It is scarcely possible to state with any degree of positiveness at what date pharmacists, in the modern sense of the term, came to be recognized as constituting a separate and honorable class in every well-organized community. It is known, however, that in Syria and Persia, during the eighth and ninth centuries of the present era, not a few of the leading physicians were the sons of apothecaries. Honein, for example, of whose career I furnished a brief sketch in Chapter XIX., was the son of an apothecary; and the careful manner in which he was educated during his youth justifies the belief that his father must have been a man of some cultivation and not at all like the general average of that class of men of whom Galen speaks so disparagingly. But even at that early period there certainly were individuals who were skilled in the pharmaceutic art, for Berendes (_op. cit._) tells us that Dioscorides (_circa_ 100 A. D.) describes minutely the manner of preparing “Oisypum.” Oisypum is identical with the modern “Lanolin” or “Lanolinum,” and is a pure fat of wool. Mention is made of the preparation by four different authors of medical treatises during the following sixteen centuries--viz., by Aëtius in the sixth, by Paulus Aegineta in the seventh, by Nicolaus Myrepsus in the thirteenth, and by Valerius Cordus in the seventeenth. Subsequently to the latter date no further mention of the preparation is to be found in any of the pharmacopoeias except the French Codex of the year 1758, in which it is classed among the simple remedies under the title of “Oesipe.” Finally Liebreich, toward the end of the nineteenth century, brought the preparation once more into favor under the name of “lanolin.” The fact that it remained in complete oblivion for such very long periods of time is easily explained by the statement which Berendes makes: “It was a troublesome ointment to manufacture, and consequently the apothecaries disliked it and resorted to all sorts of falsifications.” With the advance of the Arab Renaissance pharmacy gradually became a regular established occupation in every fairly large city in the East. It is known, for example, that the first public apothecary shop in the city of Bagdad was established during the eighth century of the present era under the caliphate of Almansur; and about the same time, probably a little earlier, there existed at Djondisabour a similar pharmacy in connection with the school and hospital of the Bakhtichou family. The training of an apothecary in those days was probably the same as that of the physician. Originally pharmacists were called “Szandalani,” probably because they dealt largely in sandal wood.