Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

hurry of the spirits, causes rest and insensibility, is comfortable and
refreshing in great watchings and strong pains; provokes sweat
powerfully; helps most diseases of the breast and lungs; as coughs,
colds, catarrhs and hoarseness; prevents or allays spitting of blood,
vomiting, and all Lasks 127 of the bowels; is specific in cholerick,
pleurisies, and hysterical cases. Dose, from half a grain to three or
four.’
‘It is proper to allay fermenting humours, to excite or procure
sleep, to calm or appease pain… to stop looseness and vomiting, to
provoke sweat’ presumably an allusion to its constipating property.
‘Apply’d to the eyes and ears it has caused blindness and deafness;
and a plaster of it on the head has occasion’d death’. He goes on to
say ‘Custom will bring people to bear great doses of it, but at first
every one must begin with very small ones’ Obviously an
acknowledgement of tolerance developing. (Pomet, 1712).
1714 I sent for Ratcliffe 128 ; was so ill
The other doctors gave me over:
He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill,
And I was likely to recover.
But when the wit began to wheeze,
And wine had warmed the politician,
Cured yesterday of my disease,
I died last night of my physician. ‘The Remedy Worse Than the
Disease,’ by Matthew Prior (1664–1721).
1715 Plough Court pharmacy, the forerunner of Allen and Hanburys Ltd
and GlaxoSmithKline, is established in London by Silvanus Bevan.
1718 John Quincy (d1722). ‘Pharmacopoeia officinalis & extemporanea;
or, a compleat English dispensatory, in four parts’ London: A. Bell,
1718. 618 pp.
Ellibori Nigri: ‘Parts do adhere to the fibres of the stomach causing
gripings.’ Quincy’s Lexicon (1787) defined it as a remedy used more
to please than to heal persons.
Ellibori Albi: ‘The violent operation has expelled it now from
internal use–its mutations are so great.’
Cinnabar (Mercuric sulphide): ‘That it is extremely safe so that it
may be given in considerable doses without any danger of the
127 Lasks = diarrhoea
128 Radcliffe or Ratcliffe =This may be John Radcliffe (1652-1714) of the Radcliffe Infirmary. Both he and Prior
were members of Parliament at the same time and both lived at that time in London.