Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

oppression of the breast, fever, headache, griping, total
derangement, profuse sweating and diarrhoea.’ (Swediauer, 1788).
Two French Pharmacopoeias were published : ‘Les Eléments de
pharmacie et de Chimie’ [The elements of pharmacy and chemistry]
by Baumé, and ‘Le Manuel de Pharmacie’ [The manual of pharmacy]
by Demachy.
1789 ‘A Treatise of the Materia Medica’: William Cullen’s (1710–1790)
‘Substances which excite a kind of fever, as very strong coffee,
pepper, aconite, ignatia 151 , arsenic, extinguish the types of the fever. I
took by way of experiment, twice a day, four drachms of good China.
My feet, finger ends, etc., at first became cold; I grew languid and
drowsy; then my heart began to palpitate, and my pulse grew hard
and small; intolerable anxiety, trembling (but without cold rigor),
prostration throughout all my limbs then pulsation in my head,
redness of my cheeks, thirst, and, in short, all these symptoms,
which are ordinarily characteristic of intermittent fever, made their
appearance, one after the other, yet without the peculiar chilly,
shivering rigor.’ He was probably the first to use the word ‘placebo’ in
a medical context during a lecture in 1772 (Kerr et al., 2008).
Mercury: ‘A small quantity of mercury very suddenly excited a
copious salivation and which continued to be very copious for many
days.’
Henbane:.. ‘Henbane and all other narcotics, may be very hurtful.’
Opium: ‘In very many of the fevers of this climate, there appears in
the beginning of them to be more or less of an inflammatory diathesis
in the system; and during this state I hold, and have often seen, the
use of opium to be extremely hurtful. It does not then either induce
sleep or relieve pain, but aggravates the inflammatory symptoms,
and often determines to particular inflammations, which prove
afterwards fatal…. Opium is subject to the law of custom by which
the force of impressions in which the body is passive becomes
weaker by repetition; and that when frequent repetitions are
requisite, it is always necessary to increase the dose.’ An example of
the development of tolerance.
‘Every body knows that sedatives… particularly opium are
employed in restraining excessive evacuations.’ He goes on to say
that opium has been much used in dysentery, but that this is wrong
since one must make use of frequent use of gentle laxatives. It would
151 Ignatia = This may refer to St Ignatia’s bean, which is the seed of Strychnos ignatis