OCR Text |
Show DRUGS FEARFUL AND AWFUL Amazing Concoctions That Our Ancestors Ances-tors Swallowed, Believing That They Had Medicinal Virtues. The medicines used down to even recent days sound most extraordinary to our ears. As late as the eighteenth century dried toad was seriously considered con-sidered a specific against the plague. In an article in the New York Medical Med-ical Journal Dr. William Renwlck Rlddell of Toronto, Canada, mentioned a few of the remedies in vogue. A plaster made of arsenic was applied ap-plied to cancel's. Bleeding was practiced prac-ticed on all occasions, even in the time of our grandparents. But the sovereign remedy of all was known as mlthrldatlum or theriuca. This was the great antidote of Itoinnn pharmacy. phar-macy. It originally had 40 or SO Ingredients, In-gredients, all vegetables, but Nero's physician, Andromachus, added the flesh of vipers. Every physician had his own variation of the formula, and Matteoll In the sixteenth century put no less than 120 Ingredients into it. The name theriaca or theriac, under un-der which It was commonly known, was derived from the Greek "therlon," a wild beast, as the stuff was considered consid-ered a specific against the poisonous bites of beasts and serpents. The French word "therlaque" was corrupted corrupt-ed Into the English "treacle." and the medicine was known in England as "Venice treacle." It was the fumous Sydenham who first opposed the use of drugs. In fact when S:r K:cb:ud Blackinore asked him for a good guide In practice, he replied: "Don Quixote," and declared that the arrival of a good clown would do more for the health of a city than that of 20 asses laden with drugs. |