52 
HISTORY OF PHARMACY. 
the poison. He was the first to have the idea of a classifi- 
cation of medicines arranged in the order of their pro- 
perties. 
Cratevas, a celebrated botanist, wrote a work upon plants, 
having for its title, Rhizotomoumena. He added to his 
description of vegetables, drawings representing them. 
The manuscript of this work still exists in the library of 
St. Marc, at Venice. An interesting circumstance to 
prove for the history of Pharmacy, is that during two or 
three centuries, whilst sciences flourished in Egypt and 
Asia Minor, almost all the sovereigns gave their attention to 
medical studies, especially pharmaceutic researches, and 
that their discoveries throw some light upon the doctrine of 
poisons and counterpoisons. 
We have spoken of the encouragement afforded to natu- 
ral sciences by the Ptolemies, and the individual labors of 
several princes of this family. Antiochus Philometor, — 
Nicomedes, King of Bithnyia, — the Queens Cleopatra and 
Artemisia,* the Kings Attalus and Mithridates, not only 
cultivated the medical sciences, but invented and com- 
pounded medicines themselves, to which they did not dis- 
dain to give their names. 
To Agrippa, King of Judea, is attributed the invention of 
the ointment bearing his name.t 
* It is pretended that Artemisia, Queen of Caria, and wife of Mau- 
solus, gave her name to the mugwort, (Artemisia Vulgaris, L.) It is 
at least equally probable that the name of the genus comes from the 
Greek Aptspif which was one of the surnames of Diana, patron of 
virgins, by reason of the known efficacy of this plant in certain affec- 
tions of the uterus. 
f The name of this preparation could as likely be attributed to the 
word ayptrtrfox), which among the Greeks meant juice of the plant. 
Suidas asserts that at Sparata the same word served to designate the 
wild olive. Olive oil, as well as the juice of a number of plants, en- 
tered, in fact, into the composition of the ointment of Agrippa, 
