| Description Of Item | A small glass bottle with cork stopper labelled ‘Veratrum Album’, filled with a number of white, spherical pills.
A perennial plant native to Europe, found growing in ‘wet meadows and swampy places’, veratrum album sports a bitter and acrid root that was used by the ‘ancients’ as an emetic and cathartic; physicians during the 19th century, however, thought these actions to be far too strong and unreliable so it was primarily employed in this era as an errhine (a substance to be stuffed up the nose), as well as a carefully administered oral remedy that proved highly effective for treating gout (though this still often caused nausea and a laxative effect) (Thacher, 1817, pp.379-381). Generally, though, the violent strength of veratrum album meant that it was not frequently prescribed by doctors, and if it was (other than for gout), it was done nasally with the intent of curing afflictions such as obstruction, loss of vision, and headache (Scudder, 1891, p.662).
Homoeopathically, however, such as in the case of this bottle from the Joseph James homeopathic chemist, it served a variety of purposes. Though often sneered upon by licensed doctors, homeopathy was a popular form of remedy in the 19th century, particularly with the laity; introduced by Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, the key principle of homeopathy was that the sick could be treated by substances that cause the same symptoms in healthy individuals. Many homeopathic schools and pharmacies began to appear during the following century, ran by book-reading types who appeared alike to degree holding, licensed doctors (opposed to alternative healers of the past), gaining popularity as a result of disenfranchisement regarding the often ineffective yet harmful medicines recommended by the more expensive, licensed doctors. Labelled ‘quacks’ by these licensed physicians, such homeopathic pharmacies prescribed their own bottles of spherical, white, uniform pills, called globuli; these were purified sugar balls or ‘sugar of milk’ balls, saturated with a specific substance (in this case veratrum) to dilute the toxicity of the medicine, rolled into a ball. Then, to keep the quality and active principles of the medicine, these globules would be imbibed with alcoholic attenuations, dried out, and put in a stopped bottle. These pills have gone on to form the basis of the homeopathic remedies that are part of the modern CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) category of treatments today. Writing on the subject of homeopathy in 1856, Harmon Knox Root, a licensed doctor, scoffed that: ‘Their little sugar pills…and drops of distilled water, possess remarkable healing properties when administered to highly nervous and notional persons, who have no disease but what exists in the imagination. Such persons they not unfrequently cure: such persons are often restored to health from an imaginary disease by a few doses of powerful and efficacious bread pills!’ (1856, pp.48-49).
The sort of symptoms thought treatable by veratrum album by homeopaths in the 19th century were extensive and varied, but included vomiting and purging, canine hunger, pain in the pit of the stomach, swollen tongue, unquenchable thirst, constriction of the throat, chill, sunken face, slowness of the pulse, suppression of the menstrual cycle (followed by delirium), convulsions, pain of many kinds, dry cough, hurried breathing, and crimson hue of the eyeballs (Laurie, McClatchey, 1887, pp.920-922). As in the 19th century, homeopathy is still considered by many today to be pseudoscience, while also hailed by others for its natural approach to medicine.
References
Laurie, J., McClatchey, R, J. 1887. The Homeopathic Domestic Medicine. Philadelphia: F. E. Boericke.
Root, H, K. 1856. The people's medical lighthouse: a series of popular and scientific essays on the nature, uses, and diseases of the lungs, heart, liver, stomach, kidneys, womb and blood: also, a key to the causes, prevention, remedies, and cure of pulmonary and other kinds of consumption: marriage guide. New York: Ranney.
Scudder, J, M. 1891. The American Eclectic Materia Medica and Therapeutics. Cincinnati: J. M. Scudder.
Thacher, J. 1817. The American new dispensatory: containing general principles of pharmaceutic chemistry ; chemical analysis of the articles of materia medica ; pharmaceutic operations; materia medica, including several new and valuable articles, the production of the United States ; preparations and compositions ; with an appendix, containing an account of mineral waters ; medical prescriptions ; the nature and medical uses of the gases ; medical electricity ; galvanism ; an abridgment of Dr. Currie's reports on the use of water ; the cultivation of the poppy plant, and the method of preparing opium ; and several useful tables ; the whole compiled from the most approved authors, both European and American. Boston: Thomas B. Wait and Sons. |