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The practice of mixing together different medicinal substances, so as to form one remedy, may boast of very ancient origin, for most of the prescriptions which have descended from the Greek physicians are of this description; the uncertain and vague results of such a practice appear also to have been early felt, and often condemned, and even Erasistratus declaimed with great warmth against the complicated medicines which were administered in his time; the greater number of these compositions present a mass of incongruous materials, put together without any apparent order or intention; indeed it would almost appear as if they regarded a medical formula as a problem in Permutation, the only object of which was to discover and assign the number of changes that can be made in any given number of things, all different from each other.

At the same time it must in justice be allowed, that some of the earlier physicians entertained just notions with regard to the use and abuse of combination, although their knowledge of the subject was of course extremely limited and imperfect.