The Evolution of Pharmacy (for pharmD students)

The Evolution of Pharmacy

Pharmacy:

1. The art of preparing and dispensing drugs. 
2. A place where drugs are sold; a drugstore. In this sense, also called apothecary.Pharmacy is a transitional field between health sciences and chemical sciences and a profession charged with ensuring the safe use of medication.

Difference between Pharmacist and Physicians:

• Previously physicians often both prepared and prescribed medicines.
• Individual pharmacists not only compounded prescriptions but manufactured medicament's in bulk lots for general sale.
• Not until well into the 19th century was the distinction between the pharmacist as a compounder of medicines and the physician as a therapist generally accepted

What pharmacist do?

• Traditionally, pharmacists have compounded and dispensed medications on the orders of physicians.
• More recently, pharmacy has come to include other services related to patient care including clinical practice, medication review, and drug information. Some of these new pharmaceutical roles are now mandated by law in various ligislatures.
• Pharmacists, therefore, are drug therapy experts, and the primary health professionals who optimise medication management to produce positive health-outcomes.

Origin of Pharmacist word:

• The origin of the word "pharmacy" is generally ascribed to the Greek pharmakon ("remedy"). It has been suggested that there is a connection with the Egyptian term ph-ar-maki ("bestowed of security"), which the god Thoth, patron of physicians, conferred as approbation on a ferryman who had managed a safe crossing.
• The notion of an Egyptian origin has a certain romantic appeal, but in all likelihood the word "pharmacy" and its many cognates derive, like so many other scientific terms, from the Greek

Peoples power:

• Human have very little power to modify the birth and death. They have no hand over these things. These two things are fully supervised by Allah.
• But in disease, human have enough to do and every moment have contribute new way of overcoming diseases. They have exposed the know how to fight against disease.

Peoples practice:

• Throughout the world, illness has often been attributed to witchcraft, demons, averse astral influence, or the will of the gods, ideas that retain some power, with faith healing and shrines still common, although the rise of scientific medicine in the past two centuries has altered or replaced many historic health practices.

Quotation from Qur'an:

• The Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad encouraged the gaining of medical knowledge. The Prophet Muhammad said,  "Make use of medical treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease, namely old age."

Starting period of History:

• As much as 80,000 years ago, people of the Paleolithic period were interested in the flora around them to engrave a variety of plants, bones and deer antlers.
• It is fruitless to try to determine when Pharmaceutical practice started because Pharmacy in a rudimentary form existed before the word.