Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Copyright Alasdair Laurie (2007). Website held by the UK Copyright Service (registration number
269023)].
3) Cost: only a small proportion of the world’s population could and can afford to go
to doctors/healers and afford herbs/drugs. The agricultural labourers and others
who were illiterate would have had to rely on their homemade herbal mixtures
gathered from the local fields. Many of their herbs would have been without an
active principle and therefore innocuous. Most of their ADRs would come from
mistakenly eating a poisonous herb. If their illness failed to abate they would
probably consult the local ‘healer’ or ‘wise women’ who, although probably still
illiterate, would have acquired more knowledge from past experience. It would
have been the literate middle classes, e.g. farmers, who would have been able to
consult an apothecary or physician who may have had access to the literature
derived from the ancients. The apothecaries and physicians were likely to have a
greater range of medicines available including many with active principles with
their inherent risks of ADRs. The number of people with access to active
medicines is likely to have risen proportionate to their income. Again we see a
sudden surge, this time in incomes around the start of the beginning of the 19th
century.
Figure 14 World averageincome per person
[ Copyright Alasdair Laurie (2007). Website held bytheUK Copyrightservice(registration number269023)]