The History of Drugs :: essays research papers

The History of DrugsDrug use and abuse is as old as mankind itself. Human beings maintain always had a desire to carry off or drink substances that make them feel relaxed, stimulated, or euphoric. Humans have employ drugs of one sort or another for thousands of years. Wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians narcotics from 4000 B.C. and medicative use of hemp has been dated to 2737 BC in China.As time went by, home remedies were observe and used to onlyeviate aches, pains and other ailments. Most of these preparations were herbs, roots, mushrooms or fungi. They had to be eaten, drunk, rubbed on the skin, or inhaled to achieve the desired effect.One of the oldest records of such medicinal recommendations is found in the writings of the Chinese scholar-emperor Shen Nung, who lived in 2735 BC He compiled a book about herbs, a forerunner of the medieval pharmacopoeias that listed all the then-known medications.He was able to judge the value of some Chinese herbs . For example, he found that Chang Shan was helpful in treating fevers. Such fevers were, and still are, caused by malaria parasites. southeastern and Central American Indians made many prehistoric discoveries of drug-bearing plants. Mexican Aztecs notwithstanding recorded their properties in hieroglyphics on rocks, but our knowledge of their studies comes mainly from manuscripts of Spanish monks and medical men attached to the forces of the conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485-1547).Pre-Columbian Mexicans used many substances, from tobacco plant to mind-expanding (hallucinogenic) plants, in their medicinal collections. The most fascinating of these substances are divine mushrooms, used in religious ceremonies to induce altered states of mind, not just drunkenness.These were all naturally occurring substances. No refinement had occurred, and isolation of specific compounds (drugs) had not taken place.As the centuries unrolled and new civilizations appeared, cultural, artistic, and m edical developments shifted toward the new centers of power. A snow of the traditional search for botanical drugs occurred in Greece in the fourth vitamin C BC, when Hippocrates (estimated dates, 460-377 BC), the Father of Medicine, became interested in inorganic salts as medications.Hippocrates authority lasted throughout the Middle Ages and reminded alchemists and medical experimenters of the potential of inorganic drugs. In fact, a opposed descendant of Hippocrates prescriptions was the use of antimony salts in elixirs (alcoholic solutions) advocated by Basilius Valentius in the nerve of the 15th century and by the medical alchemist Phillippus Aureolus Paracelsus (born Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, in Switzerland, 1493-1541).