Methodus medendi : a sketch of the development of therapeutics / by Sir William Henry Allchin.

  • Allchin, William Henry, Sir, 1846-1911.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Methodus medendi : a sketch of the development of therapeutics / by Sir William Henry Allchin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    was used.* Gradual]}^ it came about tliat a separation took place amona tlie <;rocers, of tliose wliose busiue.ss was concerned with groceries proper from those who concenual tliem.selves more especially with the vendiniT of drujis to whom in course of time the name of drugsters or druggists was applied, and with whom were subsequently combined those who prepared and sold the increasing number of chemical substances employed in medicine, who were designated pharmaceutical chemists, and thus arose the conjunction of chemist and druggi.st with which we are familiar. The office of apothecary, its origin, duties, and relation to the other branches of the profession, here only briefly sketched, forms an interesting chapter in the history of medicine; luit it is desirable to remember that, apart from the preparation of and dealing in various drugs and medicaments, the actual pi-escribing for and treatment of the patient appears to have always been within its scope, though the fitness for so doing was fi’equently insufficient, even in respect to the limited knowledge of former times, and often called forth protests from the more learned physicians ; and legal enactments were formulated from time to time forbidding surgeons and apothecaries from giving internal medicines in certain specified maladies. Even since the manufacture and preparation of the articles of the mafena medico has become a trade of its own in the hands of the chemist and druggist, the temptation to j)rescribe, too often at the request of the public, has not always been resi.sted. Among the vast number of drugs and medicaments that were in vogue at various times the need for some soi’t of arrangement and classification must have been soon experienced as a guide both to physician and pharmacist. The chief of the early works on materia medica were by Dioscorides (first century), Pliny (first century), and Galen (second century), and of these the first named is the most complete. Reference has been previously made to the Ebers papyrus, which, of course, preceded these woiks by a thousand years or more, and also to the wi-itings of various earlier physicians, but those of the three authors named may be fairly regarded as the first de.scriptions of plants and other substances used medicinally which are in any way to be compared to modern pharmacopoeias, and that formed the source whence the Arabian and later writers compiled most of their accounts. To those already mentioned might be added Nicolas of Salerno, who wrote an Antidofariwm in the twelfth century, Mattheus Platearius, of the .same place and period, whose work de Sivvplici * The. Laws re/aling to the Medical Profession, By J. W. Willcock, Barrister-nt- Law, 183(). Page xviii.