Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

can only be obtained by a just acquaintance with that part of natural
philosophy which respects the animal economy.’
Mercury: ’Very dismal symptoms often attend it; as fevers, violent
colics, diarrhoea, dysenteries, swellings and erosions of the glands,
terrible headaches, vertigo, tremors, delusions, convulsions and
often death closes the rear’… ‘salivation, some were grown mad,
loss of sense, great weakness, emaciated, rheumatism, effusion of
lymph, livid colour, palsy, suffocated by an asthma.’ (Bradley, 1733).
Mercury: ‘an antidote, or some remarks upon a treatise on mercury
by Thomas Harris. “A treatise on the force and energy of crude
mercury proving the usefulness innocency of its intense application
by a great many experts and history of cases acute and chronic”…. It
also copies word for word from the 1733 Alleyne’s dispensatory
(Harris,1734).
1735 Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738), who was made professor of
Botany and Medicine at Leiden in 1709, wrote his aphorisms in 1728
and it was translated from the Latin in 1735. He is renowned as an
outstanding bedside clinician and as a chemist. His therapeutic
range was large and for epilepsy he advocated: ‘Revulsions and
dissipating means are useful, such as clear and depurate 137 the
passages: Hence bleeding, purging, vomiting, burning, issues,
fistules, a blister, a wound of the head, the trepanning of the skull,
antihysterics and opiates are useful: which must be learned from the
discovery of the proximate cause of the disease.’ He was still very
influenced by the ‘humours’ and he describes epilepsy in the
following terms: ‘ This disease wonderfully different in its many
aspects does often appear so surprising that it has in all ages been
attributed to the Gods, Devils, Divine wrath, Witchcraft and like
causes above and greater natural ones.’ His treatment for madness
was extreme: ’The greatest remedy for it is to throw the patient
unwarily into the sea, and to keep him under water as long as he can
possibly bear without being stifled.’ His mention of adverse drug
effects is casual and they are only mentioned occasionally, e.g. ‘the
steam of arsenic, antimony, fresh quick lime, mercury, and other
poisons, are able to cause a palsy.’ He recommend Peruvian bark
for intermittent fevers, ‘which, according to the fancy of the patient,
he may give in powder, infusion, decoction, extract, or boiled up into
137 Depurate = purify