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APOTHECARIES.
“ Hereupon also are grounded the gross mistakes in thecure of many diseases, not only from the last medicine andsypothetical receipts, but amulets, charms, and all incantaryapplications, deriving effects from inconcurring causes, —but things devoid of all efficiency whatever.”
"We have the circumstance fresh upon our minds whichis mentioned by an historian; and to the best of our memory,the custom to which we allude, occurred in the capital ofancient Persia , where it was usual never to employ regularmedicinal skill for the recovery of the health of the diseased,but only to carry the afflicted into the market-place, and eachperson who passed was compelled to give his testimony ifhe had ever seen any of his friends or acquaintance soafflicted ; if he had, he was to declare what remedies hadafforded the patient relief.
Thus far we found necessary to speak of medicinal prac-tice generally; we now propose to confine ourselves to thespecific article which heads this research; at the same time,lamenting that it is not treated of by a medical professor.
The presenff apothecary's business is one which rose fromtwo dr three other distinct sources. "We now know thathis business consists in keeping a repository of simples andcompounds, galenical and chymical requisites; and his artteaches him to read the prescriptions of physicians, and tocompound his medicaments agreeably to their directions.
But on searching the records of ancient Roman existence,we find that apothecaries were occasionally called pig-vientarii, septasiarii, pharmacopola, and also medicamentarii,with other nominations, serving more to distinguish theprevalence of the article wherein they dealt, than to markany other distinction. However, that the pigmentarii dealtin medicines is established by that law which enacted apunishment for such as sold poison through mistake, Diipst,lib. xlviii. Those herbs which are prescribed by Vegetius forcertain diseases in cattle, were to be purchased of the septasi-arii. From Pliny it is also understood, these last named soldmedicines, where he reproaches the physicians of his age,that instead of making up the medicines themselves, whichappears to have been the ancient practice of Greece , 1 theypurchased them of the septasiarii, without knowing of whatthey were composed . 2 3 The judicious of the Roman people