EWU Evolution of Pharmacy

Evolution of Pharmacy
Professor A B M Faroque
abmfaroque@yahoo.com
Evolution of Pharmacy
Human civilization and pharmacy are
inseparable, because pharmacy fulfils one of
our most basic needs.
As man made his way through remote times

or places, he shielded himself against
disease as best as he could, reaching out,
often blindly, toward the resources of nature
but in the process gradually elaborating
pharmaceutical theories, techniques, and
implements.
Evolution of Pharmacy ……….
The person supplying this essential

service may not be recognizable always
as a pharmacist in our present times
sense of the term; conversely, the
pharmacist as such has been
designated in a variety of ways
throughout the ages.
Ancient men treating a wound using instinct.
How men fend off disease depends

largely on how they define its cause. In
the dawn of history, man saw the
patient as a victim of evil forces or of a
god’s anger, thus disease as
punishment for sin.
Diseases thus came in mysterious ways

that called for supernatural as well as
natural countermeasures. The healing
practitioner, be he a shaman or priest,
best knew how to command the spirit
and what substances from the natural
world convey or reinforce the balancing
powers.
Thus through experiences over thousands
of years, man came to know some herbs
that are more powerful than others to heal
bad spirits or diseases.
In today’s world too, there are many
people who due to poverty or belief, seek
healing not from medication but from
religion. Indeed, most of us rely partly on
our divine faith along with medication. This
is wholly so when present medical science
fails.
The oldest pharmaceutical records as

yet are the small clay tablets from
Babylonian civilizations of the 2nd
millennium BC and the long scrolls
of Ebers Papyrus of about 1500 BC
from Egyptian civilizations.
Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia is often called ‘the cradle
of civilization’. It provides the earliest known record of
practice of healing. Practitioners priest, pharmacist and
physician, all in one. Medical texts on clay tablets record
first the symptoms of illness, the prescription and directions
for compounding, then an invocation to the gods.
Though Egyptian
medicine dates back
from about 2900 BC,
best known and most
important
pharmaceutical record
is the ‘Ebers Papyrus’
(1500 BC), a collection
of 800 prescriptions,
Sample of Ebers Papyrus mentioning 700 drugs.
Art of compounding
dictated to a group of
gatherers and
preparers of drugs by
a head pharmacist in
the drug room or
‘House of Life’ of
ancient Egypt.
These documents reveal that these river-
valley people knew, though very crudely,
many of the basic forms of dosage forms
used even today (e.g. gargle, suppository,
inhalation, poultice, and ointment) and
knew hundreds of different substances
used as drugs (e.g. asafetida, dates,
garlic, castor beans etc.). The potentiation
of drugs with magic or spirits were
followed before their use, although the
emphasis varied with time and civilization/
culture.
Though religious leaders once termed disease as the outcome of
God’s anger, gradually they realized that it is medicine that is
needed to cure diseases and even to ‘drive off bad spirits’. Thus
they started cultivating medicinal plants in their monasteries. These
they prepared according to the art of the apothecary for the benefit
of the sick and injured.
An apothecary is examining logs of sandalwood brought
for sale by a traveling merchant, while children indulge
their taste for sweets with stalks of sugar cane.
The first Drug Shops were possibly established in
Baghdad late in the 8th century. They used the Greco-
Roman wisdom of medicine and developed it.
Under Arabian influence, public pharmacies began to appear in
European countries. In 1240 AD in Sicily and southern Italy,
Pharmacy was separated from Medicine by a royal decree by
Frederick II, who was the Emperor of Germany as well as King
of Sicily. At his palace in Palermo, he presented Pharmacists
the edict completely separating their responsibilities from those
of Medicine and regulations for their professional practice.
Thank You

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Evolution of Pharmacy

As man made his way through remote times

The person supplying this essential

How men fend off disease depends

Diseases thus came in mysterious ways

The oldest pharmaceutical records as

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