Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Unfortunately, due to severe toxicity and the deaths of some
patients, digitoxin was rejected and forgotten until 1775, when it was
rediscovered by William Withering.
Early English Statute: (Apothecary Wares Drugs and Stuffs Act 32
King Henry VIII, c40 For Physicians and their privileges) empowering
physicians to appoint four inspectors of ‘Apothecary Wares, Drugs
and stuffs’ (Goodall, 1684; Penn 1979).
Henry VIII amalgamated the Barbers Company of London and the
Guild (or fellowship) of Surgeons to form the Company of Barber-
Surgeons.
1541 Konrad Gessner (26 March 1516–13 December 1565) Swiss
‘Enchiridion historiae plantarum’ [Handbook of the history of plants]
(1541) and the ‘Catalogus plantarum de remediis secretis liber
secundus’ [Book 2, the catalogue of secret plant remedies]
Paracelsus–Philippus Aureolus Theofrastus Bombasto di
Hohenheim (1493–1541) alias Paracelsus. ‘The Third Defence
Concerning the Description of the New Receipts.’ is one of seven
defences presented as replies to the accusations of Paracelsus’s
enemies, published posthumously in 1564: ‘If you wish justly to
explain each poison, what is there that is not poison? All things are
poison, and nothing is without poison: the Dosis alone makes a thing
not poison.’ [‘Alle Ding sind Gift und nichts ohn Gift; alein die Dosis
macht das ein Ding kein Gift ist.’]
‘Die Grosse Wundartzney’ (Greater Surgery) by Paracelsus had
been translated into French by Pierre Hassard of Armentières as
early as 1566 while Jacques Gohory had prepared a Compendium of
Paracelsian theory the following year (Debus, Chemical Philosophy,
1, pp.145-173).
‘The several kinds of diseases are divided into various boughs,
branches, and leaves, but yet the cure is but one: For example,
Consider a Mercurial disease, and you shall find that the Mercurial
Liquor does likewise pass into many branches and leaves; so ‘tis in
the small pox, or pustules, all the kinds thereof are under Mercury,
for the disease itself is mercurial: Some French-pox are under
common Mercury: some pustules are under a metallic Mercury,
some are under an ebony wood Mercury, some are under a
Mercury…‘Tell me, how comes it to pass that mercury heals the
French pox and the filthy scab? Why do you command the miserable
sick persons to annoint themselves with quickesilver as
shepherdesses grease their sheep? How happens it (I say) that