EVOLUTION OF PATENT MEDICINE. 79 



lieved that a solution of gold had great medicinal virtues. "Why ? 

 On the theory that the strength and quality of the metal might 

 be communicated. to the body of the person taking it. Still more 

 potent than the aurum potabtle was the elixir vitw, by which peo- 

 ple preserved their youth and lived forever. 



The magical element in patent medicine actually won scientific 

 repute in the " doctrine of signatures " a doctrine which held 

 that plants and minerals, by their external character, indicated 

 the particular disease for which Nature had intended them as 

 remedies. Thus the Euphrasia, or eyebright, was good for the 

 eyes ; the wood-sorrel, being shaped like a heart, for the heart ; 

 the liverwort for the liver, and so on. Pettigrew, in his history 

 of medical superstition, says that this fanciful and magical no- 

 tion " led to serious errors in practice," and often to fatal results. 



Observe that, at this stage of its evolution, patent medicine is 

 herb medicine, and so it remained for a long time. The materials 

 of the healing art were all vegetable. The patent-medicine man 

 was a dealer in herbs, and his shop is well described by Romeo : 



" And in bis needy shop a tortoise hung, 

 An alligator stuffed, and other skins 

 Of ill-shaped fishes ; and about his shelves 

 A beggarly account of empty boxes, 

 Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, 

 Eemnants of pack-thread and old cakes of roses, 

 Were thinly scattered, to make up a show." 



In those days the barber-surgeon and the apothecary were the 

 recognized exponents of the healing art ; to them patients repaired 

 for treatment. " The students of medicine," Mr. Goadby, in his 

 England of Shakespeare, says, " were usually extensive dealers in 

 charms and philters." They were as ready " to sell love-philters 

 to a maiden as narcotics to a friar." The Arabic physicians in- 

 troduced chemical and mineral remedies into European pharma- 

 copoeias, and then patent medicines took a turn for the worse. 



The mantle of alchemists and witches seems to have fallen 

 upon certain " wise " men and women, whose medicinal prepara- 

 tions were invested with a dash of magic ; so that their nostrums 

 were held in popular favor. Lord Bacon complained of the 

 weakness and credulity of men in his day. "They will," said 

 he, " often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physi- 

 cian." Secret preparations were put up by physicians of repute. 

 Thus, Sir Kenelm Digby made a sympathetic powder which was 

 reputed to cure wounds. He even published a book of Choice 

 and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery. The 

 efforts of physicians were directed to the invention of nostrums 

 and charms, not to the cause of the disease or to the action of 

 their remedies. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth 



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