Christopher Duffin
London, England

Gemstones such as sapphire, ruby, emerald, and topaz are complex silicate minerals. Their distinctive and intense colors, hardness, durability, and rarity suggested medicinal value to medieval scholars, famously summarized in medieval lapidary texts, or books about such stones. In the early 15^th century, Monsieur Chiquart, Master Chef to the Duke of Savoy, added ground gems to soups and other “sick dishes,” believing they helped strengthen and restore patients to health.¹ Precious stones thus made their way into a wide range of medicaments in medieval and early modern receipts. Their most famous and long-lived preparation is likely to have been the gem electuary.

The Electuarium de Gemmis first appeared in a 1471 work ascribed to Johannes Mesuë of Damascus, also known as Mesuë the Younger (d. 1015). Translated from the original Arabic into Latin, the recipe was incorporated into many subsequent incunabula and later compendia. It was based upon sapphire, jacinth (possibly an alternative name for sapphire), garnet, sard (brownish chalcedony), smaragdus (probably emerald), amber, and gold and silver leaf. These were mixed with pearls, ivory, red coral, musk, ambergris, and a wide range of herbal materials. Honey was the main binding agent, and the use of spices and rose water must have contributed to the olfactory impact of the preparation. The ingredients, numbering 36 in all, must have been costly and not always easy to source. Nicolas Culpeper (1616–1654) remarked, “The truth is … these pouders are of too heavy a price for a vulgar mans purse”²; Jean de Renou (1568–1620) later substituted local herbs with similar properties for the rarer ingredients.³

Evidence suggests that the gem electuary was in active use in the West, although not necessarily under that title, from at least the 14^th century. Edward I (“Longshanks”; 1239–1307) was struck with dysentery in July 1306 whilst on campaign against the Scots. The Royal Physician contacted the king’s “especer” (apothecary) in London, requesting “for a comforting electuary”: amber, musk, pearls, jacinth, gold silver, coral, garnets, ambergris, myrrh, and many herbal ingredients. Unfortunately, the king died before the electuary could be administered. The apothecaries’ bill of £134 16s. 4d. was left unpaid, and the cost of transporting the drugs was £159 11s. 10d—not an insignificant sum! Elisabeth (Isabeau) of Bavaria-Ingolstadt (c. 1370–1435) ordered similar ingredients from a Parisian merchant for the Royal Apothecary, apparently as a treatment for her husband, Charles VI (“The Mad”) of France (1368–1422), who was suffering from bouts of insanity.⁴

From the early 16^th century onwards, the gem electuary was incorporated into a wide range of compound pharmaceuticals. It was one of the ingredients, for example, in Pietro Mattioli’s (1501–1577) cure-all “Great antidote against Poison and Pestilence.”⁵ The supposed effectiveness of this enormously complex preparation, which also included theriac and mithridatium, depended on the properties ascribed to many of its almost 150 components; no symptom was to be left to chance. This great antidote was noted by William Salmon (1644–1713) as being “one of the greatest Galli-maufries that I ever saw,”⁶ while Nicholas Culpeper, though recommending it, commented that “if it were stretched out and cut in thongs [it] would reach round the world.”⁷ Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) included the gem electuary in his “Elixir, or compound water of Lyfe,” and Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) suggested that a sort of restorative stew of various meats and herbs could be converted to a thorough medicine by adding the gem electuary to it and then distilling the mixture.⁸

Andrew Boorde (1490–1549) indicated that the gem electuary strengthened the heart, soul, and spirit of man, and the lifelong Elizabethan depressive Robert Burton (1577–1640) discussed its efficacy in cases of melancholy, recommending it mixed in a conserve as a restorative tonic. William Bullein (c. 1515–1576) provided a detailed recipe for the electuary in his Bulwarcke of Defence (1579), indicating its effectiveness in diseases of the brain, heart, stomach and womb. He also notes that it was known to make kings and noblemen bold-spirited, “the bodie to smell well,” and color come to the cheeks—the gem electuary may have been one of the most expensive makeup items ever produced!⁹

The gem electuary was also commended in combination with other simples by certain early modern authors for treating nightmares, penile and uterine ulcers (in topical form), morning sickness in pregnant women (as a lozenge), and diseases of the liver. Like many other well-established preparations, the electuary was also repurposed to offer protection and treatment against plague. Others noted its use in cases of palsy, cramp, breast cancer, erysipelas, and in the treatment of the “strumae” associated with the King’s Evil (tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis).¹⁰

Perhaps the last word should go to Gabriele Zerbi (1445–1505) who so praised Mesuë’s electuary in his Gerontocomia (1489):

[W]ith its sublimity [it] restores the power of the brain and heart and assists the stomach and the digestion, creates happiness, warms the members of nutrition and assists those of frigid nature. Since these aids increase the powers of the spirits it is urged that old men use them.¹¹

Clearly, although out of the range of the poor man’s pocket, the gem electuary was a popular component in a wide range of preparations for a diversity of diseases, the recipe being copied, modified, and inventively combined with novel ingredients until it eventually fell out of favor, as pharmacy became increasingly empirical during the 18th century.

References

1. Terence Scully, ed. Chiquart’s “On Cookery.” A Fifteenth-century Savoyard Culinary Treatise, American University Studies Series,IX: History, vol. 22 (1986), 99-100.
2. Nicholas Culpeper, A physicall directory (London: Peter Cole, 1649), 154.
3. Jean de Renou, A medicinal dispensatory (London: Jo. Streater and Ja. Cottrell, 1657), 600.
4. Christopher Duffin, “The gem electuary,” in Duffin, C.J., Moody, R.T.J. & Gardner-Thorpe, C. (eds), A History of Geology and Medicine, Geological Society of London, Special Publications, vol. 375 (2013), 81-111.
5. Pietro Andrea Matthioli, I Discorsi di M. Pietro And. Matthioli Sanese, Medico Sereniss. Principe Ferdinando Archiduca d’Austria &c. Ne I sei Libri Di Pedacio Disocoride Anazarbeo Della Materia Medicinale (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1563), 744.
6. William Salmon, Pharmacopoia Londinensis (London: J. Dawks, 1716), 590.
7. Nicholas Culpeper, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (London: Peter Cole, 1653), 138.
8. Duffin, “The gem electuary.”
9. William Bullein, Bulleins bulwarke of defence (London: Thomas Marshe, 1579).
10. Duffin, “The gem electuary.”
11. Gabriele Zerbi, Gabrielis Zerbi Veronensis Ad Innocentivm VIII. Pon. Max. Gerontocomia Feliciter Incipit (Rome: Eucharium Silber alias Franck, 1489).