Holy Wafers in Pharmacy: Who Was Curé Arnal?

Abstract

Historically, most medicines were associated with a horrible taste ( goût repoussant ). Sulphate of quinine, widely used at the beginning of the XIX th century as remedy for malarial intermittent fever, certainly fits the description. Southwestern littoral France, was an area of endemic malaria and the population widely exposed to the medicine. French pharmacist Stanislas Limousin (1831-1887) is credited with the introduction of cachets enclosing medicine and thus greatly facilitating their administration. In fact, such cachets were developed and used much earlier by the parish priest of the village of Pérols ( curé of Pérols ), Joseph Lambert Arnal (1798-1867). The present contribution attempts to correct the erroneous perception about the paternity of the invention and to answer the question of who was Arnal.