Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

1759 ‘Dictionnaire Universel des Drogues Simples’ [A universal dictionary
of simple drugs] by Nicolas Lemery, Paris.
Hellebore: ‘Ils purgent par haut et par bas.’ - they purge both
upwards and downwards.
Hyoscyamus: ‘Elles sont narcotique, stupéfiant, assoupissant et
souvent mortelles aux animals qui en mangent.’ ‘They are narcotic,
stupefying, soporific and often mortal to animals who eat it.
Salix (saule marceau): ‘The bark, leaves and seeds are astringent
and refreshing. One makes a decoction to stop ‘les ardeurs de
Venus.’ – lust.
Mercury (Hydrargia): ‘the head swells, the gums, the tongue and
the palate ulcerate, the salivary vessels relax and one feels the pains
such as happens if one has put on corrosive sublimate somewhere
excoriated, these accidents are accompanied by a copious
involuntary salivation.’
François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, French author, humanist,
rationalist, & satirist. (1694–1778).
‘Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little,
to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom
they know nothing.’ Voltaire also said ‘the art of medicine is to amuse
the patient while nature cures the disease.’.
In Candide Dr Panglos was ‘all covered over with sores, his eyes
half dead, the tip of his nose eaten off, his mouth turned to one side,
his teeth black, speaking through his throat, tormented with a violent
cough, with gums so rotten, that his teeth came near falling out every
time he spit’. A description of the mixture of symptoms and those of
mercury.
1760 Dr Anton Storck tried hemlock on a dog and when it remained well,
he took one grain (65 mgm) of hemlock extract with a cup of tea
without ill effect. Subsequently he prescribed it for cancers, ulcers
and cataracts.
A controlled study comparing two forms of mercury treatment for
syphilis was undertaken in Geneva. Twelve patients were treated by
rubbing in a mercurial ointment and 12 with Keyser pills (mercuric
oxide and acetic acid) with the result that 23 were cured; two failed to
respond to rubbing, one of whom was cured with the pills (Louis-
Courvoisier, 2007; Repertoire du Registre CC, 1761).
Leopold Auenbrugger applied the technique of percussion, which he
had learnt as a brewer, to the chest and thereby was able to
diagnose fluid on the chest and consolidation of the lobes of the lung,