DISMEMBERMENT  OF  PHARMACY  FROM  PHYSIC. 
165 
The  same  may  be  said  of  Avicenna,  who  wrote  in  the  tenth 
century.  Speaking  of  the  Tyriaca  Esdrse,  he  says,  "  et  de  medi- 
cis  sunt  quidam  qui  ponunt  in  ea  de  ammoniaco  ;  et,  de  iis,  sunt 
quibus  illud  non  videtur  quoniam  ammoniacum  nocet  stoniacho." 
In  order  to  render  this  matter  more  intelligible,  it  will  be 
proper  to  give  an  account  of  the  different  classes  of  persons  who, 
in  addition  to  those  already  mentioned,  had  any  connection  with 
the  collection  or  sale  of  medicines  ;  and  to  endeavor  to  ascertain 
what  were  the  real  functions  of  those  persons,  and  what  was  the 
extent  of  their  connection  with  the  healing  art. 
It  will  no  doubt  occur  to  many  that  the  word  apothecary  is 
frequently  found  in  the  English  translation  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  that  his  art  is  there  referred  to,  thus  leading  to  the 
great  error  of  supposing  that  in  these  passages  we  have  evidence 
of  the  separate  practice  of  pharmacy  at  the  period  alluded  to. 
In  Exodus  we  find  the  following  :  "  And  thou  shalt  make  it  an 
oil  of  holy  ointment,  an  ointment  compounded  after  the  art  of  the 
apothecary;"  and  "thou  shalt  make  it  a  perfume,  a  confection 
after  the  art  of  the  apothecary,  tempered  together,  pure  and 
holy;"  and  in  1st  Samuel  it  is  said — "And  he  will  take  your 
daughters  to  be  confectionaries,  and  to  be  cooks,  and  to  be  ba- 
kers." The  word  "confectioner"  here  used  is,  in  the  original, 
the  same  as  in  the  other  passages  translated  by  the  word  "  apothe- 
cary." Now,  one  of  the  earliest  forms  of  medicine  was  called  a 
confection;  there  are  compounds  of  the  present  day  which  have 
the  same  name  in  the  pharmacopoeias,  and  hence  medicinal  con- 
fections are  nearly  two  thousand  years  old.  Those  who  made 
and  sold  such  compounds  were,  in  later  times,  called  "  confec- 
tionarii."  By  the  edict  of  Frederic  I.,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  the  confectionarii  were  legally  established  in 
the  southern  parts  of  Italy,  under  an  oath  that  they  would  always 
have  in  readiness  fresh  and  adequate  medicines,  the  price  of 
which  was  regulated  by  the  edict ;  and  that  they  would  prepare 
medicines  exactly  according  to  the  prescriptions  of  physicians. 
Yet,  Actuarius,  a  celebrated  physician,  wrho  practised  at  Con- 
stantinople in  the  thirteenth  century,  in  his  work  de  medicam. 
comp.,  gave  a  list  of  medicines  which  might  be  substituted  for 
others  deemed  of  the  same  power  (Mangeti  Bibl.),  and  other 
