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Pharmacy earlier and today - History of pharmacy
contents
- Arabic medicine
- Doctor and pharmacist
- Opium and saffron
- A privilege of the rich
- The filthy pharmacy
- monastic gardens
- The Apotheca medicamentorum
- God's grace
- Unicorn medicine
- Friedrich II - the empirical science
- Traveling quack
- The academic pharmacist
- Sacred and mythical creatures
- The workplace of the pharmacist
- A dangerous occupation
- Businessman and pharmacist
- Medical Advisor
- New self-confidence
- Sugar and porcelain
- The pharmacist as a naturalist
- private scholar
- Natural history cabinets
- botanist
- mineral collectors
- zoologists
- Moles and ammonites
- Aspirin and thalidomide
- The pharmacist becomes the examiner
- Pharmacies today
- Medicines and nail clippers
Arabic medicine
Medieval Middle Ages medicine was more advanced than that of the Christian West, and specialists made medicines in the ninth century. Their shops were called "dakakin as-sayadila", and here they sold not only remedies but also perfumes, herbs and spices. At the same time, there were medicines to be purchased in the hospitals, and these were effective medicines.
In Arabia, specialists made remedies as early as the ninth century and sold them in addition to herbs and spices in their shops. (Image: jbphotographylt / fotolia.com) Doctor and pharmacist
In Arabia, medicine was already separated from the doctor's profession in the Middle Ages. The local pharmacies (which were not called that) always had a supply of medicines and their raw materials in the warehouse and processed them further. Pharmacy was well developed, as was medicine, and a division of labor became necessary.
Opium and saffron
At the same time, doctors in Europe usually produced their own medicines or monitored their production. But the profession of pharmacist also separated here from the doctor, partly because of the exclusive goods: Many components of medicine were expensive, because they came from distant lands such as opium, saffron, myrrh or frankincense.
The merchants trading these treasures went on to hire their own specialists to make medicines out of them. These specialists wafted around a magical aura. For one thing, magic and science were not separated in the Middle Ages of Europe, and producing drugs turned into alchemy.
A privilege of the rich
On the other hand, the products had an effect on the human body, something that the people of those days could hardly explain with "right things".
Only wealthy physicians could afford a good reputation, and these much sought-after physicians did not have time to buy the often exotic ingredients for their medicines themselves. That's why other men took care of the medicinal plants stored in the department stores full-time.
The filthy pharmacy
Apart from such equally valuable and effective substances, the "Heylsame Dreck-Apotheke" was also widespread. So geese manure and Kuhfladen were considered medicine, the Stadtphysikus of Eisenach recommended medicine from "Badesünderfett" (the executioner of executed) available, nasal mucus, semen, earwax and menstrual blood, also powdered mouse teeth and roundworms.
Some of these substances are much less ridiculous than remedies as it seems. Thus, the mold on goose excrement, sheep droppings and cow dung antibiotic.
Cow dung was considered a medicine in the Middle Ages - not without reason, because the mold on it has an antibiotic effect. (Image: rbkelle / fotolia.com) monastic gardens
A special role was played by the monasteries. On the one hand, monks translated the writings of the Greeks and Romans and came across recipes for medicines; on the other, the monasteries themselves planted herb gardens.
The Apotheca medicamentorum
The monastery pharmacy was called armarium pigmentorum, operatorium or statio specalium and was mostly located near the herb garden, the herbularius.
The monastery pharmacies were the model for the municipal council pharmacies and the late medieval university and royal pharmacies. Pharmacy called in the Middle Ages goods stores of any kind, the special magazines for medicines were called apotheca medicamentorum.
God's grace
The seat of the pharmacies in the monastery had its origin in the Christian world view. As a result, only God's grace could heal the sick. Consequently, heal- ing was the task of applied theology and thus of the religious order. Only monasteries were allowed to train doctors. This changed only in the high Middle Ages. Monks and nuns tied ointments with wax, honey and oil and used, among other things, arsenic, mercury and sulfur.
Unicorn medicine
Medieval medicine was saturated with magic. Unicorn powder was supposed to fight all poisons. Drinking unicorn blood should give eternal life, and his tears should dissolve stomach and kidney stones.
Although the Danish physician Ole Worm 1638 discussed that the "Ainkhürn" was actually the tusk of the male narwhal, which the Norwegians from the Arctic Sea referred. But the desperate paid twenty times more in gold for the powder in the eighteenth century - just as today some end-stage cancer patients attribute their fortune to charlatans of all stripes.
Magic played a central role in Medieval medicine. Powder from the horn of the fabulous unicorn should e.g. help against poisoning. (Image: marbenzu / fotolia.com) Friedrich II - the empirical science
The German Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) placed the sale of medicinal products on a systematic basis. Frederick was in open conflict with the pope because he despised ecclesiastical dogma. Against the will of the pope he forced a crusade into the "Holy Land".
But instead of slaughtering Muslims, he fraternized with them, learned the language of the Arabs and above all the empirical method practiced by the Arab scholars. Frederick II introduced scientific thought to Medieval Europe, learning by value-free observation of nature and experiment, while the Church regarded natural phenomena as metaphors and diseases as the punishments of God.
In 1241 Friedrich regulated the medical system: Every pharmacy now had to be approved by the sovereign. Doctors were not allowed to work with pharmacists, but to control them and to report charlatans.
Frederick's edict strengthened the privileged apotecarii. These established pharmacists we know from Cologne in 1263, from Trier 1241, from Würzburg in 1254, from Constance in 1264, from Hamburg in 1265, from Münster in 1267, from Magdeburg in 1270 and from Innsbruck in 1326.
Traveling quack
The ambulant pharmacists weakened the tighter control, however. They moved from market to market with stalls (Schragen), building up their stalls at bridges or city halls. Among them were the notorious quackers who used to pseudo-medicine people, for example, toothache with opium products "cured" and were long gone when the numbing effect subsided.
However, to condemn these traveling pharmacists flat rate, is not correct. There were just as reputable pharmacists among them (in terms of time of course) as among the sedentary drug manufacturers. Pharmacists were turning from traveling traders to wealthy citizens who manufactured medicines in the officinale.
The academic pharmacist
Pharmaceuticals developed into an independent subject at the universities. In 1530, the Universities of Padua and Bologna set up chairs for pharmacology, and from 1536 pharmacist apprentices had to attend lectures at the medical college in Paris.
Sacred and mythical creatures
Pharmacists in the cities sold their goods out the window onto the street. The pharmacies were named after the situation in the city, the district (Krämerapotheke), the associated monastery (Allerheiligen ...), but also for real animals (lions, eagles, etc.) or mythical creatures (unicorn, griffin, dragon). Also popular were Christian figures (John, Mary). Sometimes the name also gave an indication of the exotic goods (Turks, Moors).
Today, 429 pharmacies in Germany are named after the mother of Jesus, 62 according to St. Hubert, 56 after St. Anthony and 78 after St. John the Baptist. In the Ruhr area, many of the shops bear the name of St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners.
The workplace of the pharmacist
The "lab" of the pharmacist was usually in his house. The tools included various scales, various mortars and pestles, friction bowls, presses for plant parts, countless vessels of various sizes of copper, tin, brass, glass, clay, plus a lot of bowls, basins, bowls and kettles to heat the fabrics to concentrate or to cook. An oven or a fireplace was essential.
The most important work tools of a pharmacist included mortars, pestles and various vessels. (Image: Sebastian Duda / fotolia.com) Then the pharmacist needed all the instruments to distil: spoons, cuttler, sieves, spatula, knife and scissors.
A dangerous occupation
The work was anything but harmless, which was due to the substances used: In the manufacture of Laudanum the pharmacist came in permanent contact with opium, a powder of Kantharidenkäfern attacked the respiratory and urinary tract, aron roots burned the skin.
Pharmacists suffered from dizzy spells when making an extract of belladonna or headaches when working with lime blossom, yew needles causing nausea and vomiting. Even worse were the toxic fumes of mercury, arsenic, and antimony, which presumably caused the pharmacists to die prematurely.
Businessman and pharmacist
The pharmacist trained as a profession in the specialization of the groceries of the Middle Ages. In addition to medicines, pharmacies sold alcoholic beverages, spices, sweets as well as ink and paper.
They traded in pepper, ginger, nutmeg, saffron and cloves, cinnamon and brazilwood, gum arabic, wax, plaster, soap, almonds, figs or grapes.
They completed a long training already in the late Middle Ages. The drug trade required specialized knowledge. Distributing medicines continued to be a very responsible activity in the 14th century, and the pharmacists were responsible for the quality of the medicines, which doctors could call into question at any time.
Medical Advisor
The pharmacists of the Middle Ages certainly also advised customers on general health issues. However, there are hardly any sources available.
In the early modern period, however, the "service to the neighbor" was expressly considered a professional duty of the pharmacist. The physician Raymund Minderer called on the pharmacist in 1613 to "weigh the necessary for the patient with the dangerous".
The Cologne Pharmacopoea in 1627 described the pharmacist as the physician's right hand and wrote that he should "look after the meaning of the medical treatment and the prescribed remedies".
New self-confidence
Pharmacists increasingly understood their work as the pharmaceutical basis of applied medicine. For example, Johann Bartholomäus Trommsdorf (1770-1837) wrote a "Chemical Receptive Art or Paperback for Practical Aetze", which was to give physicians a guideline "in which [!] They easily recover Raths, where they overlook the materials with one glance could, which decompose, etc., in short, which saved them from any chemical error. "
At the end of the 18th century, pharmacy broke into the medical discipline of pharmacology and pharmacognosy. The pharmacists focused primarily on the chemical substance, the doctors studied less and less about this scientific basis.
Sugar and porcelain
Chemistry developed in the early modern period, and German pharmacies became laboratories researching the effects of medicines. In the Enlightenment, especially Berlin, Thuringia and Saxony promoted pharmaceutical science.
In the course of the development of chemistry, the pharmacies became laboratories in which the active ingredients of medicines were investigated. (Image: samiramay / fotolia.com) With new methods it became possible to extract active substances. Andreas Siegmund Marggraf (1709-1782) was a pioneer who isolated the sugar from the sugar beet and thus made possible the mass production of sugar, while cane sugar had previously been a luxury product, and the common people had resorted to honey.
The pharmacist Johann Friedrich Böttger discovered the recipe to make porcelain in the early 8th century. He acted on behalf of August the Strong and spent years in custody so he would not reveal the secret. Later he headed the porcelain manufactory in Meissen.
The pharmacist Friedrich Ferdinand Runge (1795-1867) developed the aniline dyes, isolated caffeine, atropine and quinoline and thus released the raw materials for many synthetic drugs.
Pharmacies not only served as a livelihood for scientists, but sometimes also for artists. Thus, Friedrich the Wise of Saxony gave Lukas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) the court pharmacy to Wittenberg, so that the painter had a regular income.
Pharmacists have been taught three to four years since the Middle Ages, and their profession was considered a craft. In Prussia, from 1825, they also had to go through two semesters of study.
The pharmacist as a naturalist
Until well into modern times, chemistry, zoology and botany were not differentiated as separate subjects, and the Materia Medica from the realms of plants, animals and minerals belonged to the knowledge of the pharmacists.
Conversely, many naturalists in the profession of bread were pharmacists. Pharmaceuticals have always been closely related to alchemy, and pharmacies have up-to-date laboratories where owners can conduct other chemical experiments.
Manuals on chemistry, botany, zoology and early modern physics often came from pharmacists. Around 1800, a "double occupation" was established. Pharmacists worked part-time as a scientist, so the Stralsunder Carl Wilhelm Schiele.
In the 19th century, pharmacists often worked part-time as scientists and were considered scholars. (Image: photo 5000 / fotolia.com) private scholar
However, very few pharmacists suggested a regular career in the university. In the nineteenth century it was almost impossible to habilitate on a part-time basis or even to do a doctorate, and the scientific pharmacists worked above all as private scholars.
They enjoyed a good reputation, pharmacists in Germany was a synonym for scholars. Their practical work predestined them for museum activities, because collecting, organizing and evaluating belonged to the pharmacology.
Natural history cabinets
Naturalienkabinette were the precursors of the natural history museums, and the pharmacist Basilius Besler (1561-1629) put on such a cabinet with objects from the three realms.
The Lincksche Naturalienkabinett became famous that the Danziger pharmacist Heinrich Linck docked in his adopted home of Leipzig, where his pharmacy is still in operation on the Grimmaischen Strasse.
His son Johann Heinrich Linck (1674-1734) took over 1710 pharmacy and collection. This contained, according to Linck's own information, 800 glasses "with all sorts of animals conserved in spiritu balsamico". Among other things, Linck preserved preserved monkeys, bats and crocodiles, fossils and minerals, corals and plants.
Hieronymus II Bernouli (1745-1829), a pharmacist from Basel, managed a collection of minerals, fossilized animals and plants, insects and molluscs, and this was after his death in the Natural History Museum Basel.
The Jena pharmacist Oscar Brehm mainly collected insects and minerals, in 1849 he drowned in the Nile; Franz Hübner from Halle studied Zoology and Pharmacy and traveled to the South Seas to collect natural products. He died of sun-stroke on the Duke-of-York Islands.
The pharmacist Josef Maria Schädel finally collected natural and ethnographic items in China and Japan and donated them to the Museum of Natural History Hamburg, the Bamberg Natural History Collection and the Munich Ethnological Museum.
botanist
Until modern times, drugs consisted mainly of plants. A pharmacist was thus necessarily a botanist. The gathering of plants and the cultivation of herbaria belonged to the professional duties.
For a long time, herbs consisted mainly of plants, which is why pharmacists were well versed in botany. (Image: Marco2811 / fotolia.com) The pharmacist Friedrich Ehrhardt (1742-1795) established a herbarium, which is today in the Botanical Institute Göttingen. Ernst Hampe (1795-880) studied at the Hirsch Pharmacy in Halle and ran the pharmacy in Blankenburg. He laid out an abundant collection of mosses, which are now stored in the British Museum.
The pharmacist Carl Haussknecht (1838-1903) traveled to Kurdistan, Persia and the sources of the Euphrates, received in 1869 the title of professor and founded in 1882 the botanical association of Thuringia. His herbarium consisted of two library and work rooms and a hall. His collection is now in Jena.
mineral collectors
Other pharmacists pushed the mineralogy forward. The Clausthaler Ratsapotheker Johann Christoph Ilsemann (1729-1822), for example, also taught chemistry and mineralogy and maintained an extensive mineral collection in the Harz, which impressed Goethe.
zoologists
Animals also play a role in pharmacy - particularly important are animal toxins, such as the poisons of snakes, frogs or scorpions. Whether the pharmacy was there first and then "the chicken" can hardly be determined, at any rate, pharmacists also researched to animals that offered no nutrients for drugs.
Friedrich Wilhelm Justus Baedeker (1788-1865), owner of the pharmacy in Wittern since 1811, collected bird eggs and contributed 34 color plates to Brehm's "Handbook of the Natural History of All Birds in Germany".
The Dresden pharmacist Franz Brahts (1802-1872) created a large collection of avian specimens and was a member of the nature research company in Görlitz.
The pharmacist Adolf Schwab from Trübau collected preparations from 1313 species of birds and 374 eggs. Theodor Bühler-Lindenmeyer, pharmacist in Basel created an ornithological collection, which today belongs to the possession of the Basel natural history musuem.
Pharmacists such as Adolf Schwab also studied animals that did not provide drugs and collected e.g. Bird eggs. (Image: JFsPic / fotolia.com) Johann Gottfried Schmeisser was born in St. Andreasberg in 1767 and studied the apothecary trade with Johann Ludwig Gösche in Bockenem. He then worked in Braunschweig and Hamburg. British naturalist Joseph Banks introduced him to botanist James Edward Smith and physician John Hunter. These introduced him to the Royal Society as a fellow.
Schmeisser stayed in England for seven years. In 1794 he became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and later joined the Sociéte Philomathique in Paris. In 1805 he bought a pharmacy in Altona, but moved to Copenhagen and returned to Hamburg in 1823, practicing there as a doctor and lectured at the university.
Moles and ammonites
Johannes Kober was born in 1840 in Mötzingen. Originally he wanted to be a theologian, but then began in Mainhardt apprenticeship as a pharmacist, studied pharmacy in Tübingen from 1866 and practiced in the Golden Pharmacy in Basel. He studied zoology and anatomy and became a partner in the Golden Pharmacy.
He became known with a book about the natural history of animals, a comparative work on ammonites and a text about the mole. During the day he worked as a pharmacist, at night he pursued his scientific studies.
Aspirin and thalidomide
In the early modern era, it was possible to isolate active ingredients, and at the end of the 19th century, the first synthetic drugs came onto the market. The first was "Antipyrin" in 1884. Aspirin followed five years later. Insulin acted from 1923 against diabetes.
In 1923, the first insulin drug came on the market - a rescue for thousands of diabetics. (Image: Dmitry Lobanov / fotolia.com) Synthetic medicines were considered in the 20th century as the victory of modern technology over the plagues of nature. A break in this belief in progress took place with the agent Contergan. It damaged the embryos in the womb and resulted in children with shortened arms. The skepticism about modern medicine has grown, and the German Drug Law has been extended to include comprehensive testing that a drug must undergo before it enters the market.
The only exception are homeopathic remedies, which not only do not undergo examination procedures, but also contradict the natural sciences and are based on the medieval doctrine of signatures. The fact that homeopathic remedies can undermine the control mechanisms of the Medicines Act is due to the wife of former Federal President Carl Carstens.
This esoteric believed in homeopathy and successfully used her husband's influence to lobby for her pseudoscience.
In 1976, the leaflet became mandatory.
The pharmacist becomes the examiner
Industrialization shifted the field of work of the pharmacist. He now made fewer and fewer medicines himself, but advised the customers to choose the right drug, while he got the drugs themselves from pharmaceutical companies.
In the Federal Republic of the pharmacist belongs to the liberal professions, and that meant after 1945 in the western occupation zones and freedom of establishment.
Pharmaceuticals are price-free, pharmacists compete so only by the quality of their customer service and have advantages and disadvantages by the location of their point of sale.
Pharmacies today
Today there are 21,500 pharmacies in Germany, which are open 365 days a year. An emergency service ensures that patients can get medication in the middle of the night. Confidence in pharmacists is high in Germany. In surveys, they occupy the top places in all occupations when it comes to satisfaction and trust.
There are prescription medicines that pharmacies are only allowed to give with a doctor's prescription and pharmacy-only ones: the latter may only sell pharmacies but not other businesses.
Medicines and nail clippers
The variety of the offer corresponds to the beginnings of the "medicine farmer shops". While the focus is indeed on medicines, pharmacies have everything on offer, which can be associated with health.
In the assortment are insoles with gel pads for shoes as well as nail scissors, ginger sweets such as vitamin tablets. Pharmacies are still combinations of shops and professional advice and therefore expensive.
Although there is a fixed price for medicines, but not for the other products, and herbal teas such as sage ointments are more expensive than comparable products in supermarkets. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)