materia medica

A historical term for the substances and preparations used in medical treatment, and for the branch of medicine concerned with them. The expression was widely used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and broadly corresponds to modern pharmacology. It derives from the title of the first-century medical work by Dioscorides, traditionally known in Latin as De Materia Medica. The term is now largely obsolete as a technical expression, although it survives in some academic contexts.