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History of Pharmacy: Name: Ifra Ishtiaq Bhatti

The document provides an overview of the history of pharmacy. It discusses how pharmacy has evolved over thousands of years from ancient civilizations to modern times. In ancient Mesopotamia, individuals began specializing in making medicines, though medical roles were combined with religious and spiritual roles. Over time, pharmacy became grounded in science with fields like pharmacology, pharmacognosy, and pharmaceutics emerging. Pharmacists transitioned from compounding medicines to advising on safe and effective drug use. Sources for understanding the early history of pharmacy include written texts, artifacts, and the study of pharmacy institutions and discoveries over time.

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210 views

History of Pharmacy: Name: Ifra Ishtiaq Bhatti

The document provides an overview of the history of pharmacy. It discusses how pharmacy has evolved over thousands of years from ancient civilizations to modern times. In ancient Mesopotamia, individuals began specializing in making medicines, though medical roles were combined with religious and spiritual roles. Over time, pharmacy became grounded in science with fields like pharmacology, pharmacognosy, and pharmaceutics emerging. Pharmacists transitioned from compounding medicines to advising on safe and effective drug use. Sources for understanding the early history of pharmacy include written texts, artifacts, and the study of pharmacy institutions and discoveries over time.

Uploaded by

hi
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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HISTORY OF PHARMACY

NAME : IFRA ISHTIAQ BHATTI

SECTION : B

ROLL NO: 95

PROFF : 1st Pharm D

PRESENTED TO : Mam Hina Javaid


INTRODUCTION
 Researching and writing the history of pharmacy
Pharmacy is concerned with all aspects of preparation and use of medicines, from
the discovery of their active ingredients to how they are used. The pharmacist is
society’s expert in medicine and, in recent decades, the focus of the pharmacist
role is shifted from the compounding of medicines ensuring their safe and effective
use by providing information and advice.

In some countries there have been moves to allow pharmacist to prescribe


prescription in their own right, with carefully defined limits. These extend role of
pharmacist echo the historic role of apothecary which has evolved over hundreds
of years. Indeed pharmacy can trace its origins and progress over thousands of
years, during which there have been great shifts in the definition of what
contributes a medicine, boundaries between various professional groups.

 THE nature of the history of pharmacy


The history of pharmacy encompasses the entire history of medicines and who
make them. Substances were taken from the primitive man long before the start of
recorded history. The individuals with in the communities began to specialize in
the making of medicines, although the early civilizations the role of physicians,
pharmacist and priest were combined in one person.

Since the beginning of 19th century, pharmacy has been firmly grounded in
science, and so the history of pharmacy includes the history of its underpinning
sciences. The most important of these is the pharmacology (the study of actions
and uses of drugs),pharmacognosy ( the study of drugs and natural origins), and
pharmaceutics(the conversion of active ingredients into useable pharmaceutical
products). The product themselves and, the tools use to make them, are key
features for the history of pharmacy, but it also encompasses the history of
pharmaceutical industries.

 Pharmaceuticals medicines and drugs


The products of the pharmacist and pharmaceutical industries have been described
by many names, the meaning of which has been changed frequently over time.
These names include ‘pharmaceutical’, ‘medicine’, ‘medicinal product’,
‘therapeutic drug’, and just ‘drug’. Because of the changing that have occurred in
the use and meaning of these words the preferred term of these products today is
‘medicine’ rather than ‘drugs’. Over the last 20 years the term Drug has
increasingly become understood as referring to illicit substances. It has become too
inclusive and too imprecise. However, the substitution of the word ‘medicine’ is
not always appropriate, and the word ‘drug’ continues to appear in many phrases
concerned with medicines such as ‘drug resistance’, ‘adverse drug reaction’, and
‘drug interaction’.

The word ‘pharmaceuticals’ is generally concerned to have a broader meaning than


‘medicines’. It referred not only to finished medicines but also to active ingredients
and vaccines. For most practical purposes, however, these terms are
interchangeable. Nevertheless, ‘pharmaceutical’ is the term use to describe
industry, whose product can be wide ranging , they include not only active
ingredients , finished product, vaccines, and other biological product but also
over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, veterinary medicines ,diagnostic product and
medical devices.

 Approaches to the history of pharmacy


Our knowledge to the early history of pharmacy has largely been defined by the
written texts that were left by the practitioner of the time, although artifacts,
paintings and woodcuts have also survived. The stories of these early histories tend
to the ‘great man’ of pharmacy such as Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus. This
tendency has been perpetuated by later generation, anxious to identify the ‘great
man’ of their own time. Early history of pharmacy often tends to focus on the
institutions of the pharmacy, such as the founding of the great society and
associations.

The founding of the great institution such as Royal Colleges, and the incremental
progress of medicines, with one discovery or invention following neatly on from
on another always give a distorted picture of history. The great institutions often
had little impact on day-to-day work of the ordinary practitioner and the tales od
discover often disguised a chaotic process whereby obvious clues were missed and
great discoveries were made by pure chance.
The approach to the history of pharmacy was a increasingly questioned by the
social historians of medicine, particularly from the 1960 s onward. Following the
emergence of social history in its own right with the post- war years, social
historians of medicine were anxious to place the patient in the centre of
discussion, to place medicine in wider and cultural context to demonstrate that the
true nature of progress is rather more chaotic and dynamic than linear and
incremental. Until the 1960s, the history of pharmacy followed a similar route to
that of the history of medicine, but the great strides that have been made in the
social history of medicine in recent decades have not greatly been reflected on the
history of pharmacy.

 Source in the history of pharmacy


It is now a vast range of material available to the historian of pharmacy. A search
of ‘pharmacy’ and ‘history’ in the welcome library index generate refers to over
4800 publications. Published sources are normally divided into primary sources
and secondary sources. A useful guide to pharmaceutical history has been
published by the British Society for the History of Pharmacy

Pharmacy precursors
 Pharmacy artifacts

The final source for history of pharmacy is its artifacts – those physical things
that have survived the ravages of time. Again there is great diversity in these.
Perhaps the earliest surviving examples are Egyptian medicine containers
dating from the time of Pharaoh. There are medicine pots dating from the 15 th
century, and large number of pestle and mortar survive. Many books have been
published that illustrate pharmaceutical artifacts, most notably Leslie
Matthews’ Antiques of the pharmacy and John Crellin’s Glass and British
Pharmacy 1600 to 1900. The artifacts themselves are now held at the Science
museum in London

(ref: Making medicines by Stuart Anderson)

PREHISTORIC PHARMACY
 From Stones and Bones to Weeds and Seeds
 Pharmacy in ancient BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

When speaking of the Babylonian practice of medicine, the Greek


historian Herodotus said, “They bring out all their sick into the
streets, for they have no regular doctors. People that come along offer
the sick man advice, either from what they personally have found to
cure such a complaint, or what they have known someone else to be
cured by. No one is allowed to pass by a sick person without asking
him what ails him.”
Herodotus had the mindset of a medical tourist, and was likely more
interested in exalting his own Greek culture than in taking an emic
point of view. Even modern texts, such as Barber’s paper from 2001,
claim that in the Middle East and Egypt prior to the first century BCE
“these civilizations did not establish any facilities for medical care or
treatment” . Mesopotamian doctors had a professional name: asu or
azu, were those who practiced therapeutic medicine, composed of
surgical and herbal treatments; the counterpart of the asu were the
asipu or ashipu, who practiced divinatory and religious medicine.7
The text of the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1700 BCE) differentiates
religious healers in two classes: diviners, baru, who practiced
hepatoscopy and made prognoses, and exorcists, ashipu, who
determined what offense to gods or demons had brought about the
disease.8 Both types of religious healers gave physical examinations
to look for telling symptoms and omens, and both will henceforth be
referred to as aship
(ref: Medicine and doctoring in Ancient Mesopotamia)

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