A fascinating story of four thousand years of progress from black magic to modern pharmacy. This story is told with a wealth of detail and a profusion of illustrations on the insistent search for the universal panacea throughout time. Priests, philosophers, poets, painters, kings, knaves, popes and charlatans have practiced the art of pharmacy through fumbling attempts and successful experiment. This book takes the reader from herbs to crushed bones, to fly specks, to astrology and magic, to the scientific compounds of today.