DISMEMBERMENT  OP  PHARMACY  FROM  PHYSIC.  169 
the  operator  was  directed  to  dance  about  in  a  circle,  and  while 
thus  gamboling,  to  utter  a  variety  of  lascivious  expressions. 
Above  all  things,  they  were  to  guard  against  the  approach  of  an 
eagle,  for  if  this  ill-omened  bird  flew  very  near  one  of  these 
herbarists,  so  envied  by  the  gods  for  their  power  over  human 
life,  the  world  was  sure  to  be  deprived  of  the  valuable  services 
of  this  personage  in  the  succeeding  year.  Theophrastus  was  too 
sagacious  a  person  to  be  deceived  by  these  imposters  into  a  be- 
lief of  their  crafty  fictions  ;  he  merely  relates  them  as  fabrica- 
tions. Not  so  Herodotus,  who,  having  been  a  much  more  credu- 
lous character,  often  allowed  himself  to  be  made  the  vehicle  to 
posterity  of  many  an  absurdity.  Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  certain 
that  the  rhizotomists  and  pharmacopolists  did  all  in  their  power 
to  monopolize  the  trade,  and  extort  a  high  price  for  their  services 
by  their  impudent  falsehoods. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  when  the  list  of  materia  medica  be- 
came numerous,  and  when  many  articles  were  brought  from 
foreign  countries  at  great  trouble  and  expense,  the  physicians 
should  employ  other  persons  to  supply  them  ;  it  is,  indeed,  more 
a  matter  of  surprise  that  they  were  ever  able  to  supply  them- 
selves. Previously  to  the  days  of  Herophilus,  the  pupils  of 
physicians  used  to  go  into  forests  and  deserts  to  collect  simples 
at  different  seasons.  We  learn  from  Horace  that  there  was  a 
whole  street  in  Rome  occupied  by  persons  who  sold  this  kind  of 
merchandise. 
In  the  fourth  century  of  Christianity,  we  find  traces  of  the 
partial  separation  of  pharmacy  from  medicine  ;  and  mention  is 
occasionally  made  of  physicians  who  prescribed  for  the  sick,  and 
caused  their  prescriptions  to  be  conpounded  by  the  pigmentarius, 
as  in  the  well-known  passage  of  Olympiodorus.  This  innovation 
made  a  very  slow  progress,  and  it  would  be  tedious  and  useless 
to  follow  up  its  history,  so  gradual  was  the  change.  The  learned 
Conringius,  writing  on  this  subject,  and  on  the  utility  of 
public  pharmaceutical  establishments,  says — "  plurimis  quidem 
seculiscaruit  iis  (officinis  publicis)  ars  medica,  ipsis  medenttibus 
domi  pharmaca  sua  conficientibus.  Idem  mos  hodieque  obtinet 
per  omnum  Asiam.  In  Africa  primum  videntur  medici  hane 
curam  a  sese  in  alios  rejicisse,  ante  hos  quingentos  amplius 
