1325 Apothecary shops were illustrated in manuscripts. This is from an antidotary called “Circa instans” London, British Library, ms Sloane fol 49v.
Early man found some plants were edible; that some could cure or kill; that some could cause sleep or even euphoria. Knowledge of the healing power of plants became a special calling of the priest & the medicine man, This knowledge of medicinal plants became a pathway to leadership & power. For thousands of years, the role of the shaman & the medicine man were combined in most budding civilizations that were growing in the Tigris Euphrates Valley, the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley, the Far East, & the Americas.
One of the earliest societies arose in Sumeria in the Fertile Crescent (4500 BCE), which spawned the succeeding cultures of Akkadia, Babylonia, Assyria, & Judea. The earliest known written document is a cuneiform tablet discovered at Nipur in Suneria, dated to about 2100 BCE consisting of a set of formulas for medicinal plants & directions for their compounding.
Todays' pharmacies, general practitioners, & specialists like surgeons, are all rooted in the ancient apothecary. The apothecary was an ancient tradition. The apothecary was the sole supplier of herbal, physical, & chemical medical treatments to the community. Apothecaries treated everything, however, the global market began to alter the course of apothecary medicine in the 1200’s.
1400 Apothecary shops were illustrated in manuscripts. Theriac shop, Vienna Tacuinum sanitatis, fol 53v
Chinese emperor Huangdi, (The Yellow Emperor) around 2600 BC.
From 4000 to 3000 BCE people in the Nile Valley established advanced agricultural technology, formed a government, & as early as 3000 BCE were building pyramids. In Babylon & Egypt the earliest role of an apothecary was pretty fairly akin to a modern doctor. The ancient Babylonians recorded the symptoms & prescribed treatment of medical patients, as far back as 2600 BC. The oldest & most complete review of ancient medicine yet discovered is the Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Ebers. Written around 1500 BC, the Papyrus Ebers contains over 800 medical recipes & treatments.
The Huangdi Neijing is an ancient treatise on health & disease said to have been written by the Chinese emperor Huangdi, (The Yellow Emperor) around 2600 BC. However, Huangdi is at best a semi-mythical figure, so the book probably dates from later, perhaps around 300 BC & may be a compilation of the writings of several earlier authors. The book takes the form of a discussion between Huangdi & his physician in which Huangdi inquires about the nature of health, disease, & healing treatments including medicinal plants.
Shen Nung, "The Divine Husbandman" is also called "The Father of Chinese Agriculture," because this legendary emperor is said to have taught his people how to cultivate grains as food to avoid killing animals. It is also claimed, that he tasted hundreds of herbs to test their medicinal value & is assumed to be the author of Shen-nung pen ts'ao ching (Divine Husbandman's Materia Medica). This text includes 365 medicines derived from minerals, plants, & animals. Emperor Shen Nung's text is said to have been written in “2700 BCE,” but it was probably written in the 1C, & contains about 100 medicinal plant remedies. Shen Nung 神農 is also venerated as "The Father of Chinese Medicine."
By the year 200 CE, Ancient China had grown into a vast empire which covered north-east, central, & South Asia. Through their conquests & the information they collected from place to place, the Ancient Chinese likely compiled the Shen-nung pen ts’ao ching. This book became the foundation of ancient eastern apothecary medicine. The book documents over 360 treatments for disease & ailment. The book classifies medicinal herbs & organic drugs into 3 classes: Upper Herbs, Middle Herbs, & Low Herbs.
Chinese Upper herbs comprised 120 substances found in nature which are harmless to humans, such as ginseng, orange, cinnamon, & cannabis. The 120 middle herbs, or common herbs, have medicinal properties that are strong enough to be toxic in excess. They include substances, like ginger, poppy, peony, & cucumber. Low herbs comprise 125 natural substances which have profound & dangerous consequences when consumed improperly. These include substances that are toxic in excesses, such as peach & rhubarb.
Greek philosophy involved a search for rational explanations of events in the natural world, including the healing arts. In Homer's epics The Iliad and The Odysseys, created circa 800 BC, 63 plant species from the Minoan, Mycenaean, and Egyptian Assyrian pharmacotherapy were referred to. Some of them were given the names after mythological characters from these epics; for instance, Elecampane (Inula helenium L. Asteraceae) was named in honor of Elena, who was the centre of the Trojan War. As regards the plants from the genus Artemisia, which were believed to restore strength and protect health, their name was derived from the Greek word artemis, meaning “healthy.”
In Greece, Herodotus (500 BC) referred to castor oil plant. Ancient Greek legendary hero Orpheus mentioned the fragrant hellebore and garlic, and Pythagoras of Samos (570-495 BC) the Ionian Greek philosopher and mathematician spoke of the sea onion, mustard, and cabbage. In his later work “De re medica,” Greek medical writer Celsus (25 BC–50 AD) wrote of approximately 250 medicinal plants such as aloe, henbane, flax, poppy, pepper, cinnamon, the star gentian, cardamom, and false hellebore.
Greece's botanical treatise Enquiry into Plants of Theophrastus, devotes Book IX to the medicinal value of herbs. The herbal De Materia Medica by Pedanios Dioscorides of Anazarba, a Roman army physician, written in the year 65, was referred to, copied, & commented on for 1500 years.
Depiction of Hippocrates (460–370 BCE), supporter of a Greek school of healing. The works of Hippocrates (459–370 BC) contain 300 medicinal plants classified by their use for illness: Wormwood and common centaury were applied against fever; garlic against intestine parasites; opium, henbane, deadly nightshade, and mandrake were used as narcotics; fragrant hellebore and haselwort as emetics; sea onion, celery, parsley, asparagus, and garlic as diuretics; oak and pomegranate as adstringents.
Hippocrates was purported to be among the earliest to expound the theory that diseases had natural rather than supernatural causes.
Theophrastus (371-287 BC), Aristotle's student, trusted colleague, & successor at the Lyceum was claimed to have founded botanical science with his books “De Causis Plantarium”-Plant Etiology and “De Historia Plantarium”-Plant History. In the books, he generated a classification of more than 500 medicinal plants known at the time. He referred to cinnamon, iris rhizome, false hellebore, mint, pomegranate, cardamom, fragrant hellebore, monkshood, and many more. In the description of the plant toxic action, Theophrastus emphasized that man should to become accustomed to medicinal plant cures by a gradual increase of the doses.
Greek Dioscorides (c 40-90AD) was a military physician with Nero's Army, studied medicinal plants wherever he travelled with the Roman Army. About 77 AD he wrote “De Materia Medica.” Translated many times, it offers data on the medicinal plants used through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Of the total of 944 drugs he described, 657 are medicinal plants, with descriptions of their outward appearance, locality, mode of collection, making of the medicinal preparations, and their therapeutic effect. In addition to the plant descriptions, their names in other languages coupled with the localities where they are grown are provided.
In the Middle Ages, the Islamic world made huge strides in the art of medicine. Pharmacies, hospitals, & apothecaries existed in Baghdad over 500 years, before the 1st apothecaries were established in England. From 700 CE through the 12C, Islam was home to major medical innovations. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 6C, there was a decline in knowledge in the Western World known as the Dark Ages. During the next 600 years the center of intellectual thought shifted to the Moslem world, as a result of the conquest of Byzantium. Moslem & Jewish scholars gathered manuscripts from antiquity & translated the manuscripts from Greek to Arabic. In the West, scholarship persisted more slowly through the persistence of monks & nuns in religious monastery libraries, where early writings about medicinal plants were laboriously copied by hand.
Islamic medical study was a direct product of the Islamic church for nearly 600 years, & throughout the 12C Renaissance Islamic medical knowledge spread throughout eastern & western Europe.
1400s Apothecary shops were illustrated in manuscripts. From Tacuinum Sanitatis, a medical codex, written and illuminated for the Cerruti Family, probably from Verona
As nuns expanded the knowledge & practice of apothecary medicine in Italian convents, they gained reputability in the medical community. By the early 1600’s, England established a country-wide Society of Apothecaries.
The Italian Renaissance played a significant role in the expansion of apothecaries to the western world. By the end of the Renaissance, apothecaries of many types were common throughout western Europe & England. Individuals could become trained as an Apothecary-surgeon, herbalist, druggist, or physician.
By the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, in the early 1700’s, apothecaries were the most common practitioners of medical & pharmaceutical services. The Age of Enlightenment brought substantial improvements to the institution of medicine, across the globe.
1655 By the mid-17C some Englishmen were devoted to herbs and roots. The English Hermite or Wonder of this Age
The Islamic standard of medicine, which had endured for the better half of a millennium, served as the backbone of the medical revolution to come. The Age of Enlightenment brought an intellectual revolution, along with sweeping improvements in technology & scientific understanding.
In England, John Parkinson (1567–1650) was apothecary to James I & a founding member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. He was an enthusiastic & skillful gardener, his garden in Long Acre was stocked with rarities. He maintained an active correspondence with important English & Continental botanists, herbalists & plantsmen importing new & unusual plants from overseas, in particular the Levant & Virginia. Parkinson is celebrated for his 2 monumental works, the 1st Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris in 1629: this was essentially a gardening book, a florilegium for which Charles I awarded him the title Botanicus Regius Primarius – Royal Botanist. The 2nd was his Theatrum Botanicum of 1640, the largest herbal ever produced in the English language. It lacked the quality illustrations of Gerard's works, but was a massive & informative compendium including about 3800 plants (twice the number of Gerard's 1st edition Herball), over 1750 pages and over 2,700 woodcuts.
Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654) was an English botanist, herbalist, physician, apothecary and astrologer from London's East End. His published books were A Physicall Directory (1649), which attempted to be a scientific pharmacopoeia. The English Physician (1652) and the Complete Herbal (1653), contain a rich store of pharmaceutical and herbal knowledge. His works lacked scientific credibility because of their use of astrology, though he combined diseases, plants & astrological lore into a simple integrated system.
Old Physic Garden of the Society of Apothecaries at Chelsea, 1750 (engraved by T.W. Lascelles)—the open-air laboratory for Master Apothecaries and their apprentices. Chelsea-Physic-Garden
During the 7-year Apothecary apprenticeship in England, a young man was taught to compound pharmacopoeia preparations, recognize drugs & their use & to dispense complicated prescriptions. Throughout the 18C, most medicines were derived from herbs, plants & vegetables; & in England, the Chelsea Physic Garden served as a place of instruction for the apothecary’s apprentice, providing simples & raw materials for the drugs manufactured in the laboratory of the Apothecaries’ Hall attached to the headquarters of the Company of Worshipful Apothecaries.
An apprentice attended lectures & demonstrations in the hall of Barber-Surgeons & could participate in anatomical dissections, if they wanted to. However, the Company of Worshipful Apothecaries did not require an apprentice to be examined on his expertise as a surgeon. So it was left entirely up to the apprentice to practice & become expert if he wished to use his skills as a surgeon -- reason enough why barber-surgeons frowned on apothecaries who “crossed the line” & not only dispensed medicines & attended patients for general medical complaints but performed surgery—an extremely risky venture in the pre-anesthetic & unhygienic conditions of the 1700’s.
Apothecary Masters usually took on 1 apprentice but there were instances of masters binding 7 apprentices to service. The usual place these apprentices lived out their 7 years of instruction was at the back of the apothecary shop, in the workroom or “laboratory” with the herbs & powders, medicinal plants & the apparatus needed for compounding.
1838 Image of English Apothecary with several very proper & well-dressed apprentices
By the mid-1800’s, with the increasing ease of transportation, the invention of new machinery, & industrialization itself, the Apothecary who served as both doctor & druggist, was slowly phased-out. The industrial revolution brought a massive shift, from local organic pharmacies & apothecaries to mass-production & distribution to chains of pharmacies.
