The First Drug Appeared During 140-130 BC

The First Drug Appeared During 140-130 BC.
Archeologists investigating an old shipwreck off the seaboard of Tuscany report they have stumbled upon a rare find: a tightly closed tin container with well-preserved c physic dating back to about 140-130 BC. A multi-disciplinary gang analyzed fragments of the green-gray tablets to decipher their chemical, mineralogical and botanical composition. The results proposition a peek into the complexity and sophistication of ancient therapeutics.

So "The research highlights the continuity from then until now in the use of some substances for the remedying of human diseases," said archeologist and lead researcher Gianna Giachi, a chemist at the Archeological Heritage of Tuscany, in Florence, Italy. "The inquire into also shows the carefulness that was taken in choosing complex mixtures of products - olive oil, pine resin, starch - in demand to get the desired therapeutic effect and to help in the preparation and relevance of medicine".

The medicines and other materials were found together in a tight space and are thought to have been originally packed in a box that seems to have belonged to a physician, said Alain Touwaide, scientific director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, in Washington, DC Touwaide is a fellow of the multi-disciplinary team that analyzed the materials. The tablets contained an iron oxide, as well as starch, beeswax, pine resin and a composite of plant-and-animal-derived lipids, or fats.

Touwaide said botanists on the inquiry team discovered that the tablets also contained carrot, radish, parsley, celery, strange onion and cabbage - simple plants that would be found in a garden. Giachi said that the mixture and shape of the tablets suggest they may have been used to treat the eyes, dialect mayhap as an eyewash. But Touwaide, who compared findings from the analysis to what has been understood from ancient texts about medicine, said the metallic component found in the tablets was undoubtedly used not just for eyewashes but also to treat wounds.

The ascertaining is evidence of the effectiveness of some natural medicines that have been used for literally thousands of years. "This bumf potentially represents essentially several centuries of clinical trials. If natural medicine is utilized for centuries and centuries, it's not because it doesn't work".