Pharmacopœia. This term has been applied to various works, consisting for the most part of (1) a list of the articles of the Materia Medica, whether simple or compound, with their characters, their modes of preparation, and the tests for the determination of their purity; and (2) a collection of approved receipts or prescriptions, together with the processes for preparing articles in the Materia Medica. Almost every civilised country of importance has its national pharmacopœia; those of the United States (6th ed. 1883), Germany (3d ed. 1890), and France deserving special mention. The earliest pharmacopœias were prepared by the Arabs from the 9th to the 12th century, and subsequently by the medical school of Salerno. The first pharmacopœia published under authority appears to have been that of Nuremberg in the year 1542. Valerius Cordus, afterwards professor at Wittenberg but then a student, showed a collection of medical receipts, which he had selected from the works of the most eminent writers, to the physicians of Nuremberg. The latter were so struck with its value that they urged him to print it for the benefit of the apothecaries, and obtained for his work the sanction of the city council. Before this time the books chiefly in use amongst apothecaries were the treatises: On Simples by Avicenna and Serapion; the Liber Servitoris of Balchasim ben Aberazerin; and the Antidotarium of Nicolaus de Salerno, arranged alphabetically. This work was commonly called Nicolaus Magnus, to distinguish it from an abridgment known as Nicolaus Pervus.
Confining our remarks to the British Pharmacopœias, we may notice that the first edition of the London Pharmacopœia (or, more correctly speaking, of the Pharmacopœia of the London College of Physicians) appeared in 1618, and was chiefly founded on the works of Mezue and Nicolans de Salerno. Successive editions appeared in 1627, 1635, 1650, 1697, 1721, 1746, 1787, 1809, 1824, 1836, and 1851, and form an important contribution to the history of the progress of pharmacy and therapeutics during the last two centuries and a half. The nature and the number of the ingredients that entered into the composition of many of the pharmaceutical preparations of the 17th and 18th centuries would astonish most of the practitioners and patients of the present day. In the earlier editions we find enumerated earthworms, snails, wood-lice, frogs, toads, puppy dogs, foxes ('a fat fox of middle age, if you can get such a one'), the skull of a man who had been hanged, the blood of the cat, the urine and excrements of various animals, &c.; and electuaries were ordered, containing 50, 62, and in one instance—Mathiolus, his Great Antidote against Poison and Pestilence—124 different ingredients.
The Edinburgh Pharmacopœia is more modern than the London, the first edition having appeared in 1699; while the Dublin Pharmacopœia does not date further back than 1807. The latest editions of these works appeared in the years 1841 and 1850 respectively.
Until the Medical Act passed in 1858, the right of publishing the pharmacopœias for England, Scotland, and Ireland was vested in the Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin respectively; and as these three pharmacopœias contained many important preparations, similar in name but totally different in strength (as, for example, dilute hydrocyanic acid, solution of hydrochlorate of morphia, &c.), dangerous complications arose from a London prescription being made up in Edinburgh or Dublin, or vice versa. By that act it is ordained that 'the General [Medical] Council shall cause to be published, under their direction, a book containing a list of medicines and compounds, and the manner of preparing them, together with the true weights and measures by which they are to be prepared and mixed; and containing such other matter and things relating thereto as the General Council shall think fit, to be called British Pharmacopœia;' and by a subsequent act it is enacted that 'the British Pharmacopœia shall for all purposes be deemed to be substituted throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the several above-mentioned pharmacopœias.' The British Pharmacopœia, which appeared in the beginning of the year 1864, gave rise to such a general feeling of disappointment throughout the profession that the General Council brought out a new and amended edition in 1867. A second reprint with additions appeared in 1874. Another edition was published in 1885, and a supplement to it in 1890. There are also Homeopathic and Veterinary Pharmacopœias, and Pharmacopœias for the London and other hospitals, but these are not printed by authority, nor authorised in any way by government.
The Pharmacopœia of the United States is drawn up by a national convention consisting of delegates from the various medical societies, medical corporations, and universities throughout the United States. It was first published in 1820, and a second edition appeared in 1828; but it is now revised every ten years, a new revision appearing in 1893.