September 2,1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
183 
And here commences the true special liistory of 
Spanish pharmacy, still ultimately united to the art 
of healing. We now meet with a very peculiar po¬ 
sition of affairs. The Arabs had conquered part of 
Spain; Hispania had become a Roman province ; 
Arabs and Romans predominated alternately ; Arabs 
and Spaniards united to Mozarabs. The remnants 
of mysticism, transferred from the Greeks to the Ro¬ 
mans, superstition, the self-illusion and deception 
of the magicians and Arabic alchemists, had to be 
destroyed; the best medical schools were filled by 
Arabs, following the Arabo-Greek system; Hippo¬ 
crates’ system, modified by a little Galeno-Arabism, 
prevailed in medicine. From the ninth to the eleventh 
century the Arabian schools flourished, the Arabian 
physicians considerably increased the number of 
remedies, and excelled in most complicated prescrip¬ 
tion^. Galen’s theory of putrefaction, originally 
^Aristotle’s idea, necessarily domineered over the 
whole of medicine. But with the expulsion of the 
Moors from Spain, under Ferdinand the Catholic 
and his queen Isabella, the influence of the Arabs 
and the Spanish Moors gradually died away, al¬ 
though it can be traced to the sixteenth century, 
when the celebrated physician of Philip II., Franz 
Valles of Covarubias, formerly professor at the Uni¬ 
versity of Alcala de Henares, became one of its 
most strenuous supporters. At the time of the 
Saracens pharmacy became separated from the 
study of medicine in the renowned school of Alex¬ 
andria. The Yalentians and Catalans were amongst 
the first European people who fostered pharmacy. 
The enlargement of the materia medica,—beginning 
from the time of Alphonse the Wise, 1252, and to 
which the Crusades assisted,—furnished many sub¬ 
jects for investigation; chemistry gained more posi¬ 
tive ground, it became incorporated into pharmacy, 
and the union between the latter and the healing 
art became more and more intimate. 
This historical state of things no doubt had 
its origin in the circumstance that the most cele¬ 
brated magicians and alchemists were of Arabian 
origin, while the most renowned physicians were 
either Jews or Arabs or Moorish Spaniards. The 
great acquisitions reserved for future centuries were 
the gradual amalgamation of a certain knowledge of 
remedies with technical pharmacy and the enrich¬ 
ment of the materia medica by chemical and phar¬ 
maceutical preparations. In this respect the time 
of the Abasides of the Orient stands outmost praise¬ 
worthy. Curt Sprengel’s ‘ Arabum. Res Herbaria’ is 
our great authority of the Arabic influence; also 
the works of Monte Cassino, who had lived for forty 
years among the Arabs, and who in his book ‘ De 
Gradibus,’ 1536, recorded all Arabian remedies. 
The importation of many new drugs from recently 
discovered parts of the globe, and the foundation of 
botanical gardens, are proofs of special advance¬ 
ment. Among the most important discoveries of new 
drugs that of the cinchona bark in 1638 stands fore¬ 
most, and it is well known that the Spaniards were 
the first to import it into Europe. 
The first botanical garden was founded under 
Philip II. J. Pedro Esteve investigated the plants 
of the kingdom of Valencia; and Don JuanFragoso, 
of Toledo, cliirurgeon to the same king, travelled 
for the same purpose with Don Francisco Herman- 
dez through the province of Seville. The Spaniards 
claim the discovery of making sea water palatable 
by distillation in the sixteenth century. Dr. Andres 
Laguna wrote in 1566 :—“ Hacese el agua marina 
dulce 6 a lo menos salobre y potable colandola por 
arena, destilandola en alambiques,” etc. Towards the 
end of the fifteenth century the Spaniards, who 
figure prominently in the history of syphilis, as¬ 
sisted in the introduction of mercury and of the vari¬ 
ous ligna. 
The bath forms a peculiar speciality in Spain. 
The Romans had popularized the use of baths in this 
province of theirs; they erected solid and spacious 
buildings for the purpose, the remains of which still 
exist. The Arabs adopted the custom; but the mis¬ 
chief created by the meeting of the two sexes 
induced Alonso VI. to prohibit the use of public 
baths and to destroy the buildings. Until the 
eighteenth century baths and mineral springs have 
been much neglected, which is the more surprising 
as the peninsula is peculiarly rich in medicinal 
springs. More recently this great mistake has been 
somewhat rectified, but analyses of many important 
springs are still wanting. Many foreign and native 
mineral waters are sold by pharmacists in Madrid 
and other towns. 
{To be continued.) 
THE HONEY TRADE. 
BY P. L. SIMMOXDS. 
{Continued from page 168.) 
Considerable quantities of honey are produced by the 
wild bees in the woods of North America. Bee-hunting 
is a most fascinating pursuit in the backwoods ; the 
returning bee laden with sweets is watched to its home, 
and 150 lb. of honey are sometimes found in a single 
tree. The bee is a more adventurous colonist than man, 
and is always the precursor of cultivation in the Trans¬ 
atlantic forests. The keeping of bees is an object of 
domestic attention also in Canada, where some 10,000 or 
15,000 hives indicate the produce of honey and wax. 
In Australia the natives are also very skilful in bee¬ 
hunting, and they adopt the following ingenious plan 
to discover their hives. A party of ten or twelve of 
them having caught an Australian bee, an insect not 
much larger than our common fly, attach to its body, 
with a gum that exudes from the mimosa, a little light 
white down, taken from the eagle or ibis. This is done 
as much for the purpose of causing the bee to fly slowly 
as to make the object as large and white as possible; 
they then, with a simultaneous shout, start off, running 
to and fro, following the movements of the bee for more 
than a mile, until the insect lights on its hive in the 
hollow branch of a gum-tree. In this manner the blacks 
collect abundance of honey, and the Australian honey 
greatly excels our finest heath honey. 
The climate of Tasmania is most favourable for bees. 
The flowers of the eucalypti and mimosa furnish food 
for them, and the honey sent to the different European 
Exhibitions was much admired. In some parts of the 
colony, as at Perth, Bothwell, Ross, etc., old tea-chests 
and boxes are used for beehives and honey is procured 
by the ton. It is sold in the interior from id. to 6c?. a 
pound, and is used by the settlers either in comb, or as 
mead or in the manufacture of beer. Swarms of bees 
wdiich have escaped take possession of hollow trees; oc¬ 
casionally more than 100 lb. of honey are taken fiom a 
hole in a gum-tree. 
The Arabs collect the bees in the bark of the cork-tree, 
formed into a cylinder, which they smear with hone} to 
entice the bees to enter; they then close up the extre¬ 
mities, leaving only a small opening as a passage tor the 
swarm; these tubes are extended lengthways on the 
o-round and surrounded with thick bushes. It is almost 
O 
