40 FOTHERGILL AS A PHYSICIAN CHAP, iv 



conditions, due no doubt many of them to infections, and the 

 long repute of Plummer's pill in old syphilitic and other cases, 

 bid fair to obtain a rational justification. 1 



1 On the use of antimony by the ancients see 2 Kings ix. 30 ; Is. liv. n, 

 R.V. marg. ; Jer. iv. 30 ; Ezek. xxiii. 40. The name of Job's third daughter, 

 Keren-happuch, signifies " Horn of Eye-paint." The " eye-salve " of Rev. iii. 

 18 is thought by Ramsay (Letters to the Seven Churches, pp. 419, 429, and note) 

 to refer to the Collyria sicca made from Phrygian powder, for which, he says, 

 the medical school at Laodicea was famous, and which not improbably con- 

 tained antimony. See Galen, De Sanitate Tuenda, vi. 12, ed. Kuhn, vi. 439 ; 

 Paulus ^Egineta, Syd. Soc. iii. 357. Respecting the modern practice, the 

 Currus Triumphalis Antimonii, under the name of " Basil Valentine, a 

 Benedictine monk of Erfurt," is now proved to have been written about 1600 : 

 see English translation with notes by Kirkringius, 1678 ; American Journ. 

 Med. Science, 1841, p. 136 ; and Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry, 1913, 

 ii. 963. See also the well-known pharmacopoeial works of the last three 

 centuries ; Sydenham, Med. Obs. ; A. Billing, Principles of Medicine ; Sir T. 

 Watson, Lectures ; Trousseau, Lectures, iii. 346 ; T. K. Chambers, Lectures, 

 pp. 207, 229, 250 ; Elliotson, Harveian Oration, 184.6 ; Cushny, Plimmer, etc., 

 in Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., 1907, etc. ; Tsuzuki, in Deutsche med. Wochenschrift, 

 1913, p. 985 ; Brit. Med. Journ. and Lancet, numerous recent references. 



