The separation of the practices of medicine, pharmacy, and surgery,
which became general though never universal, was of course a gradual
process. Galen expresses the opinion that Hippocrates prepared the
medicines he prescribed with his own hands, or at least superintended
the production of them. According to Celsus, it was in Alexandria and
about the year 300 B.C. that the division of the practice of
medicine into distinct branches was first noticeable. The sections he
names were Dietetics, Surgery and Pharmaceutics.
The physicians who practised dietetics were like our consultants,
only more so. They were above all things philosophers, the recognised
successors of the Greek thinkers and theorists, and but too often
their imitators. Although they owed their designation to their general
authority on régime, they prescribed and invented medicines. The
pharmaceutical section came to be called in Latin medicamentarii,
and their history corresponds closely with that of our English
apothecaries. At first they prepared and administered the medicines
which the physicians ordered. But in Alexandria and Rome they gradually
assumed the position of general practitioners. To another class,
designated by Pliny Vulnerarii, was left the treatment of wounds, and
probably of tumours and ulcers. The necessity of a lower grade of
medical practitioners in Rome is manifest from a remark of Galen’s to
the effect that no physician, meaning a person in his own rank, would
attend to diseases of minor importance.
It is worthy of note that the Latin designation medicamentarius, which
was nearly equivalent to the Greek pharmacopolis, was similarly used
to mean a poisoner, while pharmakon in Greek and medicamentus in Latin
might mean either a medicine or a poison.
It is noted elsewhere (page 52) that the word pharmakeia when it occurs
in the New Testament is universally translated in our versions by the
term sorcery or some similar word. At the time when the Apostles wrote
this was evidently the prevalent meaning attached to the term. But
in earlier Greek literature the reputable and the disgraceful ideas
associated with the word seem to have run side by side for centuries.
Homer uses pharmakon in both senses; Plato makes pharmakeuein mean to
administer a remedy, while Herodotus adopts it to signify the practice
of sorcery. Apparently this word came from an earlier, pharmassein,
which was derived from a root implying to mix, and the gradual sense
development was that of producing an effect by means of drugs. They
might produce purging, they might produce a colour, or they might
produce love.
The multiplication of names for the various classes connected with
medicine and pharmacy in the Roman world is rather confusing. As the
language of medicine up to and including Galen was largely Greek, many
of the designations employed were those which had been drawn from that
tongue. The name Pharmacopeus, used in Greek to denote certain handlers
of drugs, had always a sinister signification. It suggested a purveyor
of noxious drugs, a compounder of philtres, a vendor of poisons.
The men who kept shops for the sale of drugs generally were called
pharmacopoloi. This term was not free from reproach, because it was a
common appellation, not only of the shopkeepers strictly so-called, but
was also applied to the periodeutes, or agyrtoi, travelling quacks or
assembly gatherers, or as they came to be named in Latin, circulatores
or circumforanei.
These itinerant drug sellers are occasionally referred to by the
classic authors. Lucian speaks of one hawking a cough mixture about
the streets; and Cicero, in his Oratia pro Cluentio, suggests that the
travelling pharmacopolists who attended the markets of country towns
were not unwilling to sell poisons as well as medicines when they were
wanted. One of these is specifically named, Lucius Clodius, and the
orator suggests that he was bribed to supply medicines to a certain
lady which were to have a fatal effect.
The designation Periodeutes meant originally, and always in strict
legal terminology, physicians who visited their patients. The term was
also used among the Christians to describe the ministers charged to
visit the sick and poor in their dioceses.
The tramp doctor in time gets tired of his vagabond life, and, it may
be, a little weary of hearing his own voice. If he has saved a little
money, therefore, the attractions of a shop in the city, where he can
exercise his healing on people who seek him, appeal strongly to him.
So in Greece and in the Roman Empire the charlatans settled in little
shops and were called iatroi epidiphrioi or sellularii medici, meaning
sedentary doctors. But all these were pharmacopoloi.
Peculiarly interesting is the suggestion made by Epicurus and intended
as a sneer, that Aristotle was one of these pharmacopoloi in his
younger days. According to Epicurus the philosopher having first
wasted his patrimony in riotous living and then served as a soldier,
afterwards sold antidotes in the markets up to the time when he joined
Plato’s classes.
Seplasia was the ordinary name in Rome for a druggist’s shop, and
those who kept them were designated Seplasiarii or Pigmentarii. These
names appear to have been used without much recognition of their
original meanings. Strictly the Seplasiarii were ointment makers,
and though the Pigmentarii were no doubt at first sellers of dyes and
colours, they evidently came to include medicines in their stocks of
pigments, and Coelius Aurelianus, in writing on stomach complaints,
alludes to aloes as a pigment. Greek designations corresponding to
those just quoted were Pantopoloi and Kadolikoi (the latter used
by Galen in referring to the trader who supplied the drugs for the
theriacum prepared in the palace of the Emperor Antoninus). Kopopoloi,
and Migmatopoloi, both of which words meant dealers in all sorts of
small wares, were like the mercers in this country when shopkeeping
first began. The shops of perfumers were myropolia or myrophecia, the
perfumers themselves were myrepsi. A general term in Latin for any sort
of shop where medicines were sold or surgical operations performed was
Medicina. This was in the days before the Empire, when there was no
usual distinction between the branches of the healing art.
Pharmacotribae, strictly drug-grinders, may have been compounders, and
it has also been conjectured that they were the assistants employed by
the Seplasiarii or Roman druggists.
Herbalists were of very ancient Greek lineage, under the names of
Botanologoi, who were collectors of simples, and who, to enhance the
price of their wares, pretended to have to gather them with many
superstitious observances; and Rhizotomoi, or root-cutters. The name
Apothek, which came to be appropriated to the warehouse where medicinal
herbs were kept, and which is to-day the German equivalent of our
pharmacy, or chemist’s shop, meant originally any warehouse, and from
it has been derived the French boutique and the Spanish bodega.
The earlier Greek and Roman physicians were in the habit of themselves
preparing the medicines they prescribed for their patients. But
naturally they did not gather their own herbs, and as many of those
used for medicine were exotics, it is obvious that they could not have
done so if they had wished. The herbalists who undertook this duty
(botanologoi in Greek) developed into the seplasiarii, pharmacopoloi,
medicamentarii, and pigmentarii already mentioned. Beckmann says they
competed with the regular physicians, having acquired a knowledge of
the healing virtues of the commodities they sold, and the methods
of compounding them. This could not help happening, but it ought to
be remembered that the physicians of all countries had themselves
developed from herbalists, that is, if we abandon the theories of
miraculous instruction which are found among the legends of Egypt,
Assyria, India, and Greece.
How similar the relations of the doctors and druggists of ancient Rome
were with those still prevailing in this country may be gathered from
a reproach levelled by Pliny against physicians contemporary with him
(Bk. xxxiv, 11) to the effect that they purchased their medicines from
the seplasiarii without knowing of what they were composed.