A pharmacopoeia is an official book that lists approved medicines and sets rules for making and testing them. Its goal is to make sure a medicine has the same strength and quality wherever the book is followed. The name comes from the Greek pharmakon (drug) and poiein (to make), and it is also spelled pharmacopeia.
The first pharmacopoeias
In 1498, the College of Physicians in Florence compiled the Nuovo Receptario, often called the first official pharmacopoeia. It told the city’s apothecaries, who made and sold medicines, which ones to stock and how to prepare them. Germany’s first came from Nuremberg, where the city council printed the Dispensatorium of Valerius Cordus in 1546 and required its apothecaries to follow it. England’s first, the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, came from London’s College of Physicians in 1618.
From cities to countries
Most early pharmacopoeias served a single city. National ones came later, such as the first Pharmacopoeia of the United States in 1820 and Germany’s in 1872, a year after the country united. Pharmacopoeias are still in use today: the European Pharmacopoeia, first published in 1969, is legally binding in 39 countries.
Pharmacopoeias in our collection
Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen was made as a picture guide to the pharmacopoeias of its day, and its full title names 12 of them, from Germany to the United States. Many of its plant texts list the parts used as official medicines and the pharmacopoeias that included them. The entry for the lemon in our botanical art collection, for example, lists lemon peel in the German, British, and American pharmacopoeias.
