MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 209 



The seventeenth century, which was the grandest age 

 of progress in the sciences and of literary greatness, saw 

 therapeutics made richer by heroic remedies ; emetics, qui- 

 nine, and ipecacuanha. The use of these drugs was intro- 

 duced under peculiar circumstances, which are connected 

 with the most curious episodes in the history of medicine. 

 Several compounds of antimony had been in use before the 

 seventeenth century, as we have seen, but the most valua- 

 ble of all, emetic or stibiated tartar, was prepared for the 

 first time about 1630. The discovery and use of this new 

 antimonial compound revived old discussions ; among phy- 

 sicians and in the faculty it occasioned long-continued de- 

 bates, very passionate and sometimes extremely comic. 

 While Eusebius Renaudot published, in 1653, his "An- 

 timony Vindicated, and Antimony Triumphant," James 

 Perreau retorted, in 1654, by his "Kill-Joy for the Tri- 

 umphant Antimony of Eusebius Renaudot." Perreau as- 

 serted that a monk, intending to purge the brothers of his 

 convent, only made out to poison the whole of them, whence 

 the name of antimony (antimoine). The quarrel grew far 

 angrier, when one of the most bitter, but also one of the 

 most reactionary, spirits of the time, the famous Gui Patin, 

 contributed his sarcasms to those of the abusers of emetics. 

 He would speak of stibiated tartar only by the name of 

 stygian tartar, declaring it as deadly as the waters of the 

 Styx, from which it seemed to him to issue. Yet Louis 

 XIV. benefited by it, his doctors having ventured to pre- 

 scribe a pretty strong dose of it for him in an illness he 

 had at Calais. This was a severe blow to the enemies of 

 antimony. 



The name of the great king is also connected with the 

 introduction of two other important remedies in therapeu- 

 tics, quinine and ipecac. Quinine is produced naturally and 

 abundantly in the forests of the Cordilleras. Probably its 



virtues as a febrifuge had been put to service for a long time 

 10 



