Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Before there were pharmacies, there were apothecaries. Before apothecaries, there were herbwomen and barber-surgeons and alchemists chasing the elixir of life. A.C. Wootton's monumental history traces pharmacy's arc from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia through Greece, Rome, and the medieval period, showing how healers in every era mixed hard observation with mysticism, prayer with poultices. This volume follows the great figures of the craft: Galen compounding his famous electuaries, Paracelsus railing against ancient authorities, the Arabian scholars preserving and expanding Greco-Roman knowledge while Europe slept through the Dark Ages. Wootton reveals that the history of medicine has always been a negotiation between tradition and innovation, between those who trusted the wisdom of centuries and those who trusted only what they could see and measure. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got from willow bark and bloodletting to the modern pharmacy shelf.