materia medica

From Latin materia (“material”) + medica (“curative, medical”).

materia medica (uncountable)

1. (medicine, archaic or historical) Synonym of pharmacology, particularly its development in early modern Europe.

materia medica pl (plural only)

1. (medicine, archaic or historical) Synonym of medicine: the substances so used, particularly traditional cures prepared from animals and plants such as herbal medicines but inclusive of early drugs.
   • 1771, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st ed., volume II, page 183:

     CHIAN earth, in pharmacy, one of the medicinal earths of the ancients, the name of which is preſerved in the catalogues of the materia medica but of which nothing more than the name has been known for many ages in the ſhops...