Orviétan

The orviétan is a forgery Antidote Des.

Drug of meeting remained famous in the records of the medical charlatanism, the orviétan was due, says one, with the imagination of a certain Jerome Shoeing, native Orvieto, from where it drew his name, and since its origin until worms the end of, it was brought in France in 1647 by another native of Orvieto of the name Christoforo Contugi, which was initially made call Lorvietano , then Lorviétan or Orviétan . The Apothecary Pierre Pomel written in 1694 in its History of drugs : “The orviétan étoit common to Rome for a long time, and it is from there that the grocers faisoient it to come before the sior Contugi had obtained from the King the permission to publicly output it. ”

Contugi quickly acquired celebrity and richness under the name which it had chosen and it was already famous in the time of the Fronde, because its pseudonym appears at the head of several Mazarinade S. having undertaken, in 1647, to make approve its drug by the Faculté, it succeeds, realizing sounding species stumbling, to obtain the signature of twelve doctors. But this ambition lost it when, wanting to have to the certificate of the senior, Jean Piètre, it boldly offered to pay it him four hundred ecus by putting to him under the eyes approvals that it had already bought. Poor Jean, bad doctor, but honest man, joins together all Faculty and the twelve corrupted doctors “were driven out company by a solemn decree. ”

This mishap of the Italian charlatan harmed by no means the success which its drug obtained. It transmitted the secrecy of it to its descendants, and one of them sold to another contractor cures, the sior Nicolas de Blegny, creator of many proprietary medical products, swindler who, to have the title of doctor of the king, however knew better the way of the prison than that of the Court.

The orviétan was composed only of twenty-seven substances, of which most useful appear to have been the out-of-date Thériaque and “of the dry vipers furnished with their heart and their Foie. As Molière attests it comiquement, it was true a Panacée:

SGANARELLE .

Sir, please give me one limps of your orviétan, that I from there will pay myself you.

OPÉRATEUR .

the gold of all the climates that surrounded the Ocean

Can never pay this secrecy of importance?

My remedy cures by its rare excellence

Plus evils than one cannot about it number in a whole

the scale,

the bad temper,

the tinea,

the fever,

the plague,

the drop,

Vérole,

Descente,

Rougeole.

O great power

Of the orviétan!

The orviétan was then output in France, in the cities, the boroughs and the villages, by Tabarin S of bottom stages, of the shameless jugglers, charlatans, travelling acrobats, merchants of medical alleged drugs selling leus produced with accompaniment of Lazzi S, of joke S Burlesque S, of parade S and blows of large case, which were installed on the public places, in the Foire S and the crossroads, and which, attracting the idlers by the means of their coarse spectacle, thus helped the sale of their specific incomparable.

From there came that one gave, thereafter, the name of “merchant of orviétan” to all the charlatans of all kinds.

Sources

Alfred Franklin, Private life of formerly , Paris, p. 133-7.
Arthur Pougin, historical and picturesque Dictionary of the theater and arts which are attached to it, Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1885, p. 498.

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