448 
Landmarks  of  Pharmacy. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\     Oetober,  1913. 
a  turning  point " ;  "  something  that  serves  to  distinguish  a  par- 
ticular period  of  time  or  point  in  progress  of  transition."' 
The  important  landmarks  of  pharmacy  are  the  words  used  to 
designate  the  practitioner  of  this  profession,  and  much  interesting 
history  may  be  learned  from  an  etymological  study  of  the  subject 
and  a  reference  to  the  history  of  pharmacy. 
The  early  history  of  pharmacy,  like  that  of  most  other  pro- 
fessions, is  wrapped  in  obscurity,  inasmuch  as  the  practice  of 
medicine,  together  with  the  preparation  and  administration  of 
drugs,  was  so  closely  associated  with  superstitious  beliefs  and  occult 
practices  and  the  employment  of  magic  or  astrology,  that  no  sharp 
line  of  demarcation  can  be  drawn  between  the  members  of  the 
various  professions  which  are  now  associated  with  the  art  of 
healing. 
The  earliest  authentic  references  to  the  preparation  and  use  of 
drugs  are  those  of  Egyptian  origin,  particularly  in  the  Papyrus 
Ebers,  which  indicate  that  at  that  early  date  the  priest  was  like- 
wise the  physician  and  the  compounder  and  dispenser  of  medicinal 
substances.  Even  in  that  early  time  (about  1600  B.C.)  it  was  a 
criminal  offence  to  add  to  or  vary  the  ingredients  in  a  prescription, 
indicating  to  a  certain  extent  a  separation  of  prescriber  from  dis- 
penser, but  we  are  not  given  any  information  as  to  the  designations 
of  these  sub-members  of  the  class  of  priest-physicians. 
The  next  oldest  references  are  those  of  the  Bible,  which  date, 
so  far  as  the  actual  existing  manuscripts  are  concerned,  from  a 
time  long  after  the  Christian  Era  (a  fact  not  generally  known), 
although  the  Papyrus  Ebers  itself,  the  original  manuscript  of  which 
is  still  in  existence  in  the  British  Museum,  gives  evidence  of  hav- 
ing been  compiled  at  about  the  period  when  Moses  was  in  Egypt. 
The  accurate  interpretation  of  such  early  manuscripts  as  the  Papyrus 
Ebers  of  the  15th  century  b.c.  and  of  the  oldest  existing  manu- 
script of  the  Bible,  which  date  from  about  the  8th  century  a.d. 
or  more  than  2000  years  later,  is  attended  with  much  uncertainty 
on  account  of  our  unfamiliarity  with  the  exact  meanings  of  words 
in  those  early  periods. 
In  the  Bible,  for  instance,  the  root  word  which  is  translated  in 
earlier  revisions  as  "  apothecary  "  in  such  references  as  the  classic 
"  after  the  art  of  the  apothecary "  is  "  Rakach "  (assuming,  of 
course,  that  the  vowels  are  correct,  for  all  early  Hebrew  manu- 
scripts are  entirely  composed  of  consonants),  which  in  the  Revised 
