Material or substance used in the composition of remedies;
a general term for all substances used as curative agents in
medicine.
That branch of medical science which treats of the nature and
properties of all the substances that are employed for the cure
of diseases.
Origin: L. see matter, and medical.
OR
The ingredients used to make medications, whether those be
for medicine, homeopathy, herbal medicine, or whatever.
The branch of medical science concerned with the study of drugs
and their properties,
Preparation, administration, and such. A synonym for pharmacology.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the renowned Dean of Harvard Medical School,
once commented that: "If the whole of the materia medica as now used could
be sunk in the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and
all the worse for the fishes.
From the New Latin meaning medical material. Or A treatise upon materials,
agents or appliances used in medicine; includes name, source, or origin, habitat,
family or natural order; physical characteristics, methods by which obtained,
tests for, constituents, forms of administration, methods of administration,
physiological action and therapeutics, normal doses and antagonists, incompatibilities,
synergies.
