to have made an immense fortune by inventing and prescribing frictions with mercurial ointment for syphilis. John de Vigo was a strong partisan of fumigations in obstinate cases. His fumigations were made from cinnabar and storax. It is not quite clear whether this physician gave red precipitate internally in syphilis. He expressly indicates its internal use in plague.
Mercury a Remedy for Syphilis.
Peter Andrew Matthiolus, born at Sienna in 1500, died at Trent in 1577, latterly the first physician to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, a botanist and author of "Commentaries on Dioscorides," was, according to Sprengel, the first who is known for certain to have administered mercury internally. Paracelsus, however, was without doubt the practitioner who popularised its use. He gave red precipitate, corrosive sublimate, and nitrate of mercury, and describes how each of these was made. Sprengel credits him also with acquaintance with calomel, but other authors do not recognise this in any of his writings.
Vigo's Plaster.
The Emplastrum Vigonium was a highly complicated compound, which was held in great veneration and is the subject of innumerable comments in the pharmaceutical writings of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Charas, Lemery, Baumé, and others modified and simplified it. John de Vigo was a native of Naples, where he was born about 1460, and he became the first physician of Pope Julius II. His plaster still figures in the French Codex, and contains 600 parts of mercury by weight in 3,550 parts. This
