The literary sources of our pharmacopoeia : opening address to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Pharmaceutical Association.

  • Stockman, Ralph, 1861-1946.
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The literary sources of our pharmacopoeia : opening address to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Pharmaceutical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    on the remedial action of many plants and natural products. Among the most primitive peoples there is always a certain know- ledge of domestic medicine the practice of which is largely in the hands of women, but very early in upward development we usually find it transferred to special medicine-men or combined with priestly functions. The earliest written documents we possess are Egyptian, the most ancient dating from about 2700 B.C., and several others are extant from later times. These contain formulae, often complex, for the treatment of various ailments, the drugs being chiefly native plants, and a few common mineral substances. Few of them are potent, and they are essentially the same kind of medicines which we find in herbals and other medical treatises down to about 150 years ago. The influence of Egypt is traceable through Greek, Roman, Arabian, and mediaeval medicine down to our own day. As different nations or communities flourished or decayed, so learn- ing generally, and along with it medical knowledge, shared the common vicissitudes, and very frec]uently suflered almost total eclipse. Take Egypt as an example, or the “ dark ages ” in Europe which followed on the fall of the Roman Empire. It can never be estimated how much the world has lost by the extinction at that time of learning and science for so many centuries. The introduction of incantations as remedial measures —a species of cure which still exists under such names as Christian science, faith-healing and so on—is almost certainly traceable to the priest-physician, while witchcraft as a factor in medicine has been held responsible for the appearance of snakes, toads, vipers, and other repulsive objects in ancient and mediaeval materia medica. Whatever their origin, there is no doubt that modern critical methods have displaced them for ever from their former prominent position. In justice, however, it must be said, or at least I have formed the opinion, that the peculiar and often disgusting character of these substances has drawn more historical attention to them than their importance or employment in actual cotemporary practice ever merited. Not to go further back than the Christian Era, we find that such authors as Celsus (d. 50, a.d.), Pliny (d. 79), Diosco-