A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF THE APOTHECARY
Herbs have been used to treat human illness since prehistoric times, being found in most of the ancient tombs and burial sites excavated by archaeologists throughout Europe and Northern Africa and Egypt.
It is estimated that 80 percent of the worlds population relies upon the use of herbal medicine for health care.
The tradition of the apothecary arose from England in the Middle Ages. An apothecary was someone who prepared and sold drugs and other compounds for medicinal purposes. He would diagnose illness and prescribe remedies, usually herbal in origin. Dr Nicholas Culpeper is regarded as one of the first European herbalists and his herbal, written in 1649, titled A Physicall Directory contains a wealth of detailed observation of the botany and medicinal application of plants, and is still used as a reference text by herbalists today.
In the Middle Ages many monasteries and apothecaries grew herb gardens and Renaissance explorers brought back to England new herbs and seeds from exotic lands.Apothecaries would harvest plants from their garden to use as ingredients in various medicines.
THE APOTHECARYS GARDEN
The Hortus Sanitatis (Garden of Health) was a herbal written in Germany in the 1400s. It lists the drugs used by apothecaries and the properties they were believed to have. Most of this information came from Hippocrates.
The idea of separating a garden into one for useful plants and another for beauty is a fairly recent innovation. Until about 300 years ago, all plants were considered to be useful, either as medicine or food. Even the beauty of the plants themselves was thought to be medicinal, contributing to the general health of the individual by strengthening the spirit. Aside from the few basic medicinal plants grown by every housewife for the cure of common minor ills, much like we use the patented medicines of today, the bulk of the truly curative herbs were originally cultivated in the monastery gardens. Healing was, from the earliest recorded times granted the distinction of being a religious practice.
The monks were mostly a literate class of people, unlike the majority of the population, and it was they who conducted most of the herbal research of the time for cataloguing their gardens. The gardens of the doctors and apothecaries were most likely similar, but perhaps on a much smaller scale, since the monks had greater access to plants imported from other parts of the world than the common man.
Today, orthodox medicine remains rooted in herbal tradition, with 70 percent of modern pharmaceuticals originating from plants from the apothecarys garden.
APOTHECARIES and DRUGGISTS
Until 1617 in England the trade in medicinal plants was controlled by the Grocers Company, and was concentrated in Bucklesbury. In 1617 the Apothecaries broke away from the Grocers claiming that: very many empiricks and unskilled and ignorant men .... do abide in our city ... which are not well instructed in the art and mystery of Apothecaries but ... do make and compound many unwholesome, hurtful, deceitful, corrupt dangerous medicines.
In 1676 they set up the Chelsea Physic Garden - now the second oldest botanical garden in England.
Apothecaries and Surgeons, in contrast to Physicians,did not have university degrees. Instead they served an apprenticeship, usually of 7 years. It was also usual for St Thomass medical pupils to train with an Apothecary before training as a Surgeon.
The Apothecary had a greater standing that the present day chemist - the St Thomass apothecary was the chief resident medical officer of the Hospital, responsible for all patients in the physicians absence and for all prescriptions in surgical cases.
As science improved and active ingredients of plants were isolated and synthesised, the apothecarys art was increasingly replaced by the emergence of the druggist. The druggist would usea wider variety of sources for his medicines minerals, animal extracts and poisons with a greater potential for toxicity. Before the development of the chemical industry, medicinal compounds were virtually all made out of natural plants. The evolution of the druggist has become our modern pharmacist.
In the summer of 1794 the London apothecaries gathered at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in The Strand to hear complaints about the growing threat to their profession. There was scarcely to be found a village or a hamlet without a druggist. If the sale of medicines and giving of advice was not sufficient to support the vendor, he added to his own occupation the sale of mops, brooms, bacon and butter. (Is this not a little like our modern day pharmacies?)
The proliferation of druggists had other consequences. Although they had modeled themselves on generations of apothecaries, they rarely stocked the most common herbs in current usage, since the local villagers could grow them in their own gardens for their own personal use. Instead they stocked exotics and chemicals, many of them highly toxic, selling indiscriminately to those who could afford them. There was no form of control over the sale of deadly poisons like arsenic and strychnine, other than the conscience or good sense of the purveyor.
The apothecaries were justly appalled, since they had undergone formal apprenticeship in the identification and preparation of herbal medicines, whereas the druggists underwent no formal medicinal training, being retailers who were often ignorant of the powerful and dangerous drugs they were prescribing.
THE MODERN APOTHECARY
The apothecary was reincarnated in London at Neals Yard. Since the late 1970s this purveyor of traditional plant-based medicines has traded discretely from a cobblestoned courtyard near Covent Garden. The herbalists there would dispense medicines to customers who would self-prescribe, according to their own personal research. The apothecary would provide reference books on herbal medicine for the use of the customer, but would not accept responsibility for writing the prescription for the presenting complaint.
There is an alarming state of affairs existing today in Europe for herbalists and natural therapists. The medical profession and government have succeeded in severely restricting the practice of herbal medicine, by legislating that it be mainly conducted by medical practitioners, who are indeed in the minority of herbalists. This has dramatically restricted the clinical practice of the herbalist and thus apothecary - as well as their access to their traditionally prescribed natural medicines.
THE USE OF PLANTS AS MEDICINES
Herbs can be administered in a number of different ways and any part of a plant, roots, bark, seeds, leaves, flowers may be used. Certain parts of certain herbs are used for their active constituents, for example the root of licorice contains anti-inflammatory actives, the flowers of calendula are used to treat infection and the bark of the white willow tree is where the salicins are found which relieve pain.
Herbs can be compounded with other herbs to make complex potions, pills, and ointments. Although the methods for combining and mixing medicines are simple it should be left to the expert! Dosages are not as critical as they are for drugs, since herbs have a safer and wider therapeutic range. It is also worth noting that the concentration of active chemical in natural plants varies widely, depending upon the country of origin, the climate and the season in which they are cultivated and harvested. For this reason one herbal blend may not taste like another, although it is formulated on the same prescription.
The use of herbal medicines is steadily increasing in Australia as we rediscover this safe and effective health intervention.
AUSTRALIAN APOTHECARIES
In the early days of European settlement in Australia the barbers shop, apothecary and undertaker were typical of the businesses of many traders in the mining areas. They sprang up to fill a need in wealthy communities. Barber shops were usually indicated by a barbers pole, often just a verandah support, painted in the traditional colours of red and white spiralling. The colours represented blood and bandages.
Since the barber was required to operate with a steady hand, it was only natural for the barber to also fill the role of doctor and surgeon in those areas where a doctor was not available. Sometimes a doctor would only visit on a weekly or a fortnightly basis.
It was thus quite normal for the barber to also dispense drugs as an apothecary. In this era, laudanum (a mixture of opium and alcohol) was most commonly used as a painkiller. It seems then quite logical, in the natural scheme of things, that the hairdresser should also be the undertaker.