Laudanum his "archanum" or "laudanum", may or may not have contained opium. Paracelsus' laudanum was strikingly different from the standard laudanum of the 17th century and beyond, containing crushed pearls, musk, amber, and other substances. One researcher has documented that "Laudanum, as listed in the "London Pharmacopoeia" (1618), was a pill made from opium, saffron, castor, ambergris, musk and nutmeg". Laudanum remained largely unknown until the 1660s when English physician Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) compounded a proprietary opium tincture that he also named laudanum, although it differed substantially from the laudanum of Paracelsus. In 1676 Sydenham published a seminal work, "Medical Observations
Ancient Iranian medicine An antiepileptic drug-therapy plan in medieval Iranian medicine is individualized, given different single and combined drug-therapy with a dosing schedule for each of those. Physicians stress the importance of dose, and route of administration and define a schedule for drug administration. Recent animal experiments confirm the anticonvulsant potency of some of the compounds which are recommended by Medieval Iranian practitioners in epilepsy treatment. In "The Canon of Medicine" (c. 1025), Avicenna described numerous mental conditions, including hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor. In the 10th century work of Shahnama, Ferdowsi describes a Caesarean section