Chemiluminescence 447 



virtue in such malignant fevers as bilious fever and whenever it is 

 necessary to revive the energy of the patient, while Hartmann's 

 recommendation was for miliary and petechial fevers. He had ob- 

 served the practical effect of the remedy in measles, pleuropneu- 

 monia, and for the pains of rheumatism, epilepsy, and opthalmia, 

 both bloody and serous. 



A French doctor, Alphonse Leroi,^" gave such heavy doses that 

 the body of a patient who had died was found on autopsy to have 

 luminous internal organs. Leroi himself took three grams of phos- 

 phorus in treacle and was very much disordered for a time but 

 next day his strength was doubled and his sexual appetite greatly 

 enhanced. This observation led to the use of phosphorus for im- 

 potence, a fact mentioned by Erasmus Darwin in Zoonomia (1794) . 

 Leroi employed phosphorus internally with great success " especially 

 to restore and revive young persons exhausted by excesses." 



De Lens in his article on " Phosphore " in the Dictionaire des 

 Sciences Medicates (1820) devoted twenty- four pages to properties, 

 pharmaceutical preparations, physiological and toxic action, and 

 therapeutic applications of phosphorus. He referred to a certain 

 case of Leroi as a successful experience, the patient, a woman affected 

 with " une fievre putride . . . et qui succomba aux suites d'une 

 imprudence." In those days phosphorus was frequently given in 

 cases of headache, extreme debility, paralysis, epilepsy, melancholy, 

 gouty rheumatism, hydropsies, fevers of a bad character, and other 

 organic maladies. 



Most pharmacologies devoted a section to phosphorus. A book 

 on the subject was published by F. Bouttatz in 1800, Ueber den 

 Phosphor als Arzneimittel, in Gottingen. The use of phosphorus 

 dissolved in oil rather than the raw material became more general, 

 and a highly favorable appraisal is given in the book, Recherches et 

 Observations sur le Phosphore (1815) , by J. F. D. Lobstein, trans- 

 lated as Researches and Observations on the Use of Phosphorus in 

 the Treatment of Various Diseases (Philadelphia, 1825). The book 

 contains a letter from Lafayette, and was subscribed to by Thomas 

 Jefferson. Lobstein concluded that phosphorus, in danger of re- 

 moval from the pharmacopoeia because of its caustic nature, was 

 actually " a remedy capable of producing extraordinary effects in 

 various internal diseases . . . extremely dangerous to administer 

 [but] confined to judicious hands, [although] not a universal pana- 

 cea . . . good effects [were obtained in] asthenic diseases and chronic 

 agues. . . ." 



»°See the account in Phil. Mag. 2:290-293, 1798. 



