Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/9



Pharmacy, or the art of selecting, extracting, preparing, and compounding medicines from vegetable, animal, and mineral substances, is an acquirement which must have been almost as ancient as man himself on the earth. In experimenting with fruits, seeds, leaves, or roots with a view to the discovery of varieties of food, our remote ancestors would occasionally find some of these, which, though not tempting to the palate, possessed this or that property the value of which would soon come to be recognised. The tradition of these virtues would be handed down from generation to generation, and would ultimately become, by various means, the heritage of the conquering and civilising races. Of the hundreds of drugs yielded by the vegetable kingdom, collected from all parts of the world, and used as remedies, in some cases for thousands of years, I do not know of a single one which can surely be traced to any historic or scientific personage. It is possible in many instances to ascertain the exact or approximate date when a particular substance was introduced to our markets, and sometimes to name the physician, explorer, merchant, or conqueror to whom we are indebted for