Revisited

No.73 Issue 4/2010

Title

First Pharmacies

Text

Lunita S V Mendoza If you were to take a glimpse at the list of history’s most renowned pharmacists – Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet, Stanley Stewart Davis, Georg Joseph Kamel, Friedrich Sertürner, Eugène Soubeiran – you’d be hard-pressed to see how Asia had any contribution at all to the noble profession. Yet paleopharmacological studies attest to the use of medicinal plants in ancient times, with the earliest known compilation of medicinal substances attributed to the Sushruta Samhita, an Indian Ayurvedic treatise in the 6th century BC. Many Sumerian (late 6th millennium BC–early 2nd millennium BC) cuneiform clay tablets record prescriptions for medicine.