Drugs from the Colonies: |
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Physicians, healers, apothecaries, and others who prepared and administered drugs for medical purposes worked for centuries with a treasury of materia medica that was familiar from ancient times, drawing on minerals, plant products, and other biological resources from European and nearby African and Asian sources. Galen, the great Greek physician of the second century, established the system that physicians would work with through modern times. |
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Dioscorides Pedanius, of Anazarbos. De materia medica[Dioskoridēs]. Venice: Aldus Manutius & Andrea [Torresani di Asolo], 1518. The most popular herbal from the time of ancient Greece to the early modern period was that of Dioscorides, here presented in an edition by Aldus Manutius of Venice, the great Renaissance printer, and his accomplished father-in-law partner. The 600 medical plants described in the book were for centuries the essential pharmacy stock for physicians, drawn from Europe and parts of Asia and Africa that were in contact with the Greek empire. Aldus’s dolphin and anchor device was familiar to men of learning. The place and date of publication appear in the colophon at the end of the book, and an early owner has added them to the printed title page with the aid of a pen. |
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Nicolas Monardes (ca. 1512-1588). Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la historia medicinal de las … Indias Occidentales. Seville: Alonso Escrivano, 1574. Monardes was greatly influential in promoting awareness of the drug plants and animals of the Spanish colonies, and was cited liberally by other botanical writers. A kind of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is illustrated on leaf [40]r, the title page for the second part. Monardes pioneered the description of tobacco as a medication, listing 36 ills it was helpful in treating. These included toothache, worms, foul breath, lockjaw, and cancer. Other important descriptions included the long pepper, balsam of Peru, and mechoacan. |
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Nicolas Monardes (ca. 1512-1588). Ioyfull nevves out of the newe founde worlde. London: Willyam Norton, 1577. This first English edition of Monardes brought his botanical descriptions and medical advice to an audience in Great Britain. Another English edition followed in 1580. The sassafras tree is shown; Monardes was the first to write of sassafras and advocate its use. Sassafras officinale was one of the foremost New World exports in the sixteenth century, and was used in the treatment of syphilis and fevers, even when from malaria. It was extensively used in patent medicines into the early twentieth century, when its carcinogenic properties were identified. |
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Francisco Hernández (1517-1587). Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium mexicanorum historia.Rome: Vitalis Mascardi, for Blasio Deuersini & Zenobio Masotti, 1651. This study was commissioned by Phillip II of Spain and conducted by Dr. Hernández during the years 1570-77, when he collected specimens and described minerals, flora, fauna, and sites of ethnographic interest. Hernández prepared a massive collection of six volumes of text and ten of illustrations and presented these to the king. The king assigned another doctor in Rome to extract an epitome of this research on medical resources; that manuscript volume may be viewed later in the exhibition. The work of Hernández was published in Rome in 1628 and is represented here by the Rome edition of 1649-1651. One of the 138 different illustrated plants described by Hernández is contrayerva (p. 301). The root was sometimes used in medicine as a gentle stimulant and tonic, and as an antidote to snake bites; it was once thought to be a formidable anti-epidemic. It served as a diaphoretic (increasing perspiration) and was applied in cases of typhoid fever, dysentery, and diarrhoea. The other plant described on this page figured in the treatment of syphilis. In all, Hernández contributed 3,000 new medical plants to the existing pharmaceutical resources. |
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FOR THE DRUGGIST'S POCKET OR POUCH | ||
Johann Jakob Wecker. Practica medicinæ generalis. VII. libris explicata. Basel: H. Froben d.J. & J. Meyer 1585. This is the first edition of this long-popular pharmaceutical handbook with its impressive |
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Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654). Pharmacopoeia Londinensis: or The London dispensatory : further adorned by the studies and collections of the fellows now living, of the said colledg.London: Peter Cole, 1659. This is the sixth edition of Culpeper’s translation and reworking of the old Latin Pharmacopoeia Londinensis published by the Royal College of Physicians,which in its 1618edition included guaiacum and mechoacan. Further drugs of American origin were gradually added to the compendium. |
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Sir Kenelm Digby. Nouveaux remedes et rares secrets, tirez des memoires de Monsieur le Chevalier Digby.Antwerp: Théodore Spits, 1676. Published almost a century after the first edition of Wecker, this volume by Digby as translated and probably augmented by Jean Malbec de Tresfel, contains numerous recipes including American ingredients, now well established in European physicians’ practices. One of these is cochineal, made from dead female insects and usually used as a dye, but here specified to treat a kind of fever. Cochineal is still in use for the purpose of coloring medications. Also included here are: balm of Peru, contrayerva, guaiacum, jalap, mechoacan, sarsaparilla, tobacco, ambergris, and spermaceti. |
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Ole Worm (1588-1654). Museum Wormianum. Seu, Historia rerum rariorum.Leyden: Johannes Elzevir, 1655. In the seventeenth century, scientists and wealthy collectors amassed great natural history collections as cabinets of curiosities. One well-documented example was the collection of Ole Worm, a Danish physician and polymath. This treasury of specimens would serve as a teaching collection for Worm’s medical students at the University of Copenhagen, but also attracted considerable outside interest. This remarkable catalogue of the items, including works of art and ethnographic specimens, includes as well a view of how the Museum looked at the time of Worm’s death. The various boxes of herbs, roots, barks, woods, fruits, and seeds in the foreground right included various samples of American origin. |
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A DICTIONARY OF PHARMACEUTICAL CHEMISTRY | ||
Johann Helfrich Jüngken (1648-1726). Lexicon chymico-pharmaceuticum.Nuremberg: J. F. Rüdiger, 1716. This is an early dictionary of pharmaceutical chemistry in two parts, the first of which describes the preparation of recognizable chemical compounds. The second part presents directions for the preparation of medicines from natural products (plants and animals), minerals, and various chemicals described in the first part. It was very popular with apothecaries and physicians, resulting in a succession of editions between 1693 and 1738. The work includes references to various New World plants and animals, e.g. Occidental bezoar (p. 480), and varieties of guaicum -- Caribbean, Nicaraguan, etc. - (p. 498). Jüngken served as court physician to members of the nobility and worked for institutions in the city of Frankfurt. |
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AN INDIGENOUS HEALER | ||
Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810). Encyclopédie des voyages. Paris: De l’imprimerie des Sciences et Arts, 1795. An Iroquois shaman or medicine man is depicted in this hand-colored engraving. Sitting outside a shelter, he wears earrings and carries a feathered rattle as well as a bag of medical plants. Grasset was born in Montreal and lived in Europe. This small book of samples was used to promote his five-volume series of the same title, published 1795-96 in Paris, illustrating the dress of many nationalities. |
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A MEDICAL PRACTICE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RHODE ISLAND | ||
David Vanderlight. Ledger or chiefe book of accompts. [Providence, Rhode Island], 1751-55. David Vanderlight. Inventory of druggs. [Providence, Rhode Island], 1756. Historians have been absorbed in the commercial, reform, and other activities of the Brown brothers, John, Nicholas, Joseph, and Moses of Providence. Their sister Mary married the Dutch physician David Vanderlight, educated at Leiden, and he established a medical practice, dispensing as well his own prescriptions. Following the Doctor’s premature death early in 1756, an office inventory was prepared by Benjamin Bowen and Nicholas Tillinghast. Vanderlight had at his disposal a wide variety of medications of both European and American origin, the latter including sarsaparilla, jalap, and numerous others. His account book likewise provides notes on Peruvian balsam, copaiba, cortex Peruviana, radix contrayerva, and ipecacuanha, etc. Hope Brown, a relative by marriage, was one of his regular patients. |
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