Pharmacopoeia, in its contemporary technical sense, is a book containing directions for the recognition of samples and the preparation of compound medicines, and published by the ability of a government or a medical or pharmaceutical society. The name has also been applied to identical compendiums issued by private individuals.

The first work of the kind published under government authority appears to have been that of Nuremberg in 1542; a passing student named Valerius Cordus showed a group of medical receipts, which he had chosen from the writings of the most eminent medical authorities, to the physicians of the town, who urged him to print it for the profit of the apothecaries, and obtained for his work the sanction of the senatus.

A previous work, known as the Antidotarium Florentinum, had been published below the authority of the college of medicine of Florence. The phrase pharmacopoeia first appears as a separate title in a work published at Basel in 1561 by Dr A. Foes, but does not show to have come into common use until the beginning of the 17th century. Before 1542 the works chiefly used by apothecaries were the treatises on simples by Avicenna and Serapion; the De synonymis and Quid pro quo of Simon Januensis; the Liber servitoris of Bulchasim Ben Aberazerim, which described the arrangements made from plants, animals and minerals, and was the type of the chemical portion of new pharmacopoeias; and the Antidotarium of Nicolaus de Salerno, containing Galenical compounds set alphabetically.

International Pharmacopoeia - Increased facilities for travel have brought into better prominence the importance of an approach to consistency in the formulae of the more powerful remedies, in order to avoid danger to patients when a prescription is dispensed in a dissimilar country from that in which it was written. Attempts have been complete by international pharmaceutical and medical conferences to resolve a basis on which an international pharmacopoeia could be organized, but due to national jealousies and the attempt to include too several preparations nothing has yet been achieved.