50 
HISTORY OF PHARMACY. 
ingly the Empirics betook themselves to experimenting d 
priori upon all the substances with which the Materia 
Medica was recently enriched. Unfortunately, they did 
not always employ a good method of observation ; instead 
of studying the isolated action of each substance, they asso- 
ciated them in complicated formulas. Since such a medi- 
cine had succeeded in a simple case, they thought that two 
substances combined ought to act simultaneously, in an af- 
fection occupying a double stage; and as in certain diseases 
numerous symptoms are observed, they imagined that a 
preparation containing all the drugs capable of acting in- 
dividually upon them would be perfectly efficacious, trust- 
ing as Dr Le Clerc wittily remarked, that the physic would 
be more serviceable than the physician. Hence the origin 
of the digression into which the empirical class were led 
away, and of that polypharmacy, the abuse of which, to be- 
gin with this epoch, grew up and extended itself from cen- 
tury to century. 
Serapio employed himself actively in the study of medi- 
cines ; he collected together all the formulas, the virtues of 
which were sanctioned by popular usage. 
iEtius, of Amidus, and Nicholas Myrepsus, have handed 
down to us a number of preparations, of which Serapio was 
the inventor. We know, likewise, that he made use in 
cholera of pills composed of hyosciamus seed, aniseed an 
opium, a formula very analogous to the means latterly em- 
ployed against this terrible scourge. In the iliac passion 
he made use of a composition into which gnidium berries, 
(the daphne mezereum) entered; also, salt, elaterium, resin, 
castoreum, and diagrede.* This is the first example of the 
employment of the last named substance. 
For tetter, and some diseases of the skin, he made use of 
a mixture of nitre, sulphur and resin. Finally, it appears 
* Preparation of Scammony, the name of which comes from dacrydion^ 
tear, because this resin being melted takes the form of a tear. 
