Pharmacopoeia, pharmacopeia, or pharmacopoea, (literally, "drug-making"), in its modern

technical sense, is a book containing directions for the identification of samples and the
preparation of compound medicines, and published by the authority of a government or a
medical or pharmaceutical society.
Descriptions of preparations are called monographs. In a broader sense it is a reference work for
pharmaceutical drug specifications.
Contents
[hide]
1 Etymology
2 History
o 2.1 City pharmacopoeia
2.1.1 London
o 2.2 National pharmacopoeia
o 2.3 International pharmacopoeia
3 Medical preparations, uses, and dosages
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Etymology[edit source | editbeta]
The word derives from Ancient Greek (pharmakopoiia), from -
(pharmako-) 'drug', followed by the verb-stem - (poi-) 'make' and finally the abstract noun
ending - (-ia). These three elements together can be rendered as 'drug-mak-ing'.
In early modern editions of Latin texts, the Greek spellings (f), (k) and (oi) are respectively
written as ph, c, and , giving the spelling pharmacopia. In UK English, the letter is
rendered as oe, giving us the spelling pharmacopoeia, while in American English oe becomes e,
giving us the spelling pharmacopeia.
History[edit source | editbeta]
Although older writings exist which deal with herbal medicine, the major initial works in the
field are considered to be Edwin Smith Papyrus in Egypt, Plinys pharmacopoeia
[1]
and De
Materia Medica ( ), a five volume book originally written in Greek by
Pedanius Dioscorides. The latter is considered to be precursor to all modern pharmacopoeias,
and is one of the most influential herbal books in history. In fact it remained in use until about
CE 1600.
[2]

A number of early pharmacopoeia books were written by Persian physicians.
[3]
These included
The Canon of Medicine of Avicenna in 1025, and works by Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) in the 12th
century (and printed in 1491),
[4]
and Ibn Baytar in the 14th century.
[citation needed]

City pharmacopoeia[edit source | editbeta]
The first known work of this kind published under civic authority appears to have been that of
Tang Dynasty in China. The treatise was written by several officials of Emperor Gaozong of
Tang. The pharmacopoeia contained 850 sorts of crude medicine, revising the treatises written
by ancient Chinese pharmacists.
However, the first dated work appeared in Nuremberg in 1542; a passing student named Valerius
Cordus showed a collection of medical receipts, which he had selected from the writings of the
most eminent medical authorities, to the physicians of the town, who urged him to print it for the
benefit of the apothecaries, and obtained for his work the sanction of the senatus. A work known
as the Antidotarium Florentinum, was published under the authority of the college of medicine of
Florence in the 16th century.
The term Pharmacopoeia first appears as a distinct title in a work published at Basel,
Switzerland, in 1561 by Dr. A. Foes, but does not appear to have come into general use until the
beginning of the 17th century.
Before 1542 the works principally used by apothecaries were the treatises on simples by
Avicenna and Serapion; the De synonymis and Quid pro quo of Simon Januensis; the Liber
servitoris of Bulchasim Ben Aberazerim, which described the preparations made from plants,
animals, and minerals, and was the type of the chemical portion of modern pharmacopoeias; and
the Antidotarium of Nicolaus de Salerno, containing Galenic formulations arranged
alphabetically. Of this last work, there were two editions in use Nicolaus magnus and
Nicolaus parvus: in the latter, several of the compounds described in the large edition were
omitted and the formulae given on a smaller scale.
Also Vesalius claimed he had written some "dispensariums" and "manuals" on the works of
Galenus. Apparently he burnt them. According to recent research communicated at the
congresses of the International Society for the History of Medicine by the scholar Francisco
Javier Gonzlez Echeverra,
[5][6][7]
Michel De Villeneuve(Michael Servetus) also published a
pharmacopeia. Michel De Villeneuve, fellow student of Vesalius and the best galenist of Paris
according to Johann Winter von Andernach,
[8]
published the anonymous ''Dispensarium or
Enquiridion in 1543, at Lyon, France, with Jean Frellon as editor. This work contains 224
original recipes by Michel De Villeneuve(Michael Servetus) and others by Lespleigney and
Chappuis. As usual when it comes to pharmacopeias, this work was complementary to a previous
Materia Medica
[9][10][11][12]
that Michel De Villeneuve published that same year. This finding was
communicated by the same scholar in the International Society for the History of Medicine,
[7][13]

with agreement of John M. Riddle, one of the foremost experts on Materia Medica-Dioscorides
works.
Nicolaes Tulp, mayor of Amsterdam and respected surgeon general, gathered all of his doctor
and chemist friends together and they wrote the first pharmacopoeia of Amsterdam in 1636
Pharmacopoea Amstelredamensis. This was a combined effort to improve public health after an
outbreak of the plague, and also limit the number of quack apothecary shops in Amsterdam.
London[edit source | editbeta]
Until 1617 such drugs and medicines as were in common use were sold in England by the
apothecaries and grocers. In that year the apothecaries obtained a separate charter, and it was
enacted that no grocer should keep an apothecarys shop. The preparation of physicians
prescriptions was thus confined to the apothecaries, upon whom pressure was brought to bear to
make them dispense accurately, by the issue of a pharmacopoeia in May 1618 by the College of
Physicians, and by the power which the wardens of the apothecaries received in common with
the censors of the College of Physicians of examining the shops of apothecaries within 7 m. of
London and destroying all the compounds which they found unfaithfully prepared. This, the first
authorized London Pharmacopoeia, was selected chiefly from the works of Mezue and Nicolaus
de Salerno, but it was found to be so full of errors that the whole edition was cancelled, and a
fresh edition was published in the following December.
At this period the compounds employed in medicine were often heterogeneous mixtures, some of
which contained from 20 to 70, or more, ingredients, while a large number of simples were used
in consequence of the same substance being supposed to possess different qualities according to
the source from which it was derived. Thus crabs eyes (i.e., gastroliths), pearls, oyster shells,
and coral were supposed to have different properties. Among other ingredients entering into
some of these formulae were the excrements of human beings, dogs, mice, geese, and other
animals, calculi, human skull, and moss growing on it, blind puppies, earthworms, etc.
Although other editions of the London Pharmacopoeia were issued in 1621, 1632, 1639, and
1677, it was not until the edition of 1721, published under the auspices of Sir Hans Sloane, that
any important alterations were made. In this issue many of the remedies previously in use were
omitted, although a good number were still retained, such as dogs excrement, earthworms, and
moss from the human skull; the botanical names of herbal remedies were for the first time added
to the official ones; the simple distilled waters were ordered of a uniform strength; sweetened
spirits, cordials and ratafias were omitted as well as several compounds no longer used in
London, although still in vogue elsewhere. A great improvement was effected in the edition
published in 1746, in which only those preparations were retained which had received the
approval of the majority of the pharmacopoeia committee; to these was added a list of those
drugs only which were supposed to be the most efficacious. An attempt was made to simplify
further the older formulae by the rejection of superfluous ingredients.
In the edition published in 1788 the tendency to simplify was carried out to a much greater
extent, and the extremely compound medicines which had formed the principal remedies of
physicians for 2,000 years were discarded, while a few powerful drugs which had been
considered too dangerous to be included in the Pharmacopoeia of 1765 were restored to their
previous position. In 1809 the French chemical nomenclature was adopted, and in 1815 a
corrected impression of the same was issued. Subsequent editions were published in 1824, 1836,
and 1851.
The first Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia was published in 1699 and the last in 1841; the first Dublin
Pharmacopoeia in 1807 and the last in 1850.
National pharmacopoeia[edit source | editbeta]
The preparations contained in these three pharmacopoeias were not all uniform in strength, a
source of much inconvenience and danger to the public, when powerful preparations such as
dilute hydrocyanic acid were ordered in the one country and dispensed according to the national
pharmacopoeia in another. As a result, the Medical Act of 1858 ordained that the General
Medical Council should publish a book containing a list of medicines and compounds, to be
called the British Pharmacopoeia, which would be a substitute throughout Great Britain and
Ireland for the separate pharmacopoeias. Hitherto these had been published in Latin. The first
British Pharmacopoeia was published in the English language in 1864, but gave such general
dissatisfaction both to the medical profession and to chemists and druggists that the General
Medical Council brought out a new and amended edition in 1867. This dissatisfaction was
probably owing partly to the fact that the majority of the compilers of the work were not engaged
in the practice of pharmacy, and therefore competent rather to decide upon the kind of
preparations required than upon the method of their manufacture. The necessity for this element
in the construction of a pharmacopoeia is now fully recognized in other countries, in most of
which pharmaceutical chemists are represented on the committee for the preparation of the
legally recognized manuals.
There are national and international pharmacopoeias, like the EU and the U.S. pharmacopoeias.
All the pharmacopoeias were issued under the authority of government, and their instructions
have the force of law in their respective territories, except that of the United States, which was
prepared by commissioners appointed by medical and pharmaceutical societies, and has no other
authority, although generally accepted as the national textbook.
International pharmacopoeia[edit source | editbeta]
Increased facilities for travel have brought into greater prominence the importance of an
approach to uniformity in the formulae of the more powerful remedies, in order to avoid danger
to patients when a prescription is dispensed in a different country from that in which it was
written. Attempts have been made by international pharmaceutical and medical conferences to
settle a basis on which an international pharmacopoeia could be prepared, but due to national
jealousies and the attempt to include too many preparations nothing has yet been achieved.
Nonetheless, some progress has been made under the banner of the ICH,
[14]
a tri-regional
organisation that represents the drug regulatory authorities of the European Union, Japan, and the
United States. Representatives from the Pharmacopoeias of these three regions have met twice
yearly since 1990 in the Pharmacopoeial Discussion Group to try to work towards "compendial
harmonisation". Specific monographs are proposed, and if accepted, proceed through stages of
review and consultation leading to adoption of a common monograph that provides a common
set of tests and specifications for a specific material. Not surprisingly, this is a slow process.
Medical preparations, uses, and dosages[edit source |
editbeta]

The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the United Kingdom
and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and
discuss the issue on the talk page. (March 2012)
Though formerly printed there has been a transition to a situation where pharmaceutical
information is available as printed volumes and on the internet. The rapid increase in knowledge
renders necessary frequent new editions, to furnish definite formulae for preparations that have
already come into extensive use in medical practice, so as to ensure uniformity of strength, and
to give the characters and tests by which their purity and potency may be determined. However
each new edition requires several years to carry out numerous experiments for devising suitable
formulae, so that current pharmacopoeia are never quite up to date.
This difficulty has hitherto been met by the publication of such non official formularies as
Squire's Companion to the Pharmacopoeia and Martindale: The complete drug reference
(formerly Martindale's: the extra pharmacopoeia), in which all new remedies and their
preparations, uses and doses are recorded, and in the former the varying strengths of the same
preparations in the different pharmacopoeias are also compared (Squire's was incorporated into
Martindale in 1952). The need of such works to supplement the Pharmacopoeia is shown by the
fact that they are even more largely used than the Pharmacopoeia itself, the first issued in 18
editions and the second in 13 editions at comparatively short intervals. In the UK, the task of
elaborating a new Pharmacopoeia is entrusted to a body of a purely medical character, and
legally the pharmacist does not, contrary to the practice in other countries, have a voice in the
matter, notwithstanding the fact that, although the medical practitioner is naturally the best judge
of the drug or preparations that will afford the best therapeutic result, he is not so competent as
the pharmacist to say how that preparation can be produced in the most effective and satisfactory
manner, nor how the purity of drugs can be tested.
The change occurred with the fourth edition of the British Pharmacopoeia in 1898. A committee
of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was appointed at the request of the General
Medical Council to advise on pharmaceutical matters. A census of prescriptions was taken to
ascertain the relative frequency with which different preparations and drugs were used in
prescriptions, and suggestions and criticisms were sought from various medical and
pharmaceutical bodies across the British Empire. As regards the purely pharmaceutical part of
the work a committee of reference in pharmacy, nominated by the pharmaceutical societies of
Great Britain and Ireland (as they were then), was appointed to report to the Pharmacopoeia
Committee of the Medical Council.
Some difficulty has arisen since the passing of the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act
[citation
needed]
concerning the use of the Pharmacopoeia as a legal standard for the drugs and preparations
contained in it. The Pharmacopoeia is defined in the preface as only "intended to afford to the
members of the medical profession and those engaged in the preparation of medicines
throughout the British Empire one uniform standard and guide whereby the nature and
composition of, substances to be used in medicine may be ascertained and determined". It is
obvious that it cannot be an encyclopaedia of substances used in medicine, and can only be used
as a standard for the substances and preparations contained in it, and for no others. It has been
held in the Divisional Courts (Dickins v. Randerson) that the Pharmacopoeia is a standard for
official preparations asked for under their pharmacopoeial name. But there are many substances
in the Pharmacopoeia which are not only employed in medicine, but have other uses, such as
sulphur, gum benzoin, tragacanth, gum arabic, ammonium carbonate, beeswax, oil of turpentine,
linseed oil, and for these a commercial standard of purity as distinct from a medicinal one is
needed, since the preparations used in medicine should be of the highest possible degree of
purity obtainable, and this standard would be too high and too expensive for ordinary purposes.
The use of trade synonyms in the Pharmacopoeia, such as saltpetre for purified potassium nitrate,
and milk of sulphur for precipitated sulphur, is partly answerable for this difficulty, and has
proved to be a mistake, since it affords ground for legal prosecution if a chemist sells a drug of
ordinary commercial purity for trade purposes, instead of the purified preparation which is
official in the Pharmacopoeia for medicinal use. This would not be the case if the trade synonym
were omitted. For many drugs and chemicals not in the Pharmacopoeia there is no standard of
purity that can be used under the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act, and for these, as well as
for the commercial quality of those drugs and essential oils which are also in the Pharmacopoeia,
a legal standard of commercial purity is much needed. This subject formed the basis of
discussion at several meetings of the Pharmaceutical Society, and the results have been
embodied in a work called Suggested Standards for Foods and Drugs by C. G. Moor, which
indicates the average degree of purity of many drugs and chemicals used in the arts, as well as
the highest degree of purity obtainable in commerce of those used in medicine.
An important step has also been taken in this direction by the publication under the authority of
the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain of the British Pharmaceutical Codex
(BPC), in which the characters of and tests for the purity of many unofficial drugs and
preparations are given as well as the character of many glandular preparations and antitoxins that
have come into use in medicine, but have not yet been introduced into the Pharmacopoeia. This
work may also possibly serve as a standard under the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act for the
purity and strength of drugs not included in the Pharmacopoeia and as a standard for the
commercial grade of purity of those in the Pharmacopoeia which are used for non-medical
purposes.
Another legal difficulty connected with modern pharmacopoeias is the inclusion in some of them
of synthetic chemical remedies, the processes for preparing which have been patented, whilst the
substances are sold under trade-mark names. The scientific chemical name is often long and
unwieldy, and the physician prefers when writing a prescription to use the shorter name under
which it is sold by the patentees. In this case the pharmacist is compelled to use the more
expensive patented article and the patient complains of the price. If s/he uses the same article
under its pharmacopoeial name when the patented article is prescribed s/he lays oneself open to
prosecution by the patentee for infringement of patent rights. The only plan, therefore, is for the
physician to use the chemical name (which cannot be patented) as given in the Pharmacopoeia,
or for those synthetic remedies not included in the Pharmacopoeia, to use the scientific and
chemical name given in the British Pharmaceutical Codex.