Pharmacologia; or the history of medicinal substances, with a view to establish the art or prescribing. And of composing extemporaneous formulae upon fixed and scientific principles / by John Ayrton Paris.

  • John Ayrton Paris
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacologia; or the history of medicinal substances, with a view to establish the art or prescribing. And of composing extemporaneous formulae upon fixed and scientific principles / by John Ayrton Paris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    yered that he wore an amulet about his neck; and, in the declining aera of the Roman empire, we find that this superstitious custom was so general, that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to make a public edict ordaining that no man should wear any super¬ stitious amulets about his person. In the progress of civilization, various fortuitous incidents,* and even errors in the choice and prepa¬ ration of aliments, must have gradually unfolded the remedial powers of many natural substances ; these were recorded, and the authentic history of medicine may date its commencement from the period when such records began. The Chaldeans and Babylonians, we are told by Herodotus, carried their sick to the public roads and markets, that travellers might con¬ verse with them, and communicate any remedies, which had been successfully used in similar cases : this custom continued during many ages in Assyria; and Strabo states that it prevailed also amongst the ancient Lusitanians, or Portuguese : in this manner however the results of experience descended only by oral tradition ; it was in the temple of Esculapius in Greece, that medical information was first recorded; diseases and cures were there registered on durable tablets of marble; the priests t and priestesses, who * Let the tradition respecting the discovery of the virtues of the Baik serve as an illustration. We are told, that an Indian being ill of a fever, quenched his thirst at a pool of water, strongly impregnated with the bark, from some trees having accidentally fallen into it, and that he was in consequence cured. f As these persons were ambitious to pass for the descendants of Esculapius, they assumed the name of The Asclepiades. The writings of Pausanius, Philostratus, and Plutarch, abound with the artifices of those early physicians. Aristophanes describes in a truly comic man? ner the craft and pions avarice of these godly men, and mentions the dexterity and promptitude with which they collected, and put into their
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