5 ms·

Medicine containers used in the golden age of piracy

101 points by blumpy22 3y ago

moffkalast 3y ago
> For liquid medicines, a through and through dense container of (substance) silver, glass or horn is manufactured The horn option does not seem sanitary.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "first century Greek physician Pedanis Dioscorides says" You might have missed the year. This bit was a advice from 2000 years ago, where horn was probably way more cheaper, than glas or metal. And I think if it is polished, it might be not too bad, but glas or silver are of course way better.
- asdff 3y ago
  Horns are boiled as they are processed so it wouldn't be any different than any other container in that sense by the end, no random bovine microbes or whatever.
mynameishere 3y ago
So, did they have any drugs that actually worked besides laudanum and "bark"? My reading of Jack Aubrey books suggests that medicine then was mostly about trauma care and bedside manner.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  Plants, mushrooms and animals have contained active substances forever, it would be surprising that after millenniums of trials and errors, the people of this time didn't settle on a few things that worked.
  - nwiswell 3y ago
    Sure, but are there examples besides aspirin and opiates? Unsurprisingly those are pain medications, since it was immediately obvious that they work. The other class of drug that would obviously be recognized as effective are psychoactives such as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. By contrast I can't imagine how they could judge the efficacy of e.g. blood pressure medications back in those days, even though there are purely herbal treatments like aged garlic that certainly do have an effect. ETA: This wiki article has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drugs_by_year_of_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drugs_by_year_of_disco... Another notable category of ancient drugs is laxatives. The first synthetic drugs did not begin to appear until around the mid-1800s. In 1832 chloral hydrate was produced, which was the first synthetic sleeping drug, but it wasn't used clinically until 1869.
    - belenos46 3y ago
      Lots of examples. 'Thorsons Introductory Guide to Medical Herbalism' is, for example, both required reading for many modern medical degrees and a collection of hundreds (of documented; more realistically, thousands) of years of the medical practice of herbalism. And if you want some anecdata, I've used plenty of preparations from that text for nausea, fever, menstrual cramps (not mine, clearly), poor clotting, sinus congestion, and likely some things that are slipping my mind. Plants are where we get a lot of medicines from, and while modern pharmaceutical companies may prefer that information not get spread around (it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US), but the fact remains that if you know how to get the medicine out of the plant, it's still totally possible to do so.
      - tekla 3y ago
        > it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US Lol, the west doesn't do herbalism because if it works, we just call it medicine.
        sonicshadow 3y ago
        The west doesn’t believe in herbal remedies because they aren’t patentable by the pharma industrial complex to make $$$
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  https://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/dispensatory25.html https://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/dispensato... The smelling salts would definitely work. The oil of Wormwood probably worked to remove intestinal worms. A lot of the others I’m not sure passed the “first, do no harm” test.
- 6177c40f 3y ago
  Plenty of stuff. For example, Mercury, which was used as an ointment and a laxative, among other uses. Here's a surprisingly readable excerpt from a medical text written in 1787: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545546/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545546/
- downrightmike 3y ago
  Anglo-Saxon eye potion helps fight against superbug https://www.wired.co.uk/article/medieval-eye-potion https://www.wired.co.uk/article/medieval-eye-potion
ant6n 3y ago
Was this found using that random Web 1.0 link from just recently?
- toastedwedge 3y ago
  I suspect we'll see a number of interesting websites posted over the next few weeks because of that web 1.0 finder. I personally can't wait
beej71 3y ago
I just have to say hats off to whoever decided to register this niche domain. :)
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
Luc 3y ago
I was wondering about the domed base of some of the bottles. Luckily there's a 'Bottle Bases Page': https://sha.org/bottle/bases.htm https://sha.org/bottle/bases.htm > It may appear that the steep rise or pushed-up portion of the base was done to reduce the interior volume of the bottle. However, it was more likely done for some or all of the following reasons: for bottle strength enhancing, stability (i.e., the process helps form an even base and keeps the rough glass of some pontil scars out of the way so the bottle sits upright without wobbling), to provide a means of turning bottles in a stack using the fingers and thumb (a procedure still followed in traditional champagne manufacture), and/or possibly to trap content sedimentation (Jones 1971a; Boow 1991).

101 points by blumpy22 3y ago

> For liquid medicines, a through and through dense container of (substance) silver, glass or horn is manufactured The horn option does not seem sanitary.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"first century Greek physician Pedanis Dioscorides says" You might have missed the year. This bit was a advice from 2000 years ago, where horn was probably way more cheaper, than glas or metal. And I think if it is polished, it might be not too bad, but glas or silver are of course way better.
asdff 3y ago
Horns are boiled as they are processed so it wouldn't be any different than any other container in that sense by the end, no random bovine microbes or whatever.

mynameishere 3y ago

So, did they have any drugs that actually worked besides laudanum and "bark"? My reading of Jack Aubrey books suggests that medicine then was mostly about trauma care and bedside manner.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Plants, mushrooms and animals have contained active substances forever, it would be surprising that after millenniums of trials and errors, the people of this time didn't settle on a few things that worked.
- nwiswell 3y ago
  Sure, but are there examples besides aspirin and opiates? Unsurprisingly those are pain medications, since it was immediately obvious that they work. The other class of drug that would obviously be recognized as effective are psychoactives such as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. By contrast I can't imagine how they could judge the efficacy of e.g. blood pressure medications back in those days, even though there are purely herbal treatments like aged garlic that certainly do have an effect. ETA: This wiki article has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drugs_by_year_of_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drugs_by_year_of_disco... Another notable category of ancient drugs is laxatives. The first synthetic drugs did not begin to appear until around the mid-1800s. In 1832 chloral hydrate was produced, which was the first synthetic sleeping drug, but it wasn't used clinically until 1869.
  - belenos46 3y ago
    Lots of examples. 'Thorsons Introductory Guide to Medical Herbalism' is, for example, both required reading for many modern medical degrees and a collection of hundreds (of documented; more realistically, thousands) of years of the medical practice of herbalism. And if you want some anecdata, I've used plenty of preparations from that text for nausea, fever, menstrual cramps (not mine, clearly), poor clotting, sinus congestion, and likely some things that are slipping my mind. Plants are where we get a lot of medicines from, and while modern pharmaceutical companies may prefer that information not get spread around (it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US), but the fact remains that if you know how to get the medicine out of the plant, it's still totally possible to do so.
    - tekla 3y ago
      > it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US Lol, the west doesn't do herbalism because if it works, we just call it medicine.
      - sonicshadow 3y ago
        The west doesn’t believe in herbal remedies because they aren’t patentable by the pharma industrial complex to make $$$
Mistletoe 3y ago
https://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/dispensatory25.html https://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/dispensato... The smelling salts would definitely work. The oil of Wormwood probably worked to remove intestinal worms. A lot of the others I’m not sure passed the “first, do no harm” test.
6177c40f 3y ago
Plenty of stuff. For example, Mercury, which was used as an ointment and a laxative, among other uses. Here's a surprisingly readable excerpt from a medical text written in 1787: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545546/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545546/
downrightmike 3y ago
Anglo-Saxon eye potion helps fight against superbug https://www.wired.co.uk/article/medieval-eye-potion https://www.wired.co.uk/article/medieval-eye-potion

ant6n 3y ago

Was this found using that random Web 1.0 link from just recently?

toastedwedge 3y ago
I suspect we'll see a number of interesting websites posted over the next few weeks because of that web 1.0 finder. I personally can't wait

beej71 3y ago

I just have to say hats off to whoever decided to register this niche domain. :)

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

Luc 3y ago

I was wondering about the domed base of some of the bottles. Luckily there's a 'Bottle Bases Page': https://sha.org/bottle/bases.htm https://sha.org/bottle/bases.htm > It may appear that the steep rise or pushed-up portion of the base was done to reduce the interior volume of the bottle. However, it was more likely done for some or all of the following reasons: for bottle strength enhancing, stability (i.e., the process helps form an even base and keeps the rough glass of some pontil scars out of the way so the bottle sits upright without wobbling), to provide a means of turning bottles in a stack using the fingers and thumb (a procedure still followed in traditional champagne manufacture), and/or possibly to trap content sedimentation (Jones 1971a; Boow 1991).