Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

1 st quarter of the 2 nd century AD
‘The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is
wise will not abhor them. Was not the water made sweet with wood
that the virtue thereof might be known? And he hath given men skill,
that he might be honoured in his marvellous works. With such doth
he heal [men] and taketh away their pains. Of such doth the
apothecary make a confection; and of his work there is no end; and
from him is peace over all the earth....’ The King James Bible,
Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus (38:4).
‘The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of
pleasant fruits…’ [Song of Solomon 7:12-13]
The Bible does not mention the adverse effects of herbs.
Early 4 th century AD
The start of Western Monasteries. These monasteries were built as
accommodation for travellers and gradually gave some medical care
with herbs, e.g. Cluny in France had a large hospice in 1000-1050,
which became a hospital. Hospices were under the Church whilst
hospitals were controlled by physicians. Church hospices were
frequently closed by the church since disease was God’s punishment
and curing it went against this principle. However since hospitals
were now under the physicians’ control they remained open. The first
hospital was probably the one founded in Jundishapur in 555 AD
followed by one in Baghdad by Jirjis ibn Bukhtyishu. The Hotel Dieu
in Paris opened in the 9 th century and by the 15 th century had 279
beds. From the point of view of adverse drug reactions this was the
first time that a lot of sick patients were brought together under the
care of physicians and they had many more patients than those
purely in private practice. They had, therefore, better opportunities to
study disease and adverse reactions leading, in due course, to the
writing of case series.
431 AD Nestorius, the Bishop of Constinople was excommunicated as a
heretic and expelled from Byzantium in by the Council of Ephesus in
431 AD and he and his followers went to Edessa (present day Urfa)
in Mesopotamia and then they were expelled from there in 489 AD
and went to Jundishapur in SW Persia (present day Khuzestan),
which had a hospital and medical school from the reign of Shapur II
( 309-339), where they translated many Greek texts into Arabic. He
was joined here by academicians from Athens in 529 AD when the
Academy of Athens closed down . Jundishapur was a multi-ethnic,
muti-lingual settlement that also had a translation school. This