
enough or suffer enough, they must be
cured. This, 1t really seems, was the un-
derlying conviction of men of old, on
which half the therapeutics of past times
was uncUnsciously based
The use of costly things as remedies for
disease constitutes kind of hdute medicine
necessarily of limited application. With
durun potable in the middle ages there
are much fewer traces of it than of the
other form of sacrifice, in which the patient
pdydH dc 81 pers0Rne. Everybody could
be sacrificed or made to swallow worms
and filth, but there were not many patients
who could afford to pay for emeralds to
tie on their stomachs in cases of dysen-
terry, as recommended by AvenZor, nor
for eight grains of that noble lunar med
icine, the wine of silver" nor for I" dis
solved pearls" either of which, Mat
thioli assures us, is sovereign against
melancholy" Dioscorides might in
vain recommend powdered sapphires
for starting eyes, or st. Jerome vaunt
their virtues for many other troubles,
to the majority of sufferers in their own
or any other age. Coral was more with
in popular reach, and probably con-
siderable number of believing souls have
followed Galen's prescription and tried
its use for splitting of blood, and Pliny's
recommendation of it for the stone. Avi-
cenna found that a cordial made of it is
" singularly productive of joy" and Mat
thioli says it has truly occult virtues
against epilepsy" whether chung about
the neck or drank in powders" As the
modern mind may be little puzzled as
to the mode in which some of these sub.
stances can be introduced into our inter
nal economy, the following extract from
the Family Dictionary of DR.. Salmon
q696) may throw light on the subject:
Coral 10 prepare.-Take such quantity
as We think convenient. Make it into fine
powder by grinding it upon porphyry or an
iron mortar. Drop on il by degrees little
rose-w water, and form it into balls for use.
After this manner crabs-eyes, pearl, oister-
shells aud precious stones are prepared to
make up cordials compounded OF them and
other suitable materials for the strengthen
ing OF the heart in fevers, or such like vio-
lent diseases, and to restore the decays of ma
ture.
Ebony is swallowed by rasping it in
shavings and making decoction. En-
eralds or rubies, and even silk (then o
ford, according to Dioscorides, relief In a
variety Of ailments, but OF course nothing
could be so generally, and, indeed, uni
versally, useful as gold He who could
discover how to make men actually drink
the most costly of metals would teach
them nothing less than the secret of i'm
mortality. The aurum potable, or noble
"Solar Oyl," especially when mixed with
the " Lunal Oyl' of silver and Mercurial
Oyl, forms, as Bolnest assures us, "a
great Arcanum, fit to be used in most dis
eases, especially in ctr0nick." By itself
alone, indeed, the drinkable gold was un-
derstood to be an elixir of life-a conclu-
sion not little remarkable when we con-
slider that the only real value of the metal
is its convenience as circulating me-
dium and for the fabrication OF ornaments,
and that the artificial importance thus at
tached 10 it must have so affected mems
minds as to cause them to idealize il as a
sort of divine antidote to disease and
death.
There was, it must be confessed, pro-
found Uiagdrity in this whole system of
costly medicine which it would be flat
tering to ourselves to think we had in our
day quite overpassed and discarded. But
IN truth, though we are not wont to dis
solve pearls or powder emeralds or drink
solar or even lunar "oyl," it may be fairly
asked whether we do not contrive to melt
down handful of dollars in every attack
of illness to very little better purpose than
If we had simply given them to an old
alchemist to put in his furnace and make
for us an elixir of life. What are those
long rows of items in our druggists bill
for draughts, embrocations, liniments,
blisters, gargles and what not represented
when the house-maid clears our room for
convalescence by a whole regiment of
quarter-emptied phials and pill boxes on
our table? Did anybody ever use one-half
or even third of the expensive medi-
cines ordered in every illness from the
pharmacy day after day? Or did anybody
ever find medical man, in view of pa
TENTS straitened circumstances, telling
his anxious friends that the remains of
the last bottle of his physic would answer
as well as new one or that they might
readily change it by adding a few drops
of some fresh ingredient instead of order
ing another six ounces from the chemist,
TO be set aside in its turn half-used to-mor-
row ?-Hdrper's Weekly.