Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
June,  1877.  / 
Varieties. 
317 
Cholesterin  in  Urine. — A.  Poehl  has  found  -25  per  cent,  of  choles- 
terin  in  the  urine  of  an  epileptic  patient  who  had  taken  large  quantities 
of  bromide  of  potassium.  It  was  readily  extracted  from  the  urine  by 
agitating  it  with  ether,  and  contained  then  a  biliary  acid,  probably 
glycocholic. — Phar.  Zeitscbr.  f.  RussL,  1876,  p.  737-740. 
VARIETIES. 
Pharmaceutical  Schools.— The  healing  art  has,  for  ages,  embraced  both  the 
application  of  therapeutical  knowledge  and  the  supply  and  preparation  of  remedial 
agents  j  and,  until  the  separation  of  these  branches  as  the  arts  of  medicine  and  of 
pharmacy,  at  a  comparatively  recent  time,  the  history  of  medicine,  and  of  medical 
schools  and  literature  embodied  that  of  pharmacy  5  while,  on  the  other  hand,  at  an 
earlier  period,  both  medicine  and  pharmacy  were  merged,  to  a  large  extent,  in  the 
pursuits  and  history  of  alchemy.   Aside  from  the  earliest  traditions  of  the  first  crude 
stages  of  medical  and  pharmaceutical  science  in  Egypt,  at  so  remote  an  age  as  the 
sixteenth  century  B.  C,  as  recorded  in  the  "  Papyrus  Ebers,"  the  art  of  pharmacy, 
as  a  special  branch  of  that  of  medicine,  seems  to  have  been  first  practiced  among 
the  Arabs  j  and  establishments,  recognized  for  the  supply  of  remedial  agents  are 
said  to  have  been  first  instituted  in  Bagdad,  in  the  year  754  A.  D.    The  first  syste- 
matic attempt  at  a  methodical  collection  and  classification  of  recognized  formula  is 
said  to  have  been  compiled  by  the  Arab  physician  and  philosopher  Sabor  ebn  Sahel,. 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  century.    In  conjunction  with  medicine,  pharmacy 
was  first  taught,  as  a  branch  of  university  instruction,  at  the  celebrated  school  at 
Salerno.    During  the  following  centuries,  the  establishing  of  pharmacies  and  mea- 
sures for  a  legal  regulation  of  the  art  of  pharmacy  extended  into  Western  Europe,, 
and  the  newly  established  universities  became  centers  of  research  and  learning.  Yet 
the  absorbing  problems  of  the  transmutation  of  base  metals  into  gold,  and  of  the 
existence  of  a  universal  remedy,  potent  to  avert  disease,  to  heal  sickness,  to  maintain 
or  restore  youth,  and  to  prolong  life,  for  centuries  engaged  the  aims  and  inspired  the 
efforts  of  the  wisest  and  most  learned  men,  in  a  search  throughout  nature  for  the 
"  philosopher's  stone  "  and  the  "  elixir  of  life."    The  long  pursuit  of  these  phan- 
toms, and  the  visionary  but  most  productive  speculations  of  alchemy,  resulted  in 
the  accumulation  of  a  vast  amount  of  chemical  and  physical  knowledge,  and  in  the 
most  important  discoveries  in  the  domain  of  chemical  operations,  processes  and 
products.    These  added  largely  to  the  compass  of  the  materia  medica,  and  contrib- 
uted much  to  prepare  that  revolution  in  the  intellectual  world,  no  less  than  in  the 
material  resources  of  men,  which,  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  culminated  in  the 
overthrow  of  old  ideas  and  systems,  and  laid  a  foundation  for  the  modern  theories 
of  chemical  philosophy,  for  the  subsequent  wonderful  strides  in  their  practical  appli- 
cations to  all  the  affairs  of  industrial  and  social  life,  and  for  their  productive  influ- 
ence upon  the  advancement  of  physiological,  pharmaceutical  and  analytical  chem- 
istry. 
During  the  struggles  of  this  remarkable  revolution,  which,  among  its  other  results, 
