Drugs: cures or curse?

With Pharmacy established in our midst at UPE it seems fitting to speak about drugs, since the name pharmacy is derived from pharmakon, the Greek word for drug. The derivation of apteker from the English word apothecary and the German Apotheker is also relevant. Interestingly the Greek root for apothecary means storekeeper, so perhaps things have not changed much in the last few centuries. However, the use of drugs precedes the Greeks, English or Germans by many centuries, and both the Chinese (over 2000 years BC) and the Babylonians (over 4000 years BC) had drug lists or pharmacopoeias. In fact the Babylonians also had a strict medical code and I recall reading that "if the surgeons's knife should slip, the surgeon's hand will be cut off" which seems far better than the modern idea of trying to sue the surgeon after the event, but must have seriously hampered the recruitment of surgeons in those days