Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 525.5

MOYSE CHARAS (1619-1698) The royal pharmacopœa, Galenical and chymical : according to the practice of the most eminent and learned physitians [sic] of France, and publish’d with their several approbations. Printed for John Starkey and Moses Pitt 1678 1st English edition. [8], 272, 245, [15] p., [6] leaves of plates : ill. 33 cm

This royal pharmacopoeia contains many recipes for preparing remedies against maladies ranging from stomachache to worms to snakebite. The first, or Galenical, section is based on the knowledge of the ancient Greek physician Galen, while the second, or chymical, section recipes concocted since Galen’s day, including preparations of beneficial minerals such as copper and mercury. The recipes range from simple ones to nostrums containing dozens of ingredients, some rather exotic (the liver of a viper, for example), and instructions are particularly lavish for preparing the ingredients by distilling, sieving, pulverizing, and so on. Educated in Orange as a chemist, Charas worked in the royal garden of plants, but when Louis XIV hardened against Protestants, Charas moved to England and later to Holland. At length, he was invited to Spain to treat Charles II (known as Carlos the Bewitched), but nearly got himself burned by the Inquisition for contradicting the archbishop of Toledo over the matter of a viper’s ejection of venom (vipers, unhappily, were a specialty with Charas: see the three English editions of his “New Experiments Upon Vipers”). Our author was imprisoned, and was able to save his life only by a timely conversion to Catholicism. The present work was originally published in French in 1676; our first printing in English is rare in the marketplace.

Cited references: Osler 2281; Wellcome II p.327; Cushing C182; NLM 17th c. 2376

John Martin M.D. Endowment