| Description Of Item | Notes on the uses and risks of quicksilver, or mercury, from different authors.
Dioscorides says that ‘quicksilver hurts only by weight’ while Avicenna ‘Prime of the Arabian Physicians’ says that it does not hurt ‘because it evacuates itself by the belly’.
Rorarius [Hieronymus?] says that he knew a man who, inebriated, ‘took a pot of 43 quicksilver’ instead of water and drank it before going to bed; when he woke up he felt ‘his sheets moist’ and ‘found twas mercury’. Rorarius ‘affirms’ it is safe to give to children ‘half dead with worms’ and to ‘women in difficult labour’.
The physician Brossavolus [Antonio Musa Brassavola, or Brasavola, or Brasavoli] says, in his book ‘Examin Simplic’ [Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum, quorum in officinis usus est], that he has given 1 drachm to children.
Amatus Lusitanus [João Rodrigues de Castelo Branco, better known as Amato Lusitano or Amatus Lusitanus] says that those who ‘dispraise’ mercury are ‘ignorant in physic’. Lusitanus ‘tells a story of a boy of 10 years of age who drank 41 of quicksilver’ by mistake, but had no ‘ill symptom but weight’ and ‘by glysters [or clysters] voided it without any harm’.
The chemist Hartman [Johannes Hartmann] says the best cure for worms is quicksilver, ‘taken by itself from 1 drachm to some 1 ounce’.
Manuscript marginalia in a library copy of William Salmon, Iatrica: seu Praxis Medendi (1684) – library reference M.10.50.
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