Medicinal use of earths and minerals from Hippocrates to Sir Hans Sloane and beyond

In 1931 two pharmaceutical drawers containing mineral specimens, belonging to Sir Hans Sloane, the 18th century collector, Royal Physician, President of the Royal Society and of the Royal College of Physicians of London, were found in the Department of Botany of the Natural History Museum (NHM) of London. The drawers, each divided into 49 compartments, contained a total of 107 mineral pharmaceutical specimens, some labelled as mercury or white arsenic. Their registration, identification with the Sloane Manuscript Catalogues and subsequent transfer to the Mineralogy department of the NHM where one of these drawers is now on public display, had been documented by 1935. In antiquity therapeutic empiricism attributed medicinal properties to animal products, plants and minerals, including the soil of specific geographic locations. This communication traces the medicinal use of certain earths and minerals, listed in Sir Hans Sloane's manuscript catalogues, to classical antiquity with a reference to Arsenic compounds, which in our time are finding application in the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukaemia and to Terra Lemnia, a celebrated antidote of repute spanning twenty centuries, also included in the Sloane collections.