PHARMACOPO´LA
PHARMACOPO´LA (
φαρμακοπώλης), quack doctors and drug-sellers who not only kept
shops or booths for their goods, but also hawked them about. Lucian
(
pro Merc. Cond. 7) describes one as hawking (
ἀποκηρύττων) his cough-mixture in the streets,
and promising an immediate cure to all sufferers (cf.
Aristoph. Thes. 504). Plutarch (
de
Prof. in Virt. 8) distinguishes the
ἰατρεύων, or trained physician, from the mere charlatan,
τὰ φάρμακα ἢ τὰ μίγματα πωλῶν.
From
Aristoph. Cl. 766, and Lucian,
Amor. 39, we gather that they sold other wares also. In
Rome there were many quacks of this sort, who, besides the sale of drugs,
professed to cure patients also, whence Pliny complains of the want of a law
to punish ignorance in doctors (
H. N. 29.18;
MEDICUS). Regular medicines
under the Empire were sold with a label (
ἐπαγγελία) affixed, which specified the name of the drug, of
its inventor, the illnesses which it cured, the component parts, and the
method of taking it. These were no doubt generally
[p. 2.383]written in a perishable form, but some for eye medicines, engraved on
stone, have been preserved (Mommsen,
Epig. 2.450). The drugs
for compounding the medicines were often brought from distant places (see
Marquardt,
Privatleben, p. 781) and obtained from
drug-sellers (whom Galen, 12.587, calls
μυροπῶλαι as well as (
φαρμακοπῶλαι, since a great part were cosmetics). The
physicians, however, commonly bought not merely the materials but the drugs
ready compounded, and the pharmacopola traded on his own account, selling to
the public his own compounds, often no doubt counterfeit, inducing the
credulous to put themselves under his treatment (Hor.
Sat. 1.2, 1;
Gel. 1.15,
9), and carrying his drugs about to country towns as
the
pharmacopola circumforaneus of
Cic. Clu. 14,
40,
who is not scrupulous about selling poisons as well. (Becker-Göll,
Charikles, 3.59; Marquardt,
Privatleben,
780; Blümner,
Technologie, 1.354;
Friedländer,
S. G. 1.317.)
[
G.E.M]
