Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

these of excessive treatment with mercury (Introductory note to: Bull
JP (1951).
1801 The first placebo-controlled trial (De Craen et al., 1999) John
Haygarth compared the actions of metallic rods known as ‘Perkins
Tractors’, which were supposed to relieve symptoms through
electromagnetic influence of the metal, with imitation wooden rods on
the same 5 patients and obtained identical results (Haygarth, 1801).
1803 France – The Law 21 Germinal 156 (21st March–18th April) an XI (11
Avril 1803). Only qualified pharmacists could open and practice from
a pharmacy, prepare and sell medications (article XXV). Strangely,
the law did not lay down any penalty for illegal practise of pharmacy.
The law also forbade secret remedies (article XXXII) and there was
an obligation to follow only prescriptions given by authorised
practitioners (Physicians, surgeons and health officials) (Fouassier,
2003). Article XXXVI forbade the advertising, distribution, and sale of
any secret remedy, but had little effect on the sale of secret
remedies. Article 29, 30 and 31 A decree the same year provided for
at least one annual inspection of pharmacies, wholesale druggist. A
team of physicians and surgeons accompanied by police were to
confiscate substandard drugs and impose sanctions (Berman,
1970). ‘The government charged the professors of the Schools of
Medicine with the members of the School of Pharmacy to edit a
‘Codex’ or Formulary, containing the medicinal preparations and
pharmaceutical preparations that must be held by the pharmacists.’
The law was modified in 1805, 1810, 1850 and 1926 (Debue-
Barazer, 2003).
1804 ‘The Edinburgh new dispensatory’ ... including complete and
accurate translations of the ... London pharmacopoeia, published in
1791; Dublin pharmacopoeia, published in 1794; and of the new ed.
of the Edinburgh pharmacopoeia, published in 1803. Edited, with
extensive alterations and additions by Andrew Duncan, junior.
Tincture Hyoscyamus (Henbane): ‘causes uneasiness, restlessness
and universal irritation...Its influence is very much reduced by having
alarming effects, intoxication, wild delusions, dilatation of the pupils,
convulsions, sweat, eruption of pustules, over the surface…Like other
narcotics …it sometimes gives rise to vertigo, headaches, general
uneasiness with particular individuals, it occasions vomiting, colic pains,
a copious flow of urine and sometimes purging.’
156 Germinal = the 7th month of the French revolutionary calendar (March-April)