DISMEMBERMENT  OF  PHARMACY  FROM  PHYSIC.  161 
HISTORICAL    SKETCH    OF    THE    DISMEMBERMENT  OF 
PHARMACY  FROM  PHYSIC  * 
By  M.  Donovan,  M.R.I.A., 
Hon.  Member  of  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy.  . 
The  distribution  of  the  healing  art  into  the  three  several 
branches  of  Medicine,  Surgery  and  Pharmacy  has  no  foundation 
in  nature,  is  artificial,  and  a  comparatively  modern  invention. 
That  whoever  undertook  the  treatment  of  the  sick,  not  only 
devised  the  remedies,  but  prepared  them  for  administration,  is 
sufficiently  probable ;  and  that  such  a  practice  prevailed  in  the 
earliest  ages  of  the  healing  art,  in  all  countries  the  records  of 
which  have  reached  us,  is  placed  beyond  doubt  by  ancient  testi- 
mony. Such  were  the  duties  of  the  Roman  medicus,  or  of  the 
Grecian  tarpoq  :  such  are  the  duties  of  the  modern  general  prac- 
titioner ;  the  general  practitioner  is  therefore  the  most  ancient 
as  well  as,  in  a  certain  sense,  the  most  extensively  useful  repre- 
sentative of  the  medical  profession.  Until  comparatively  modern 
times  the  pure  physician,  as  he  is  now  called,  had  no  existence, 
and  it  might  be  readily  conceived,  even  were  there  no  historical 
evidence  of  the  fact,  that  the  treatment  of  every  morbid  con- 
dition of  the  human  body  was  undertaken  by  the  same  person. 
But  there  is  abundant  proof  that  such  a  practice  prevailed, 
not  only  in  the  earliest  ages  of  the  healing  art,  but  at  all  times 
down  to  a  comparatively  modern  period.  We  find  ancient 
writers  on  the  composition  of  medicines  addressing  the  reader  in 
the  second  person,  and  instructing  him,  not  only  how  to  prepare 
each  remedy,  but  to  employ  it  in  the  treatment  of  disease  ;  in- 
deed, there  are  very  few  of  them  who  do  not  enter  into  the 
medical  use  of  the  articles  described.  We  find  that  persons  who 
sold  simples  to  the  multitude  were  taken  into  the  employment 
of  physicians,  and  gradually  acquiring  knowledge  in  this  way, 
often  ventured  to  do  a  little  on  their  own  account ;  and  as  there 
was  no  tribunal  to  test  competence,  they  became  general  practi- 
tioners, like  those  who  originally  employed  them.  Pliny  informs 
us  that  the  physicians  of  his  day,  and  of  a  period  long  before  it, 
*  In  compliance  with  the  wishes  of  the  Editor,  that  I  should  give  a 
reference  to  the  authorities  from  whom  I  quote,  I  have  done  so  in  the 
following  communication. 
11 
