Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Poisons upon Animals, etc.’ Made at Montpellier in the Years 1678 and
1679, by the Late William Courten Esq; Communicated by Dr. Hans
Sloane, Secretary of the Royal Society’ in ‘Philosophical Transactions’
(1683–1775), Vol. 27, 1710–1712, 485-500. This mentions that
intravenous injections of opium caused violent convulsions and death.
William Courten wrote of his experiments ‘In the month of July anno
1678 we gave a dog’… ‘two drachms of white hellebore (Hellebore
Album) very much disordered him, and caused reachings, suffocations,
vomiting, and voiding of excrements… often scratched the ground with
his feet.’ (Sloane, 1710–1712).
1679 Lonicerus A. ‘Kreuterbuch ‘(1679). Reprinted by Verlag Konrad Kölbl,
München, Germany. (1962) in which he described the plants
particularly under medical-pharmaceutical aspects. He also wrote the
first known record of the use of ergot by midwives as an ecbolic
(hastens childbirth).
Johann Jacob Wepfer (1620–1695) Physician in Ordinary to several
dynasties in Southern Germany: ‘My sin will be less, if I explore the
effects of poison in animals in order to be of benefit to me.’ Another
example of animal toxicology.
1680 Thomas Sydenham brought opium into England in the form of
laudanum and commented: ‘Among the remedies which it has
pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings none is
so universal and so efficacious as opium.’ (Postler & Waisel, 1997).
He was also renowned for writing very detailed clinical notes on his
patients and has, thereby, given us figures for amounts involved in
bloodletting and saliva extracted with mercury. For apoplexy he says
he took 12℥ of blood from the arm and then a further 8℥ from the
jugular vein, making a pint in all. In treating the French Pox with
mercury he says ‘The salivation ought to be so moderated, that the
patient may spit 4 pints in 24 hours.’ He was imbued with the belief in
humours, but tempered it with concern for his patients. For gout ‘yet
bleeding does as much harm as it does good in the just mentioned’
(pleuritics and rheumatism) and again as for purging in gout
‘Therefore I am fully persuade, having learnt by continual and
repeated experience that all purging whether by gentle or strong
medicine, such as are usually designed for purging the joints, do
much hurt...’ He was not disinterested as he himself suffered from
gout (Sydenham, 1696).
1684 ‘Dr. Willis’s practice of physick being the whole works of that
renowned and famous physician wherein most of the diseases