Drugs from the Colonies:
The New American Medicine Chest
VENEREAL DISEASE, COUGHS, AND PHLEGM (ALL ABOUT GUAIACUM)
In the years following Columbus’s return from the New World, European physicians identified a new “pox” and assigned it various names, including the Spanish pox, the French disease, and the literary “syphilis,” alluding to a popular poem by Girolamo Fracastoro. An old principle held that a disease’s place of origin must also harbor its cure. So it was that the woody part of the guaiacum plant was identified early in the sixteenth century as a source of medication and cure for those suffering from the “new” disease.
IMPLEMENTING GUAIACUM
Liber de morbo Gallico. Venice: Giovanni Padovano & Venturino Ruffinelli, 1535.
This volume is a compendium of reports on the guaiacum treatment and includes in particular the narrative of the young scholar Ulrich von Hutten, who undertook a guaiacum cure of his own and believed himself to have been cured of syphilis. This is especially interesting in that it is believed to be the first published instance of a patient recording his own course of treatment and recovery. The narrative was first published in 1519 and frequently reprinted.
Eyn bewert Recept, wie man das Holtz Gnagaca[m] für die Kranckheyt der Frantzosen brauchen sol.[Bamberg: Georg Erlinger], 1524.
Individual physicians and chemists offered recipes and courses of treatment with guaiacum. On the last page of this guide to its use, “A worthy recipe”, a sixteenth-century physician has recorded his own preferred recipe in brown ink, reducing the verbiage in the interest of expediency.
Jan van der Straet. [Nova reperta]. [Antwerp, ca. 1600].
Straet prepared an imaginative series of prints entitled “New Discoveries.” This engraving is the title page to the Nova reperta, an illustrated catalog of sixteenth century technological developments.In the right foreground of the engraving are logs labelled hyacum or guaiacum, and nearby, functioning laboratory equipment may be seen. At the far left is a silkworm bush.
Ayn Recept von ainem Holtz zu brauche[n] für die Kranckheit der Frantzosen. Augsburg, 1524.
This recipe book also entices the reader with a vivid woodcut tableau of conversion, baptism of an Indian, shipwreck, fear and devotion, and sorcery and snake handling.
Alfonso Ferri (1500-1595). New erfundne helysame, vnd bewa[e]rte Artzney. Strassburg: Balthasar Beck, 1541.
Ferri, originally in Latin and here in a German translation by Walter Ryff, described the guaiacum plant, its origins and properties, a special diet to accompany treatment, dosage, and brewing process, accompanied by these woodcuts showing the laboratory equipment to be used. He describes as well the various illnesses, above all syphilis, that may be treated through guaiacum. He also discusses the mercury treatment, which would prove more effective and enduring, though also toxic to the syphilis patient.
FLOWERS AND RESIN OF GUAIACUM
Lydia Byam (fl. 1797-1800). A collection of exotics, from the island of Antigua. London, 1797.
Roughly a century after the artistic and scientific achievements of Maria Merian in Suriname and the Netherlands, this relatively unknown student of Caribbean natural history produced two fine series, each of ten engravings of medicinal plants. One shows guaiacum, used in the eighteenth century as a base for medicines and other purposes. The resin of guaiacum (guafenesin) continues to be used in present times as an expectorant in cough syrup.
AGAVE FOR MEDICINE AND ALCOHOL
Francisco Xavier de Balmis. Demostracion de las eficaces virtudes nuevamente descubiertas en las raices de dos plantas Espana : species de agave y de begonia, para la curacion del vicio venereo y escrofuloso. Madrid: Widow of Joaquin Ibarra, 1794.
The search for cures for syphilis continued, but recommendations by native healers were not always effective in practice. An old native woman in Mexico told a Creole healer that two local plants, agave and the begonia, were effective in treating syphilis. He passed on this unsupported information to the Spanish surgeon who wrote this volume. De Balmis proceeded to perform tests which led him to believe them efficacious. De Balmis gathered a quantity of the plants and took them back to Spain, where further tests were performed. Neither plant was successful in treatment, but the quest for cures and the thirst for valuable information from native healers was potent enough that the work went promptly into translations in both German and Italian.
Notwithstanding the inappropriateness of agave for treatment of venereal disease, its intoxicating properties have long been recognized. Maguey, one kind of agave, is the source of pulque, while Agave tequilana or blue agave is the source of tequila. At the time the Europeans arrived in Mexico, pulque, a viscous alcoholic beverage, was reserved for Aztec nobility, indigenous priests, and for pregnant women, due to its perceived high nutritional value. Modern research suggests that the drinking of pulque in moderation by childbearing women is safe. Chemical analysis reveals that it contains carbohydrates, vitamin C, B-complex, D, E, amino acids, and minerals such as iron and phosphorus. The spirituous beverage tequila is closely regulated by the government of Mexico. It is made from the blue agave plant in the state of Jalisco and parts of four other Mexican states. Tequila dates only from the sixteenth century, when Spanish colonists began distilling it to supplement limited stores of brandy from home.
Exhibition may be seen in Reading Room from september 27, 2011 through
december 22, 2011.
Exhibition prepared by Dennis C. Landis, Curator of European Books.