INTRODUCTION When someone gets sick they need the right medicine to help them get better But just what is the right medicine That’s a problem that has been plaguing doctors since ancient times Throughout history doctors have come up with some really great ideas for healing people but also some very very bad ones Germ Killers Some medicines are designed to help people get better by fighting infections Antibiotics for example are medicines that kill or attack the germs that make people ill Antibiotics only work against bacteria To fight viruses you need special antiviral drugs Correcting Mistakes Sometimes the body makes too much or too little of certain chemicals Some medicines are designed to replace missing chemicals or block their production when the body is making too much Diabetics for example are given insulin which used to be taken from the pancreases of pigs to replace the insulin their bodies are unable to make 6
Soothing the Symptoms Some medicines are not meant to cure people they are just designed to make them feel better by relieving the symptoms For example pain relievers can make headaches or sore throats less painful And creams can make skin less itchy Medical Business Americans use as much medicine as the rest of the world put together Every year they buy and use a third of a trillion dollars worth of medicines In other words every single American uses one thousand dollars worth of drugs every year So they must be very well or very sick Aspirin 7
ANCIENT MEDICINE Many herbs and natural materials have healing properties But people learned long ago that these natural medicines can often be made more effective by preparing or mixing them in certain ways This ancient art of pharmacy dates back to Ancient Egypt and beyond The Father of Pharmacy The Ancient Egyptians believed pharmacy began with the god Horus Horus lost his eye in battle but it was healed by the god Thoth Modern pharmacists write Rx on prescriptions for medicine Some believe they are writing the ancient sign for the eye of Horus Others think that Rx is just medieval shorthand for the Latin for recipe Herb Master For 1,500 years De Materia Medica About Medical Materials was the bible on medical herbs This vast book was written by the Greek pharmacist Dioscorides in the first century CE It describes more than 1,000 herbal medicines many discovered by Dioscorides himself as he followed Roman armies around Europe 8
Screaming Root The root of the mandrake plant is a powerful drug that causes hallucinations and sends people to sleep The roots can be shaped like a little person and the plant was long thought to have magic powers Some said it screamed when pulled from the ground and cursed the person who uprooted it so people tied a poor dog to the plant to pull it up instead Up the Back We take most drugs through our mouths but long ago some doctors had the idea of putting them into the body from the other end Basically they stuck a tube called a clyster pipe into the patient’s bottom Then they attached a tube to squirt the medicine in Modern doctors still use this method only they call it an enema 9
