THE SIMPLES AND DRUGS OF INDIA.

332 "

"

Femme and Legouve’s Histoire Morale des Femmes." His varied travels afforded material for "New and Old; or, California and India"" (1859), and " Up and Down the Irrawaddi"(1860). Gustav Bruhl (1826-1903), a native of Prussia, settled in Cincinnati in 1848. Not only as a scientist and historian did he take rank; he was also a German-American poet of no mean order. His " Charlotte," "Die Heidin des Amazon," ’’Poesiendes Urwalds," and " Abendglocken" call for mention. He was also an archaeologist and anthropologist of note. Sir William Osler has made usSfamiliar with Elisha Bartlett (1804-1855),

of the men discharged from that ship on or about May 25th had been already taken ill with typhus fever, so the grant of free pratique was recalled and the ship isolated for the night in the roads. Next day (nineteenth day) she was again medically examined

whose essay on " The Philosophy of Medicine " is regarded by many as a classic in American medical literature, as is also his discourse on the " Times, Character, and Writings of Hippocrates." Orpheus Everts (1826-1903) was one of the early " problem novel" writers. His Giles and Company" dealt with the problem of heredity, while " The Cliffords" was based on the relations of religion and science. He also published a volume of verse entitled " Facts and Fancies." Chandler Robbins Gilman (1802-1866) wrote " Life on the Lakes " and "Legends of a Log Cabin." We have not included Drummond, the poet of the Canadian habitant, for he was a Canadian, or Draper, the historian and philosopher, or Noah Webster, the lexicographer, historian, and essayist, or Oliver Wendell Holmes, who needs no introduction where the English language is read. "

AN

EPIDEMIC OF "SHIP FEVER."

THE old " ship fever," typhus, has of late years been little heard of, but if the former conditions of dirt and overcrowding arise again the disease will All port medical officers come back with them. must therefore have typhus fever in their minds, and will be obliged to Dr. Markl, health officer of the port of Trieste, for his account1 of an epidemic which, arising in a crowded Turkish transport, came under his observation last summer. On 14th the steamer Vorwaerts embarked at May Valona, in Albania, and at another port on the Adriatic, 2766 defeated Turkish troops, worn out and in misery. There were two doctors belonging to the ship and six Turkish doctors as well. 200 of the troops were sick, but their ailments were not exactly diagnosed, and though 27 died during the passage free pratique was at once granted the ship on her arrival at Constantinople on May 20th (sixth day). It was subsequently ascertained that while the soldiers were on board the crew had lived practically with them and all of them had become in consequence infested with lice. As soon as the troops landed the were ship returned to Trieste (May 25th, eleventh day), and there disembarked her trooping fittings and discharged half her crew before proceeding, on May 29th (fifteenth day), to Fiume, which she reached next day, when eight of the crew reported themselves sick and were diagnosed as suffering from malaria or three-day (pappataci) fever. On June lst (eighteenth day) she was back again at Trieste with 14 sick on board, supposed by the visiting physician to be cases of some form of alimentary intoxication, and pratique was granted, when two of the sick landed and went to their homes. But when request was made for the admission of one of the crew to the city infectious hospital it was recalled that another 1

Archiv für Schiffs- und

ropen-

Hygiene,

December

1913, p. 805.

and 18 men on board were found to be sick, all, as it proved, with typhus fever. On later investigation it appeared that in each half of the crew, those discharged on May 25th and those still left on board, 20 cases developed, 40 in all, and that no case arose among those men who replaced the half first discharged-that is, the disease attacked those only who were on the ship with the Turkish troops, but did not spread from them to the men who came on board later. The symptoms were two or three days’ feeling of illness, shivering, headache, and anorexia; one man had vomited; only four of the 18 were in bed, but all had more or less pyrexia and fast pulse, two had enlarged an exanthem (nineteenth any lice found, the men having had time since May 20th to get rid of them. From not one single case, even from those nursed at their own homes, did infection spreada strong corroboration, as Dr. Markl points out, to Nicolle’s view that the infection of typhus fever is carried by lice, and that a patient may be harmless to his neighbours once he is freed from lice. It is noted how strikingly little subjective discomfort and feeling of illness there is at first, but the patients all complained of distressing sleeplessness and of bad dreams when they did doze. The exanthem is an inconspicuous roseola appearing on the fourth or fifth day, and first on the front of the chest and abdomen, becoming generalised later, and altering to petechiæ. Post mortem it is noticed at once that the blood is fluid, as is sometimes the

spleens, and four day). On none

showed were

after death from suffocation; ecchymoses are on the surface of the liver and spleen, and the spleen is enlarged, weighing overlb. Death occurred in six of the cases described above(15 per cent.) from collapse, and in the majority of instances at the end of the second week. Iujection of blood into guinea-pigs never set up the disease. case

seen

THE

SIMPLES AND

DRUGS OF INDIA.

FOR some 80 years-namely, from 1498 to 1580the only European power holding any dominion in Vasco da Gama anchored India was Portugal. before Calicut in May, 1498 ; Francis of Almeida was the first Viceroy, from 1505 to 1509 ; while Goa was captured in 1510 by Alfonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese domination being extended to various places on the Malabar and Malacca coasts. Goa became, as it still is, the capital of Portuguese India, and to Goa, in 1534, there came as physician to Martin Affonso de Sousa, afterwards (1542 to 1545) governor of the city, Garcia da Orta, author of a work written in dialogue form upon the Simples and Drugs of India,1 The book was first printed at Goa by Johannes de Endem in 1563, being the third book ever printed in India. A Latin epitome made by Clusius (Charles de l’Escluze) was published by Plantin in 1567, which, says Sir Clements Markham, was very different from the original. The epitome was translated into Italian by Antonio Briganti (Venice, 1582) and into French by Antoine Colin (Lyons, 1 Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, by Garcia da Orta. New edition (Lisbon, 1895), edited and annotated by the Conde de Ficalho. Translated with an introduction and index by Sir Clements Markham, K.C.B., F.R.S. London: Henry Sotheran. 1913. Pp. 509. Price £2 2s. net.

333

for" Andromachus."

1619), Orta’s name being translated into Du Jardin. An inaccurate edition was published at Lisbon in 1872, and finally Count Ficalho published his standard edition in two volumes, 1891 to 1895, with valuable notes and comments, he himself being an accomplished botanist. The volume now before us Garcia da Orta is a translation of this edition. about 1490, and from the was born at Elvas evidence of the Colloquies is supposed to have studied medicine at the Universities of Salamanca and Alcala de Henares from 1515 to 1525. He then returned to Portugal and practised as a village doctor at Castello de Vide. In 1532 his patrons, the Sousa family, got him appointed lecturer in Lisbon University, a. post which he held until 1534, when, as already mentioned, he accompanied Martin Affonso de Sousa to Goa. Here he practised as a physician until about 1570, when he died. The interlocutors of the Colloquies are Garcia da Orta and an imaginary person, by name Dr. Ruano, who is, says Count Ficalho, the personification of the literary and student side of Orta Ruano is always referring to Pliny, himself. Dioscorides, Serapion, Mesue, Avicenna, and other ancient authors, while Orta, though he occasion.ally mentions the ancients, says (p. 288), "Ikeep myself remote from these scholastic matters," and frequently when Ruano quotes the ancients in opposition to Orta the latter simply replies, "I have The Colloquies are 59 in number, and seen it." deal mostly with vegetable drugs, though some animal drugs, such as ambergris, bezoar, and theriaca, are dealt with. There is also a Colloquy on precious stones and on pearls, which formed part of the Electm’ÚMn de gemmis or Diamargariton of mediaeval and later times. So Gilles de Corbeil in his directions for treating a rich patient says: " Contundat gemmas, molat aurum, misceat ambram." One Colloquy treats of cholera, another gives an account of a robbery committed by the aid of datura poisoning, and another of the Pao de Cobra, one of the many " Snake Roots," scientifically known as Pauwolfia Serpentina. Orta’s style is occasionally somewhat confused. For instance, in talking of plants used for scent he says (p. 37) : " Others are used for their scent, such as- sandal wood, which is very commonly used to anoint the body, and the Linaloe, Amber, Almisque, and Algalia, much used because the price is not so high. This is because there are many cats in many parts of India." The argument appears a decided MOM sequitur-it may be one analogous to Darwin’s well-known canon about cats and clover. The book on the whole is singularly interesting as giving a vivid picture of a physician’s knowledge of Indian drugs in the sixteenth century. It is illustrated with pictures of various plants taken from the work of Cristoval Acosta, brother of the better known Cristoval Josef Acosta, who wrote on Mexico. published a work on the medicines of the The volume is East Indies at Burgos in 1578. beautifully printed, though we notice, surely, a misprint on p. 13, where the word " Greeks" in be Turks." Ruano’s first question should Again, on p. 28, in the Colloquy on .AOMMM—i.e., cardamum-Ruano quotes Mateolo Senense as saying that he "does not hold for certain that this drug entersinto the ti1’iaca of Andronicus." In his index of persons Sir Clements Markham gives the name Andronicus (p. 28) and adds, "apparently a mistake for Marcus Aurelius." In our opinion

The Andromachi, father and to the Emperor Nero, and the father wrote a poem in Greek elegiacs, ’AvTEaoTOr "icÛB1]V’I)’ which was quoted by Galen in the Liber de Theriaca ad Pisonem and was translated into Latin under the title De Theriaca. There were many Theriacse in ancient medicine, but the most those of Andromachus and renowned were son,

no

doubt

that "Andronicus " is

a

physicians

Damocrates.

____

"THE ISLE OF MAN." Dr. Gustave Monod, M.R.C.S., M.R.C.P., the first Frenchman for 300 years to receive this combination of qualifications, has been studying post-graduate methods in England as a Government delegate, and on Jan. 22nd gave a demonstration in the Therapeutics Section of the Royal Society of Medicine of the "Peristaltic Movements of the Intestines of a Cat," thus showing his audience by the help of the cinema how vividly some physiological processes, not usually visible to the mind’s eye, may be set before the student. Food passes from the stomach to the bowel of a cat more rapidly than through a dog or a human being, but when under the influence of senna. and in the conditions of a laboratory experiment, the feline gut performs with almost surprising alo7nb. Thrown artistically upon a dark-blue screen the cat’s intestines, in the film from the Institut Marey shown by Dr. Monod, appeared a coil or tangle of glistening folds, which suggested a cobra di capella or a silkworm, according as the successive peristaltic movements distended or convulsed their convolutions. A futurist sculptor of the school of Mr. Epstein might have seen in the abbreviated drama of the descent of fsecal matter a subject quite as interesting as pregnancy or parturition, which the new art believes to be not unworthy of plastic representation. In the same drama an old Greek physician might have fancied that he beheld the writhings of the mystic serpent of healing. Indeed, one wonders whether the caduceus does not in some sort symbolise man’s twining guts. Had it been possible, however, for old Phineas Fletcher to be present at the lecture he would have been more delighted than any of the audience. Fletcher is the poet of the Microcosm, and in "The Purple Island or the Isle of Man," published at Cambridge in 1633, he essaysthe bold task of describing man’s inner economy, both anatomical and physiological. Following up a well to known metaphor Shakespeare and to the ancients, he portrays the body as a country with rivers, lakes, cities, and so forth, and a host of functionaries from the Steward Gustus down to the Porter. The stomach is the kitchen and the intestines are its drainage. His metaphor here is scarcely metaphorical enough. Some eight verses at the end of Canto II. describe the drainage system, over which Hepar, a great official, keeps spies :These pipes are seven-fold longer than the Isle, Yet all are folded in a little pile, Whereof three noble are, and thinne

"

there is

were

The poem is not

I

a

;

three

thick, and vile.

success, for it fails to

Indeed, it is at best

a

"conceit"of

a

move us.

most in-

genious kind. Poets are apt to be conventional thought, and they probably imagine that something shameful or terrifying in what happens inside us. Now, however, that there is a medical poet laureate someone may think of the possibilities of a poetry of medicine. Much verse mistake has undoubtedly been written on specific diseases, in their there is