Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Quinsy = tonsillitis
Spotted fever = typhus
Rising of the lights = croup
Timpanie = tumour
Tissicke = TB or cough
1630 A possible treatment for malaria was found in the forests of the
Andes Mountains. In that decade, an Augustinian monk published a
notice regarding the treatment, burying it in a work on the
Augustinian Order. ‘A tree grows which they call “the fever tree” in
the country of Loxa (Equador), whose bark, of the colour of
cinnamon, made into powder amounting to the weight of two small
silver coins and given as a beverage, cures the fevers and tertian
(Vivax malaria); it has produced miraculous results in Lima’, wrote
the monk, Antonio de Calancha. He was describing the bark of the
cinchona tree; the bark contains the alkaloid quinine along with
several other alkaloids effective against malaria (Burba, 2007).
1637 Baltasar Gracian. Spanish Philosopher in ‘The art of worldly wisdom
cxxxviii. The art of letting things alone’. ‘The more so the wilder the
waves of public or of private life. There are hurricanes in human
affairs, tempests of passion, when it is wise to retire to a harbour and
ride at anchor. Remedies often make diseases worse: in such cases
one has to leave them to their natural course and the moral suasion
of time. It takes a wise doctor to know when not to prescribe, and at
times the greater skill consists in not applying remedies. The proper
way to still the storms of the vulgar is to hold your hand and let them
calm down of themselves. To give way now is to conquer by and by.
A fountain gets muddy with but little stirring up, and does not get
clear by our meddling with it but by our leaving it alone. The best
remedy for disturbances is to let them run their course, for so they
quiet down.’
1640 ‘Theatrum Botanicum, The Theater of Plantes or An Universal and
Compleate Herball’, composed by John Parkinson, Apothecary of
London and the King’s Herbalist. London. This vast book of 1756
pages each 12½ inches by 8 inches follows the precedence of
Dodoen’s herbal in having sections on the virtues of each plant, but
does not have any section on the dangers of each plant. Under