iv THE REFORM OF THERAPEUTICS 33 



earlier century was still dominated by formulae which had 

 come down in some cases little changed during a thousand 

 or fifteen hundred years. Confections and electuaries, com- 

 pounded of a multitude of miscellaneous and incongruous 

 substances, were still prescribed as sovereign remedies for the 

 ills of the body. They were often dignified by resounding 

 titles, which had been bestowed by some revered master. 

 Such were the Diacastorius and the Diasatyricon ; the Atha- 

 nasia Magna contained among many other things the liver 

 of a wolf and the horn of a goat or stag ; the Aurea Alexandrina 

 of Nicholas of Alexandria 1 had sixty-nine ingredients, and 

 the long list of diseases it could cure was crowned by the 

 words ab omni ventris malo liberal. 



It was from imposture of this kind, grown hoary by age, 

 that Sydenham and Boerhaave and others of the natural 

 school had begun to deliver the medical art, by prescribing 

 a few remedies, chosen rationally, instead of the weird and 

 marvellous compositions of the ancients. 



Felix, simplicibus novit qui tollere morbos ; 

 Pro quovis morbo est una vel herba satis. 2 



But the change took effect slowly : physic was still in some 

 sense a mystery ; and the apothecaries taught their pupils in 

 the old ways. The official organs of the art, the pharma- 

 copoeias, which became systematised in Fothergill's time and 

 ruled its practice, were loth to part with the old forms. It 

 was not until 1788, eight years after Fothergill's death, that 

 the London College of Physicians at last omitted from its 

 Pharmacopoeia the famous Theriaca Andromachi, or Venice 

 treacle, with its sixty-five ingredients, including dried vipers ; 

 and the Mithridatium of Damocras, whose fifty components 

 included the bellies of lizards. Both these relics of poly- 

 pharmacy had come down from before the time of Galen, and 

 it needed all the earnest persuasion of Heberden to effect 

 their omission. For Heberden had shaken himself free of 

 pharmacal fetters ; he told Lettsom once that he cared little 

 for the latter's new manuscript of Hippocrates ; he would 

 rather know, he said, what men would be thinking 2000 years 

 hence than what they believed 2000 years ago. 3 



The Edinburgh School had followed Boerhaave in his 



1 The Sal Sacerdotale of this thirteenth-century physician was alleged to 

 have been used by the priests in the time of Elijah the prophet. 



2 Zwelfer, Pharm. Regia, 1675, p. 163. 



3 Mem. Lettsom, iii. 124. 



D 



