Geology as medicine and medics as geologists

Abstract

Modern links between geology and medicine are clearly demonstrated in the rise (or some would say, re-emergence) of medical geology – the study of the influence of geological factors (such as the excess or deficiency of trace elements and minerals, radionuclides, mineral dusts and volcanic emissions, etc.) on the geographical distribution of health problems in both man and animals (e.g. Finkelman et al. 2001; Dissanayake 2005; Selinus & Alloway 2005). The purpose of the current volume, however, is to explore the historical links between geology and medicine; indeed, this is the first major publication to embrace such a project. Two major themes emerge from this study: the therapeutic use of geological materials (geopharmaceuticals), and the contributions made by medical practitioners to geology. It could be argued that both themes were well established by classical times. The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 AD), imperial surgeon to Nero and the legions of the Roman army, probably studied medicine at Tarsus (Osbaldeston & Wood 2000). His magnum opus was a five-volume herbal entitled The Materia Medica, probably written around 64 AD. Although effectively a medicinal herbal, volume 5 of his work contains a section on ‘Metallic Stones’. The 99 entries in this part of his work embrace a wide range of materials including such unlikely things as soot gathered from torches and glassmakers, ash from burnt twigs, Mediterranean soft corals (‘Alcyonium’), sediment from old Italian wines and various oils, gums and herbal derivatives. In addition to a wide range of metallic products, he includes unprocessed geological materials in the form of earths (e.g. Lemnian earth, Samian earth), ochres, rocks (e.g. limestone, pumice, serpentinite), minerals (e.g. Chrysocolla, azurite, cinnabar, calcite, pyrite, realgar, orpiment, gypsum, hematite, magnetite, turquoise, asbestos, selenite, sapphire, siderite, corundum) and fossils (e.g. echinoid spines, jet, oysters). Unconcerned with the origins of these geological materials, he dealt solely with their perceived therapeutic benefits. His work quickly became an authoritative and essential reference, consulted widely and revered relatively uncritically for the next 1400 years. Before this seminal contribution, the medical traditions of numerous earlier societies incorporated geological materials into their respective pharmaceutical arsenals. The Egyptians recorded the medicinal use of malachite, gypsum and galena in a series of medical papyri; the Babylonians and Sumerians preserved recipes for drugs which included geological simples on clay tablets; the Indian Ayurvedic and Chinese traditions also incorporated a variety of minerals and lithologies into their earliest medical writings. At approximately the same time as Dioscorides, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historiae, written around 77 AD, gathered together much Roman wisdom and folklore belief, including much information about the contemporary medicinal applications of a variety of geological materials. These authors laid the foundations for the later works of Arabic scholars, medieval encyclopaedists, lapidaries and bestiaries, many of which were made newly available in incunabular form with the invention of the printing press. Christopher Duffin examines the evolution of the geological materia medica from earliest times through to around 1750, as expressed in primary printed sources, providing a bibliography for those intending to access these topics for the first time. The word ‘Lithotherapy’ was coined by the German physician and pharmacist, Hermann Georg Fuhner (1871–1944). Using published lapidaries as his source material, Fuhner completed his doctoral dissertation (1902) at the University of Strasbourg on the history of the use of precious stones in medicine. The word has since been commandeered by New Age beliefs and given to mean the use of the energy emitted by minerals for healing purposes. Relatively little serious research has been completed on the topic of lithotherapy since Fuhner’s contribution, although the last decade has seen some stirrings of interest in this long neglected discipline. A number of papers in this present volume are dedicated to the opening up of this general topic area. Eladio Linan, Maria Linan and Joaquin Carrasco have scoured the early literature (Theophrastus’s book On Stones from the third century BC, four second century AD apocryphal Greek lapidaries, Pliny’s Naturalis Historiae,