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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ALLIED SCIENCES—PHARMACY, CHEMISTRY AND BALNEOTHERAPEUTICS

During the excavations carried on at the site of Pompeii, there were discovered three houses which bore every appearance of having been occupied by apothecaries. Among the objects found in these buildings were: A bronze box equipped with the apparatus required for mixing ointments; a few surgical instruments; several glass receptables which had evidently at some earlier period contained fluid or semi-fluid pharmaceutical preparations, but which, at the time when the excavations were made, presented merely a deposit of some solid but easily friable substance at the bottom of the vessel; and quite a variety of drugs in the form of pills, tablets, powders, etc. At first, the impression prevailed that these must have been the houses of apothecaries, but subsequently the discovery, in each instance, of the house sign representing a snake with a pine cone in its mouth (the symbol of Aesculapius) satisfied the authorities that these particular buildings had belonged to physicians. Indeed, as a matter of fact, no good reasons have thus far been found for believing that apothecaries, in the modern acceptation of the term, existed in even the largest cities of Greece and Italy until a much later date.

Pharmacy in Its Infancy.—All through the Hippocratic period and during the years when Alexandria was at the height of its prosperity as the great centre of medical activity, it was customary for the physicians to prepare their own drugs. The same is true of the best physicians