Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/598

 the regular faculty still held the belief that the teachings of Galen were the only safe guide for physicians to follow, de Mayerne's action must have appeared to them like an impudent challenge. In one of his writings he strongly recommended the employment of antimonial preparations,—remedies introduced originally by the much-hated Paracelsus,—and he even went so far as to offer some for sale. This was too much for the disciples of Galen to bear without a protest, and consequently in 1603 the Parliament issued a new decree, in accordance with which de Mayerne was prohibited from practicing medicine in Paris. This measure appears to have proved successful in putting a stop effectively to his obnoxious teachings, for we learn that shortly afterward he was known to be living in London, where, in 1611, he was appointed the Physician-in-Ordinary to King James the First, and later to Charles the First. He died in 1655.

Jean Astruc, the distinguished French medical author of the eighteenth century, speaks rather disparagingly of de Mayerne's attempt to organize a pharmacopoeia. An earlier, more successful, and much more creditable attempt of this nature was made by Valerius Cordus, whose "Dispensatorium pharmacorum omnium" was first published at Nürnberg in 1535. This work, which subsequently bore the title "Pharmacopoeia Augustana," up to the year 1627 passed through at least seven editions and was utilized to a greater or less extent by the authors or editors of nearly all later pharmacopoeias. To go still further back, the most ancient pharmacopoeia of which we have any knowledge is that which bears the title of "Antidotarium Nicolai," the author of which work was Nicolaus, the President or Dean of the Medical School at Salerno. The book was written originally during the first half of the twelfth century, but it did not appear in print, at Venice, until the year 1471, and then only in an incomplete form. Quite recently a French translation of the book has been made and published (1896) by Paul Dorveaux, of the Paris School of Pharmacy. Most of the preparations there described have long since been abandoned, but a few of