114 
Medicinal  Earths. 
J  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
X      March,  1909. 
also  absorb  and  destroy  the  poison.  Alum  used  locally  was,  and 
even  to-day  is,  said  to  prevent  conception.  Thus  these  earths  got 
the  general  reputation  of  being  remedies  against  poisons  and  also 
against  plague  or  contagious  diseases.  The  ancients  even  went  so 
far  that  the  dishes  and  vessels  burned  from  these  clays  and  earths — 
the  ceramic  art  has  been  known  from  the  oldest  times,  the  Chinese 
being  noted  for  their  porcelain  and  the  Egyptians  and  Greeks  for 
their  pottery — were  said  to  possess  also  medicinal  properties,  inas- 
much as  they  transferred  the  magic  power  to  the  liquid  kept  therein. 
Red  clays  also  were  very  popular.  Bolus  Rubra,  red  bole,  Bolus 
Armena,  Armenian  Bole,  natural  aluminum  silicate  containing  iron 
oxide,  was  especially  renowned  as  a  remedy  against  plague.  Bol 
d'Armenie  has  even  been  official  in  the  Pharmacopee  Francaise  up  to 
1908  and  was  one  of  the  ingredients  of  Emplatre  Ceroene  (Emplas- 
trum  Ceroneum).  The  red  earths  were  also  marketed  in  the  form 
of  disks  or  lozenges  imprinted  with  a  seal,  as  Terra  Sigillata  rubra. 
In  place  of  the  foreign  and  oftentimes  adulterated  earths,  domes- 
tic clays  were  found  to  be  equally  as  effective. 
In  Laubach,  Hessia,  for  instance,  Andreas  Berthold  von  Oschatz 
discovered  a  pipe  clay  which  was  found  to  be  valuable,  and  he  wrote 
with  silver  on  blue  parchment  paper  an  essay  to  the  Hessian  Court. 
The  earth  according  to  the  fantastic  custom  of  that  time  was  called 
"  Axungia  Solis  "  (more  correctly  would  be  "Soli")  or  "Earth 
Fat  "  on  account  of  its  fatty  nature.  Similar  earths  were  found  near 
Striegau,  Silesia,  others  in  Saxony  called  Steinmark,  Medulla 
Saxorum,  or  Saxon  Wonderearth,  Terra  Miraculosa,  used  for  sym- 
pathetic cures.  The  white  earths  were  also  marketed  in  the  shape 
of  balls,  disks  or  troches  and  imprinted  with  a  seal  under  the  name 
of  Terra  Sigillata  alba. 
In  the  museum  of  Olaus  Wormius,  Leyden,  1606,  were  about  25 
different  kinds  of  Terrse,  among  them  also  Kaolin  or  China  Clay, 
the  purest  natural  aluminum  silicate.  The  name  Kaolin  is  derived 
from  the  peninsula  Kaoli  in  Korea,  or  according  to  such  an  authority 
as  Witt  stein  Etymolo  gisch-Chemisch  Handworterbuch  from  the 
Chinese  Ka-olin,  which,  according  to  Muspratt's  Technisch  Chemie 
is  the  name  of  a  mountain,  situated  east  of  King-te-chin,  where 
porcelain  clay,  the  product  of  decomposed  feldspar,  is  found 
abundantly. 
The  more  the  composition  of  the  different  earths  became  known, 
and  the  more  medicine  wanted  to  use  the  pure  active  principle,  the 
