Pharmaceutique

More than 1500 years ago, religious and magic practitioners controlled the medical aspects of people’s lives. They believed that many aspects of disease were beyond observation, explanation, and control. The oldest known application of pharmacy was in ancient India and China. They based healing on the belief that disease was caused by spirits in the body. In Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, and parts of Greece the concept of purification from sin by a purgative existed. In second century Rome, Galen classified medicines by the affects that they had on the four humors of the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The systematic guide he created was, unfortunately, incorrect. Seventh century Arabs contributed a large amount of knowledge on the drugs available from that time through the Middle Ages. In 1240, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, made great advancements in pharmacy by: issuing three regulations that separate the profession of pharmacy, instituting governmental supervision over pharmacy, and producing an oath that pharmacists had to take promising to prepare drugs reliably. The 19th century brought major pharmacy development throughout the United States. Pharmacy organizations, formal education of pharmacists, official pharmacy books (pharmacopoeias), and setting standards for the identity and purity of drugs are some examples of such developments. Some pharmacy unions that were developed during this time included the American Pharmaceutical Association (1852), the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (1958), and the Federation Internationale Pharmaceutique (1910) which is a worldwide organization base in the Netherlands. Major advancement has taken place in this field in the past 100 years, and pharmacists have started applying scientific method and principles to their work.