Although older writings exist which deal with
herbal medicine, the major initial work in the field is considered to be the
Edwin Smith Papyrus in
Egypt,
Pliny's pharmacopoeia. A number of early pharmacopoeia books were written by
Persian and Arab physicians. These included
The Canon of Medicine of
Avicenna in 1025 AD, and works by
Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) in the 12th century (and printed in 1491), and
Ibn Baytar in the 14th century. The
Shen-nung pen ts'ao ching (Divine Husbandman's Materia Medica) is the earliest known Chinese pharmacopoeia. The text describes 365 medicines derived from plants, animals, and minerals; according to legend it was written by the Chinese god
Shennong. One of the earliest surviving pharmacopoeias from medieval Europe is the
Lorsch Pharmacopoeia, which dates to around 800, and draws on classical and post-classical sources. Pharmacopeial synopsis were recorded in the
Timbuktu manuscripts of
Mali.
China The earliest extant Chinese pharmacopoeia, the
Shennong Ben Cao Jing was compiled between 200–250 AD. It contains descriptions of 365 medications. The earliest known officially sponsored pharmacopoeia was compiled in 659 AD by a team of 23 pharmaceutical scientists led by Su jing during the
Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) and was called the
Xinxiu bencao (Newly Revised Canon of Material Medical). The work consists of 20 volumes with one dedicated to the table of contents, and 25 volumes of pictures with one volume dedicated to the table of contents. A third part consisting of seven volumes contained illustrated descriptions. The text contains descriptions of 850 medicines with 114 new ones. The work was used throughout
China for the next 400 years.
City pharmacopoeias A dated work appeared in
Nuremberg in 1542; a passing student
Valerius Cordus showed a collection of medical prescriptions, which he had selected from the writings of the most eminent medical authorities, to the physicians of the town, who urged him to print it for the benefit of the
apothecaries, and obtained the sanction of the
senatus for his work. A work known as the
Antidotarium Florentinum, was published under the authority of the college of medicine of
Florence The term
Pharmacopoeia first appears as a distinct title in a work published at
Basel, Switzerland, in 1561 by A. Foes, but does not appear to have come into general use until the beginning of the 17th century. Michel De Villeneuve (
Michael Servetus) also published a pharmacopoeia. De Villeneuve, fellow student of
Vesalius and the best
galenist of Paris according to
Johann Winter von Andernach, published the anonymous "
Dispensarium or Enquiridion" in 1543, at
Lyon, France, with Jean Frellon as editor. This work contains 224 original recipes by De Villeneuve and others by Lespleigney and Chappuis. As usual when it comes to pharmacopoeias, this work was complementary to a previous
Materia Medica that De Villeneuve published that same year. This finding was communicated by the same scholar in the
International Society for the History of Medicine, with agreement of
John M. Riddle, one of the foremost experts on
Materia Medica-
Dioscorides works.
Nicolaes Tulp, mayor of
Amsterdam and respected surgeon general, gathered all of his doctor and chemist friends together and they wrote the first pharmacopoeia of Amsterdam named
Pharmacopoea Amstelredamensis in 1636. This was a combined effort to improve public health after an outbreak of the
bubonic plague, and also to limit the number of quack apothecary shops in Amsterdam.
London, Edinburgh, Dublin Until 1617, such drugs and medicines as were in common use were sold in
England by the apothecaries and grocers. In that year the apothecaries obtained a separate charter, and it was enacted that no grocer should keep an apothecary's shop. The preparation of physicians' prescriptions was thus confined to the apothecaries, upon whom pressure was brought to bear to make them dispense accurately, by the issue of a pharmacopoeia in May 1618 by the
College of Physicians, and by the power which the wardens of the apothecaries received in common with the censors of the College of Physicians of examining the shops of apothecaries within of London and destroying all the compounds which they found unfaithfully prepared. This, the first authorized
London Pharmacopoeia, was selected chiefly from the works of Mezue and Nicolaus de Salerno, but it was found to be so full of errors that the whole edition was cancelled, and a fresh edition was published in the following December. At this period the compounds employed in medicine were often heterogeneous mixtures, some of which contained from 20 to 70, or more, ingredients, while a large number of simples were used in consequence of the same substance being supposed to possess different qualities according to the source from which it was derived. Thus crabs' eyes (i.e.,
gastroliths), pearls, oyster shells, and
coral were supposed to have different properties. Among other ingredients entering into some of these formulae were the excrements of human beings, dogs, mice, geese, and other animals,
calculi, human skull, and moss growing on it, blind puppies,
earthworms, etc. Although other editions of the London Pharmacopoeia were issued in 1621, 1632, 1639, and 1677, it was not until the edition of 1721, published under the auspices of Sir
Hans Sloane, that any important alterations were made. In this issue many of the remedies previously in use were omitted, although a good number were still retained, such as dogs' excrement, earthworms, and
moss from the human skull; the botanical names of herbal remedies were for the first time added to the official ones; the simple distilled waters were ordered of a uniform strength; sweetened spirits,
cordials and
ratafias were omitted as well as several compounds no longer used in London, although still in vogue elsewhere. A great improvement was effected in the edition published in 1746, in which only those preparations were retained which had received the approval of the majority of the pharmacopoeia committee; to these was added a list of those drugs only which were supposed to be the most efficacious. An attempt was made to simplify further the older formulae by the rejection of superfluous ingredients. In the edition published in 1788 the tendency to simplify was carried out to a much greater extent, and the extremely compound medicines which had formed the principal remedies of physicians for 2,000 years were discarded, while a few powerful drugs which had been considered too dangerous to be included in the Pharmacopoeia of 1765 were restored to their previous position. In 1809 the French chemical nomenclature was adopted, and in 1815 a corrected impression of the same was issued. Subsequent editions were published in 1824, 1836, and 1851. The first
Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia was published in 1699 and the last in 1841; the first
Dublin Pharmacopoeia in 1807 and the last in 1850. == National pharmacopoeiae ==