Physicians medicine compounding

Nuclear medicine is used chiefly in medical diagnosis. A radiopharmaceutical—a relatively harmless compound with a low dose of radiation— is swallowed or injected into the patient and tracked through the bloodstream by instruments such as a PET (positron emission tomography) camera. The nuclear physician can use the results to create a... 

Pharmacy is the art or practice of preparing and preserving drugs, and of compounding and dispensing medicines according to the prescriptions of physicians. 

For over 2,000 years, alchemy was the only chemistry studied. Alchemy was the predecessor of modern chemistry and contributed to the slow growth of what we know about the Earth s chemical elements. For example, the alchemists interest in a common treatment for all diseases led to the scientific basis for the art of modern medicine. In particular, the alchemist/ physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) introduced a new era of medicine known as iatrochemistry, which is chemistry applied to medicine. In addition, alchemists elementary understanding of how different substances react with each other led to the concepts of atoms and their interactions to form compounds. 

Antimony was known in the days of alchemy (500 BCE to 1600 ce) when it was associated with other metals and minerals such as arsenic, sulfides, and lead used as medications. It is possible that an alchemist, Basilus Valentinus (fi. 1450), knew about antimony and some of its minerals and compounds sometime around the mid-fifteenth century ce. Physicians of this period—and earlier periods—used elements such as mercury and antimony to cure diseases, although they knew that these elements were toxic in larger doses. Antimony was used to treat depression, as a laxative, and as an emetic for over two thousand years. Despite the elements poisonous nature, physicians of that early era considered both mercury and antimony good medicines. 

Paracelsus went on to dismiss the theory on which the orthodox medicine of the day was based. This theory, which had originally been proposed by Hippocrates, held that the body contained four humors blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Disease was supposedly a consequence of imbalances in these humors, and it was the physician s job to correct the imbalances. Furthermore, each humor was associated with one of the four elements. For example, a fever was clearly the result of the presence of too much fire. The humor that corresponded to fire was blood, so feverish patients should be bled. All of this was nonsense, Paracelsus said. The body was a kind of chemical laboratory, and a doctor must investigate the properties of chemical compounds to find those that would cure any specific disease. 

The Editor Is surprised to find that the above are so little vised in medicine. Surely, if physicians would only daily experiment on the action of the different mrtelB and their compounds upon the system, they might soon discover some more very valuable specifics. 

The apothecaries, too, were enraged against this iconoclast. For had he not, as official town physician, demanded the right to inspect their stocks and rule over their prescriptions which he denounced as foul broths These apothecaries had grown fat on the barbarous prescriptions of the local doctors. The physician s duty is to heal the sick, not to enrich the apothecaries, he had warned them, and refused to send his patients to them to have prescriptions compounded. He made his own medicines instead, and gave them free to his patients. 

The German physicians Paul Ehrlichmann and Robert Koch made pioneering contributions to modem medicine, including scientific approaches to the development of arsenicals and gold compounds, respectively, for treatment of various diseases. The contribution of Paul Ehrlichmaim, who is considered the father of modem immunology, included investigation of... 

Although the war would do much to turn America toward mass-produced, mass-marketed pharmaceuticals, the 1860s still saw most medicines either compounded by the physician or pharmacist. Prepackaged patent medicines— though gaining in popularity—would... 

For all the dmg wholesalers and fledgling manufacturing concerns, the bulk of pharmacy care took place in either the physician s office or, in more cosmopolitan settings, the apothecary shop. Even by the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of physicians stiU dispensed their own medicines. 28 They prescribed and compounded a wide variety of vegetable, mineral, and animal substances, but a review of the 1860 United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) indicates that 587 (or 67 percent) of the total number of 871 medicinal substances listed therein were botanical.29 Some of the more popular were cinchona, sometimes referred to as Pemvian bark, and its refined counterpart, sulfate of quinine, both used as antiperiodics O opium from Papaver somniferum, the powerful narcotic and anodyne (i.e., pain reliever) of choice for many physicians of the day, as well... 

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