In the prehistoric era, there were evidences of pharmacists being respected more than the physicians. In the highly stable hierarchy of royal family of Japan (538–710 B.C.), the pharmacists were assigned superior status when compared to physicians and acupuncturists. Records from the Egyptian medical practices indicate sophisticated pharmaceutical techniques, where many descriptive formulae were used for compounding dosage forms. Drugs from the plant sources, laxatives and enemas were used more prominently.

The expertise of Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle, in combining information from scholars, root diggers, midwives and traveling physicians was emulated 300 years later by Dioscorides. The collected information became the physician’s summary of knowledge and the standard encyclopedia of drugs known as Materia Medica.

Galen, a Greek physician, practiced pharmacy in Rome in the second century A.D. He devised a treatment that attempted to balance the tumors of an individual who is ill by using drugs that have contrary nature, for example, treating an external inflammation by the use of cool and wet drug galenicals and liquid extract of different drugs obtained from natural source. The influence of Galen was so strong that his basic healing approach guided the commoners in their own treatment of ailments.