History, Evolution and Milestone in

Pharmacy
Perspectives in Pharmacy
Melchora M. Bautista, RPh, MS Pharm
 Intended learning outcome
To manifest appreciation of the significance of
Pharmacy history in relation to current
Pharmacy practice.
Heritage of Pharmacy
“Drugs have existed as long as humans”
- Ansel
Means of treatment of diseases:
instinct
experience
spiritual incantations
Prehistoric pharmacy
Shamans or tribal healers
-Diagnosed and treated illnesses
-Compounded remedies
Notable discovery in this era is the concept
on external force to influence bodily functions
 Antiquity
Two classes of practitioners (Babylonian)
1. Asipu (magical healer)-relied more heavily on
spells and used magical stones
2. Asu (empirical healer)-drew upon a large
collection of drugs and manipulated them into
several dosage forms, such as suppositories, pills,
washes, enemas and ointments.
 Antiquity
• Hippocrates “The Father of Medicine” was a
Greek philosopher, Physician and Pharmacist.
• It was Hippocrates who finally freed medicine
from the shackles of magic, superstition, and
the supernatural.
• Rationalized medicine, systematized medical
knowledge and put the practice of medicine in a
high ethical plane
Antiquity
• Theophrastus: Father of Botany experimented
with many types of plants as medications.
• Dioscorides – Materia Medica (became the
standard encyclopedia of drugs for hundred of
years to follow)
Antiquity
• Galen (Claudius Galen)
-advocated the use of polypharmaceutical
preparations (termed as “shotgun
prescriptions” today)
-originator of cold cream and among other
galenicals
Antiquity
• Conceptual link between the environment and
humanity by connecting the four elements of
earth, air, fire and water to four governing
humors (“liquid” or “fluid”) of the body: black
bile, blood, yellow bile and phlegm.
Middle Ages
Cosmas (Physician) and Damian (Pharmacist)
Patron Saints of Pharmacy and Medicine
• Twin brothers, Priests
• Monasteries as center of healing
• Spiritual and corporal healing
• Garden of medicinal herbs
• “unmercenary physicians”
Middle Ages
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)-”Persian Galen”
• Famous book (Canon of Medicine),
immense five volume encyclopedia of
medicine including over a million words. It
comprised of medical knowledge available
from ancient and Muslim sources.
Middle Ages
• Separation of Pharmacy and Medicine
started to develop.
• Frederick II, codified the separate practice
of pharmacy for the first time in Europe
Renaissance and Early Modern Europe
•Paracelsus
•Scheele
•Serturner
•Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou
Ebers papyrus
Ebers papyrus
• A 110 page scroll, which rolls out to be 20.23 meters
in length and 30 centimeters in height, was found
between the legs of a mummy in the Assassif
district of the Theben necropolis.
• Containing over 800 prescriptions and 700 drugs
• the Papyrus was purchased in 1872 by the
Egyptologist George Ebers, for who it is named. In
1875, Ebers published a facsimile with an English-
Latin vocabulary and introduction.
Ebers papyrus
Remedies from the ancient Ebers Papyrus scrolls:
• Aloe vera was used to alleviate burns, ulcers, skin
diseases and allergies
– Basil was written up as heart medicine
– Balsam Apple (Apple of Jerusalem) was used as
a laxative and as a liver stimulant
– Bayberry was prescribed for diarrhea, ulcers and
hemorrhoids
– Caraway soothed digestion and was a breath
freshener
– Colchicum (citrullus colocynthus or meadow
saffron) soothed rheumatism and reduced swelling
Notable are:
Vehicles used were beer, wine, milk and honey
Use of two dozen or more medicinal agents in
pharmaceutical formulas, known as polypharmacy now.
In compounding, materials used were mortars and
pestles, hand mills, sieves and balances.
 Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim
“What is there that is not poison? All things
are poison and nothing is without poison.
Solely the dose determines that a thing is
not a poison.”
Provided a clinical description of syphilis,
treatment with the right amount of
Mercury
Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Independently discovered oxygen, chlorine

and manganese
Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner (1783–
1841)
First to isolate Morphine, an alkaloid from
the poppy seed juice
Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou

They discovered brucine, cinchonine,

colchicine, quinine, strychnine, and veratrine
Pharmacy in the US: The early days
18th century: Four distinct types of Pharmacies
1. Dispensing physician
2. Apothecary shop
3. General store
4. Wholesale druggist
Pharmacy in the US
19th Century
Establishment of Pharmaceutical companies
First Pharmacopeia of the United States
(1820), precursor to today’s United States
Pharmacopeia (USP)
Issuance of licenses to apothecaries, often
based on examination
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (1821)-first
to provide classes for apprentices to learn
Pharmacy
William Procter Jr.
Father of American Pharmacy
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (PCP)
graduate
Served as faculty for 20 years at PCP and 30
years on the USP Convention Committee
Editor of the American Journal of Pharmacy
for 23 years.
20th Century Pharmacy: A business or a
profession?
“…if the preparation of medicines is taken
from the apothecary and he becomes merely
the dispenser of them, his business is shorn
of half its dignity and importance, and he
relapses into a simple shopkeeper.”
- By Hepler
Reference:
Remington, J. and Gennaro, A. (2011). Remington: The
Science and Practice of Pharmacy. 21st edition. Lippincot.
Philadelphia