244 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



about which he had been consulted. The second and third letters are of 

 more general interest : — 



Sr., 



Dr. Dun is right in his guesse yt ye distemper is a sort of ricljets but I feare 

 it is such yt ordinary purgers will hardly prove effectuall ye greatnesse of ye 

 distemper may be concluded from hence yt it has ye same effect upon bones yt 

 are almost adult yt it uses to have upon children at a time when their hardest 

 bones are not above one degree removed from gristles & some but newly gellied. 

 I believe these symptomes will hardly determine ye controversy between Glisson ' 

 and Mayow ^ whether the rickets owe their originality to tlie alogotrophy of ye 

 bones or ye atrophy of ye muscles for I suppose this to be a corrosive venome 

 whose first degree softens and makes spongy but next step calcines ye bones such 

 as have been sometimes observed after long confirmed veneriall distempers. I 

 pray let the Dr. know yt my opinion is some purge made of mercury remedies 

 ought to be prescribed I think pulvis corallium' with mercurius dulcis might 

 be a good purge ' there is an author I once read of Dr. Duns Harris pharma- 

 cologia anfciemprica' a preparation of Antimony wch. I think they call halfe 

 rested* Dr. Needham' used it much sent me a quantity of it. I used a little 



■ Francis Glisson (1597-1677). A graduate of Cambridge, and Regius Professor of 

 Medicine there for forty years. He published the original and classical account of 

 infantile rickets in 1650. In 1654 he was the first accurately to describe the capside of 

 the liver and its blood-supply. 



■ John Mayow (1643-1679). A student of Wadham College, and D.C.L of Oxford. 

 He was a distinguished chemist and physiologist. Glisson had explained the curvature 

 of the bones iu rickets by alogotrophia. or unequal nutrition of different parts. Mayow 

 in his essay on rickets, which was published at Oxford in 1668, opposed this view, and 

 attributed the curvature to a deficiency in the growth of the muscles. He said " the 

 bones are bent by the muscles just as a bow by its string." 



^ Coralliura, or Red Coral, was said to be cold and dry. Culpeper writes it "helps 

 witchcraft, being carried about one. It is an approved remedy for the Falling Sickness. 

 Also if ten grains of Red Coral be given to a child in a little Breast Milk so soon as it is 

 born, before it take any other food, it will never have the Falling Sickness, nor convul- 

 sions." The common dose is from ten grains to thirty. (Pharm. Lond., p. 50.) 



* The " Purging Powder" is described in Radcliffe's Dispensatory of 1721 as follows : — 

 "Take Mercurius dulcis six times sublim'd, six grains ; Resin of Jalap, seven grains ; 

 Fine white sugar, half a scruple ; mix and make a powder to be taken early with due care." 



5 Walter Harris (1647-1732). A Fellow of New College, Oxford, and of the College 

 of Physicians, London. The book referred to is " Pharmaeologia Anti-Emprica, or a 

 rational discourse of remedies both chemicid and Galenical." London, 1683. 



" The powder referred to is probably the Kermes Mineral, invented by Glauber in 

 1651. The method of its preparation was kept secret, but in 1720 was purchased by 

 Louis XIV. It was an orange-red powder, consisting of a mixture of oxide of antimony 

 with a hydrated sulphide of the metal, and a small proportion of sulphide of sodium or 

 potassium, according to the method of its preparation. It appeared in the Dublin 

 Pharmacopoeia as Antimonii Sulphui'etum Praecipitatum, or Sulphur Antimoniatum 

 Fuscuni. 



^ Either Caspar Needham or Walter Needham is referred to. Both were Fellows of 

 the College of Physicians of Loudon, and of the Roj'al Society. Caspar graduated M D. 

 Cantab, in 1657, and died in 1679 ; Walter graduated M.D. Cantab, in 1664, and died in 

 1691. 



