All posts by mariekehendriksen

Marieke Hendriksen is a historian of science, art, and ideas, based at Utrecht University , The Netherlands. She is particularly interested in the material culture of eigtheenth-century medicine and art, and the transmission of instructions through text. She currently is a postdoc with the ARTECHNE project (www.artechne.nl).
Apothecaries, Food and Drink, Medicine, Posts, Remedies, Series: Minerals

From bloodstone to fish soup: iron recipes

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By Marieke Hendrikksen

In my research on the use of metals in eighteenth-century medical chemistry, iron has a special place. Unlike other metals, which were increasingly regarded as dangerous, iron remained a safe bet in blood-related diseases. However, up until the early nineteenth century, this understanding was not so much based on a chemical understanding of iron, but on the ancient principle of sympathetic medicine, in which a cure is associated – often materially – with the body part or disease it treats. An excellent example of this is bloodstone.

From antiquity onwards, the terms ‘lapis haematites’ and ‘bloodstone’ were used to refer to minerals or precious stones spotted or streaked with red, or red in colour, used as pigments by artisans and medicinally in the treatment of hemorrhage, or as a charm against injury or bleeding. Most descriptions seem to refer either to what is now known as heliotrope, a form of chalcedony, or more commonly to hematite, an iron oxide. Whereas in hermetic alchemical texts ‘blood’ often refers to the transforming arcanum, now commonly believed to be a form of mercury, bloodstone occurs predominantly in pharmacopeia and is clearly linked to blood because of its blood-like pigments. A quick test in my back yard shows how easy it is to yield ‘blood’ from bloodstone:

Grinding some chips of bloodstone gives a rusty red powder...
Grinding some chips of bloodstone gives a rusty red powder…
Result after adding some water.
Result after adding some water.

By the early eighteenth century, bloodstone was routinely listed in city pharmacopeia as a mineral that had to be stocked in the apothecary shop. Its association with and supposed influence on the blood was implied by its use in recipes for styptics, without reference to its iron-like nature. This does appear in more detailed sources in Latin though. The Amsterdam physician Stephen Blankaart for example described it in his 1701 Opera medica, theoretica, practica et chirurgica (Volume 1) as ‘dark red stone, like the name perhaps suggests coagulates the blood. It appears in long streaks, like wood, and can be split into sharp needles. It is found in the veins of iron mines and can be consumed by rust.’ 

Recipe for 'cookies' to cure excessive periods and bleeding hemorrhoids, consisting mainly of red ingredients. From Wouter van Lis's Pharmacopoea.
Recipe for ‘cookies’ to cure excessive periods and bleeding hemorrhoids, consisting mainly of red ingredients. From Wouter van Lis’s Pharmacopoea.

A clear example of how bloodstone was understood and applied by early modern apothecaries can be found in Wouter van Lis’s bilingual 1747 Pharmacopoea Galeno-Chemico-Medica, which gives information in both Latin and Dutch on the same page.[1] Van Lis gained a doctorate in medicine from Utrecht University in 1745 and probably authored this book to capitalize on his previous experience as an apothecary while he set up a practice as physician in another city.

Van Lis lists Bloodstone as a semi-metal, but he also refers to the origins of its name: ‘Bloodstone has a Rock- Earth- and Metal-like nature. Because of its paint that resembles blood, or because it is a styptic, it is called Bloodstone.’ In the chapter ‘Medicinal biscuits and stones,’ two recipes are listed for cookies containing bloodstone: they are said to cure heavy menses and bleeding haemorrhoids, as well as bloody stool. These two recipes are clearly based on sympathetic rather than chemical principals; they contain predominantly red ingredients, like coral and red flowers.

Ironically, anaemia caused by iron deficiency is still the most common nutritional health problem in the world today. I was fascinated to learn that health researchers are battling anaemia in rural Cambodia with reusable ‘lucky iron fish’ that are added to boiling soup or rice. The small amounts of iron released during cooking ensure the sufficient intake of iron. A vital part of the success of the ‘fish’ is its shape: fish is both a staple in the local diet, and a symbol of luck in Cambodian culture. Not exactly sympathetic medicine in the early modern sense, but this shows how important cultural understandings of materiality still can be in ensuring the correct use of medicinal substances and dietary supplements.

Just one final note–although iron, especially in small amounts, is essential and one of the more harmless metals for humans, an overdose can be poisonous. Like always, the dose makes the poison.

[1] Van Lis, Wouter, Gualtheri van Lis Pharmacopoea Galeno-Chemico-Medica… = Meng- Schei- … / Wouter van Lis Meng- Schei- En Geneeskonstige Artseny-Winkel (Amsterdam: Jan Morterre, 1747).

18th Century, Medicine, Plants and Herbs, Series: Beer

Bottoms up: beer as medicine

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Over the years, I have encountered quite a few early modern recipes based on or consisting entirely of a drink still commonly used today, such as medicated wines and tea. In 2013, I heard James B. Sumner speak at ICHSTM Manchester about his excellent book, Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880, on how beer brewing rapidly developed from an oral culture derived from home-based skills, into an industry with an extensive trade literature, based increasingly on the authority of chemical experiment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland. My curiosity was sparked, especially as beer was often seen as a safe alternative for contaminated drinking water, and I asked Dr. Sumner on Twitter whether he had encountered any recipes for beer as a medicinal drink, to which he replied he had not.

Front page of Van Lis's 1747 Pharmacopea
Front page of Van Lis’s 1747 Pharmacopea

As medicinal drinks are not the prime topic of my research, I forgot about this until last week, when I was skimming through eighteenth-century Dutch apothecary handbooks for mineral-based recipes. Suddenly a paragraph caught my eye: not a mineral recipe, but one for beer! Wouter van Lis, who gained a doctorate in medicine from Utrecht University in 1745, in his 1747 apothecaries’ handbook, Pharmacopoea Galeno-Chemico-Medica… = Meng- Schei- … / Wouter van Lis Meng- Schei- En Geneeskonstige Artseny-Winkel, describes various ways to prepare medicinal beers, similar to medicinal wines. The first way consists of simply letting some mashed herbs soak in beer for two or three days. According to Van Lis, this way the full powers of the herbs would be used, much more efficiently than in meads (fermented honey-herb brews), as ‘nature in these Lands is more used to such drinks [beers], the stomach will receive them with more lust, and digest them fully.’

Cheers! Photo © theNerdPatrol, licensed Creative Commons Attribution.
Cheers! Photo © theNerdPatrol, licensed Creative Commons Attribution.

Another option was to add the herbs during the brewing process, either when boiling the malt, or just slightly heating them in the beer after the boiling has taken place. Van Lis mentioned over fifty kinds of herbs to prepare medicinal beer, ranging from ginger, lavender, cardamom, hyssop, cinnamon, aniseed, rosemary, nutmeg, gentian, juniper and lemon grass to plants such as absinth leaves, sweet flag, germander sage, and eye worth. He does not advise which kind of herb-infused beer should be used for particular ailments; this was after all supposed to be at the discretion of physicians. However, Van Lis does advice that ‘Joopen beer’ (which he says literally means ‘juicy beer’ in old Dutch) heats, moistens, and nourishes the body, but causes infected blood, bad digestion, sore eyes, fevers, and gout when drunken in excess.[1]

It might seem strange that I have only found one reference to medicinal beer so far, but it makes much more sense when we look at Van Lis’s career. Before he gained his medical doctorate in 1745, he already ran an apothecary shop in Rotterdam, and also owned… a beer brewery. Apparently it ran in the family: his mother ran a beer trading company, and in the year Van Lis graduated, he also published a treatise on beer brewing, dedicated to his promotor, the Utrecht professor Oosterdijk Schacht. However, beer consumption was decreasing steadily in the eighteenth century, and in 1748 Van Lis sold all his property in Rotterdam, including his brewery with a loss, and moved to Bergen op Zoom to make a career as city physician and apothecary and doctor of the diaconate.[2] As far as I can tell medicinal beer never really took off – although I do remember older female family members telling me that a glass of dark beer should be given to women after giving birth to stimulate the flow of breast milk.

Please do let me know if you have encountered other examples of medicinal beer!

 

[1] There is still a Dutch brewer called Jopenbier, which advertises with ‘recipe 1407’. Although they use a recipe from 1407, as their own website states, this beer was called Koyt back then; the current name has been given to the beer in 1994 and refers to the 112 litre tuns in which beer used to be transported, which were called ‘jopen’.

[2] Peeters, F.A.H., ‘Wouter van Lis: Apotheker, Bierbrouwer En Stadsmedicus’, Kring Voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie in de Benelux. Bulletin, 73 (1988), pp 1 – 21.

Alchemy, Early Modern, Manuscripts, Posts

The recipes of an eighteenth-century Amsterdam alchemist(?)

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By Marieke Hendriksen

Over the past two decades, it has become increasingly clear that alchemy, chemistry and medicine were still deeply intertwined in the early eighteenth century. Mostly rhetoric attempts by scholars to establish chemistry as a respectable, transparent academic discipline and renounce alchemy as its obscure predecessor were only partly successful. This latter phenomenon appears to have been particularly strong in the northern Netherlands, even though – or maybe because – many alchemists from the German lands temporarily lived and practiced in the Netherlands.

Very little is known about Dutch alchemists in the first half of the eighteenth century, and that is why I was rather surprised to find a Dutch manuscript on alchemy from 1741 in Leiden University’s special collections. It is signed ‘op Grootenburg octob: 18, 1741,’ and a search for Grootenburg quickly led me to Burghard de Groot (1661/2-1744), who left a number of illustrated Dutch alchemical manuscripts. Grootenburg was probably De Groot’s house on the Kattengat in Amsterdam. In 1991, Frank van Lamoen published a short biographical and bibliographical study in Dutch about this wealthy Amsterdam gentleman. Exactly what De Groot did remains unclear; city records list him as a schoolmaster. From his texts it appears that he travelled through Europe and exchanged ‘processes’ with apothecaries, alchemists and physicians along the way, but he did not attend a Dutch university, nor was he a member of the Amsterdam Collegium Medicum or are there indications that he ran an alchemical laboratory.[1]

Johann Hiskia Cardilucius, Magnalia Medico-Chymica oder Die höchste Artzney- und Feurkünstige Geheimnisse..., Nürnberg: Endters 1676
Johann Hiskia Cardilucius, Magnalia Medico-Chymica oder Die höchste Artzney- und Feurkünstige Geheimnisse…, Nürnberg: Endters 1676

When Van Lamoen wrote his article, this Leiden manuscript was probably unknown (it was acquired by Leiden University at an auction in 2011), but it is interesting and remarkable for several reasons. First, it contains a number of recipes for medicinal preparations of gold, silver and zinc. Take for example a recipe for a medicinal gold powder, or ‘Cardilucius’ powder,’ probably taken from the work of seventeenth-century Nuremberg physician Johann Hiskia Cardilucius (1630–97). It involves dissolving gold in aqua regis, mixing it with rain water and precipitating it, resulting in a ‘purple powder’ that is useful in ‘malignant diseases.’ Although the idea that gold and gold preparations have medicinal qualities was quickly loosing credit among academically trained medical men in the eighteenth century, De Groot’s manuscript, which apart from Cardilucius’ powder lists four recipes for ‘Aurum potabile’ or drinkable gold, about which Tara Albert and I have written before, once more confirms there still was a strong popular belief in their effectiveness.

Pure gold precipitate produced by the aqua regia chemical refining process
Pure gold precipitate produced by the aqua regia chemical refining process

Another remarkable aspect this particular manuscript is that the handwriting is extremely neat and clear, suggesting the author intended it to be read, reproduced and understood by others – in contrast to many older alchemical manuscripts and printed texts. Although the descriptions of processes are still rather imprecise (i.e. in the recipe for Cardelucius’ powder the gold has to be dissolved in a ‘sufficient’ amount of aqua regis), there is no trace of the use of coded language and images so typical of much alchemical work. In fact, pure gold precipitate can be produced by dissolving gold in aqua regis (nitro-hydrochloric acid) and the result is indeed a powder – although a rusty orange rather than purple. Last but not least, De Groot’s manuscripts suggest the existence of a branch of an international network of alchemists and interested amateurs in the early eighteenth-century Netherlands who operated almost completely outside the Dutch academic world – a topic that certainly warrants further research.

[1] Van Lamoen, Frank, ‘Vijf Handschriften van Burghard de Groot M.D. (1661/62-1744)’, Jaarverslagen Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, 1991, 73–82. In 2013 Van Lamoen wrote a blog post about the Arab pen-name Ali Puli, probably a pseudonym for De Groot.

Early Modern, Ingredients, Medicine, Plants and Herbs, Posts, Series: Metals

The dose makes the poison: dangerous plants

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By Marieke Hendriksen

'The gift of chemistry', by P.H. Looff, 1773
‘The gift of chemistry’, by P.H. Looff, 1773

My current research focuses on how certain materials, particularly metals, gemstones and glass, mostly disappeared from the medicine of Boerhaave and his followers. This primarily had to do with how these substances were chemically understood. When I tell this to people, they mostly nod in agreement, assuming that Leiden professor of medicine, chemistry and botany Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) discovered how poisonous metals are for the human body through chemical analysis, and subsequently banished them from his medicine. The truth is a little more nuanced. Boerhaave’s ideas about these substances and his idea of poisonousness were deeply influenced by those of illustrious medical men like Paracelsus (1493-1541) and the common alchemical understandings of matter at the time.

The reason that Boerhaave thought most metals were poisonous for humans for example was not because he had systematically tested the effects of ingestion, but because he argued from an alchemical understanding that the corrosive nature of most metals, except for gold and iron, meant that they were generally damaging for the human body. Only in very severe cases of otherwise incurable diseases, such as syphilis, could an appropriately cultivated preparation of a heavy metal like mercury be used as a last resource. Neither did Boerhaave’s discouragement of the use of substances such as metals in medicine mean that he thought all vegetable substances were safe to use, and he discusses vegetable poisons in his lectures.

Poisonous hemlock (Conium maculatum) Courtesy of Kurt Stüber, www.biolib.de.
Poisonous hemlock (Conium maculatum) Courtesy of Kurt Stüber, www.biolib.de.

However, Boerhaave, although critical of Paracelsus, was also aware of the truth of his adage ‘the dose makes the poison,’ and a fervent advocate of critical thinking and practical research, who told his readers to think for themselves and undertake their own experiments. The impact of his work and attitude becomes clear from an array of eighteenth-century works on medicine, ranging from academic chemistry and medical handbooks to private recipe collections and small practical medical treatises in the vernacular. A nice example is a pamphlet by Philip Looff (1745-1778), a medical doctor from Groningen, published in 1773 under the title Donum Chemicum, literally ‘the gift of chemistry.’[1]

Rough chervil (Chaerophyllum temulentum). Couresy of Kurt Stüber, www.biolib.de.
Rough chervil (Chaerophyllum temulentum). Courtesy of Kurt Stüber, www.biolib.de.

Although Looff obviously never met Boerhaave, he dedicated his book to Boerhaave’s successor and former student H.D. Gaub (1705-1780), who endorsed it, and Looff repeatedly speaks of Boerhaave’s work admiringly in the book. Completely in Boerhaave’s line of thought too is his discussion of the medicinal use of rough chervil (‘dulle kervel’ or Chaerophyllum temulum), a slightly poisonous plant. It was often confused with hemlock  (Conium maculatum), which is said to have been the active ingredient in Socrates’ poisoned chalice. Like Boerhaave, Looff begins with a warning that any use of poisonous substances by the uniformed is extremely dangerous, and continuous to describe an observation of the usefulness of rough chervil in the cure of leprosy. According to Looff, he and his father in law, also a medical doctor, had successfully cured a woman suffering from leprosy be treating her with a very week solution of rough chervil and sarsaparilla – a handful of rough chervil and an ounce and a half of sarsaparilla boiled in 28 or 30 ounces of water for three hours. Although the patient went temporarily blind each time she took a two-ounce dose of the brew, after seven weeks of two daily doses, she was cured of her leprosy.

In hindsight it seems rather risky that Looff published his findings in the vernacular, as it is very easy to confuse rough chervil and hemlock – ingestion of only 6 to 8 leaves of fresh hemlock can be fatal. Yet however dangerous, these kinds of case studies were also essential for the study of the effects of potentially poisonous plants on the human body, and thus indirectly for the early nineteenth-century invention of isolating plant alkaloids  – the active chemical principles of plants that had been used medicinally for centuries and that we still know and use today.[2]

 

Plant prints: permission from Kurt Stüber, www.biolib.de

 

[2] Swann, John P. “The Pharmaceutical Industries.” edited by Peter J. Bowler and John V. Pickstone, The Cambridge History of Science. Volume 6: Modern Life and Earth Sciences: 126–40. (The Cambridge History of Science, 2009), p. 127-8.