Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/129

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of his secret, which he sold for a thousand louis d'or, for a share in which the merchant Garnier unsuccessfully sued. This was the beginning of a successful career which was continued by his son and his grandson. The last became France's fashionable poet and philosopher in the generation before the Revolution. The discoverer of ipecacuanha was appointed Inspector General of the Hospitals of Flanders, and became physician to the Duke of Orleans.

It appears from a treatise which Helvetius wrote that at first ipecacuanha was given in doses of two drachms, sometimes in decoctions and sometimes in enemas. Hans Sloane in England and Leibnitz in Germany wrote warmly in favour of the new remedy, but it was not till thirty years after it had been introduced that the dose was popularly reduced to some four to ten grains. Dover's lucky combination of ipecacuanha with opium had a great effect in ensuring its permanent adoption.


Kousso.

Although Bruce, the African traveller and others had described the tree which bears the kousso flowers in Abyssinia (Hagena Abyssinica) and had noted that the natives used these as worm medicine, the first knowledge of them actually made use of came through a French physician named Brayer residing in Constantinople about the year 1820. Brayer was one day in a café where was a waiter extremely emaciated and who suffered cruel pains from tape-worm. An old Armenian came into the café and told this waiter that he possessed a remedy which his son had brought from Abyssinia, and which he was sure would cure him. Brayer ascertained the successful result of the experiment