'the eternal pharmacy ... created for the eternal patient'

'Medicine a dream! I doubt whether the pharmacopolists and master-apothecaries could resist stoning you if they were here. You deny, then, the influence of philtres on the blood and unguents on the flesh! You deny the eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals we call the world, expressly created for the eternal patient we call man!'

—Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame of Paris (1831) (trans. John Sturrock 1978)