Materia medica is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing. The term derives from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica, 'On medical material'.
Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it links health sciences with pharmaceutical sciences and natural sciences. The professional practice is becoming more clinically oriented as most of the drugs are now manufactured by pharmaceutical industries. Based on the setting, pharmacy practice is either classified as community or institutional pharmacy. Providing direct patient care in the community of institutional pharmacies is considered clinical pharmacy.
Leonhart Fuchs, sometimes spelled Leonhard Fuchs and cited in Latin as Leonhartus Fuchsius, was a German physician and botanist. His chief notability is as the author of a large book about plants and their uses as medicines, a herbal, which was first published in 1542 in Latin. It has about 500 accurate and detailed drawings of plants, which were printed from woodcuts. The drawings are the book's most notable advance on its predecessors. Although drawings had been used in other herbal books, Fuchs' book proved and emphasized high-quality drawings as the most telling way to specify what a plant name stands for.
A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them. A herbal may also classify the plants it describes, may give recipes for herbal extracts, tinctures, or potions, and sometimes include mineral and animal medicaments in addition to those obtained from plants. Herbals were often illustrated to assist plant identification.
Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals.
Apothecary is an archaic English term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica (medicine) to physicians, surgeons and patients. The modern terms 'pharmacist' and 'chemist' have taken over this role.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is the body responsible for the leadership and support of the pharmacy profession (pharmacists) within England, Scotland, and Wales. It was created along with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) in September 2010 when the previous Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was split so that representative and regulatory functions of the pharmacy profession could be separated. Membership in the society is not a prerequisite for engaging in practice as a pharmacist within the United Kingdom. Its predecessor the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was founded on 15 April 1841.
John Uri Lloyd was an American pharmacist and leader of the eclectic medicine movement who was influential in the development of pharmacognosy, ethnobotany, economic botany, and herbalism.
The Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis is an Aztec herbal manuscript, describing the medicinal properties of various plants used by the Aztecs. It was translated into Latin by Juan Badiano, from a Nahuatl original composed in the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1552 by Martín de la Cruz that is no longer extant. The Libellus is also known as the Badianus Manuscript, after the translator; the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano, after both the original author and translator; and the Codex Barberini, after Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who had possession of the manuscript in the early 17th century.
Michael Moore was a medicinal herbalist, author of several reference works on botanical medicine, and founder of the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine (SWSBM). Before he was an herbalist Michael Moore was a musician and a composer, father and husband. He operated the SWSBM as a residency program for 28 years, first in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and later in Bisbee, Arizona. For decades, Moore influenced, impacted, taught, and reached one way or another more practicing herbalists than any other living herbalist in the United States. His books put the previously unknown materia medica of the southwest into mainstream botanical field.
John Uri Lloyd House is a registered historic building in Cincinnati, Ohio, listed in the National Register on March 7, 1973. Lloyd was an American pharmacist who was a leader in the eclectic medicine movement and influential in the development of pharmacognosy, ethnobotany, economic botany, and herbalism. In 1886, he and his two brothers, also chemists, established a pharmacology business together, named Lloyd Brothers, Pharmacists, Inc. It operated until after the senior Lloyd's death, when it was bought in 1938 by S.B. Penick.
Pharmacy in China involves the activities engaged in the preparation, standardization and dispensing of drugs, and its scope includes the cultivation of plants that are used as drugs, the synthesis of chemical compounds of medicinal value, and the analysis of medicinal agents. Pharmacists in China are responsible for the preparation of the dosage forms of drugs, such as tablets, capsules, and sterile solutions for injection. They compound physicians', dentists', and veterinarians' prescriptions for drugs. Pharmacological activities are also closely related to pharmacy in China.
Eclectic medicine was a branch of American medicine that made use of botanical remedies along with other substances and physical therapy practices, popular in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.
Curtis Gates Lloyd was an American mycologist known for both his research on the gasteroid and polypore fungi, as well as his controversial views on naming conventions in taxonomy. He had a herbarium with about 60,000 fungal specimens, and described over a thousand new species of fungi. Along with his two brothers John Uri Lloyd and Nelson Ashley Lloyd, he founded the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati.
The Apothecary Shop is a building at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, that exhibits objects salvaged from New England pharmacies that were closing in the early decades of the 20th century. The main room contains dried herbs, spices, drugs, and labeled glass apothecary bottles from the nineteenth century, as well as early patent medicines, medical equipment, cosmetics, and a collection of barbers' razors. The compounding room, with its brick hearth, copper distilleries, and percolators, replicates an illustration found in Edward Parrish's 1871 Treatise on Pharmacy.
The history of pharmacy as a modern and independent science dates back to the first third of the 19th century. Before then, pharmacy evolved from antiquity as part of medicine. The history of pharmacy coincides well with the history of medicine, but it's important that there is a distinction between the two topics. Pharmaceuticals is one of the most-researched fields in the academic industry, but the history surrounding that particular topic is sparse compared to the impact its made world-wide. Before the advent of pharmacists, there existed apothecaries that worked alongside priests and physicians in regard to patient care.
The history of herbalism is closely tied with the history of medicine from prehistoric times up until the development of the germ theory of disease in the 19th century. Modern medicine from the 19th century to today has been based on evidence gathered using the scientific method. Evidence-based use of pharmaceutical drugs, often derived from medicinal plants, has largely replaced herbal treatments in modern health care. However, many people continue to employ various forms of traditional or alternative medicine. These systems often have a significant herbal component. The history of herbalism also overlaps with food history, as many of the herbs and spices historically used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds, and use of spices with antimicrobial activity in cooking is part of an ancient response to the threat of food-borne pathogens.
Henry Hurd Rusby (1855–1940) was an American botanist, pharmacist and explorer. He discovered several new species of plants and played a significant role in founding the New York Botanical Garden and developing research and exploration programs at the institution. He helped to establish the field of economic botany, and left a collection of research and published works in botany and pharmacology.
Moodeen Sheriff, the Anglicized form of Mohideen Sheriff was an Indian surgeon and practitioner of herbal medicine who worked in Madras and was the posthumous author of the Materia Medica of Madras. He was known for his expertise and knowledge of native herbal medicine and contributed to the works on economic botany by Sir George Watt. He worked for many years at the Triplicane Dispensary and was conferred the title of Khan Bahadur in 1870.
John Skelton was born in Holbeton, South Hams, Devon. He recounted how he and his grandfather collected herbs locally for use by his grandmother who he described as the skilful doctress and midwife of the village.
