Greek pharmakon meant drug in both senses: remedy and toxin. The same root gives pharmacy, pharmacist, and pharmaceutics. Ancient writers used the ambiguity knowingly; whether a pharmakon healed or harmed depended on dose and use.
Assessment: Fully documented. Modern toxicology's first principle, the dose makes the poison, was baked into the word 2,500 years ago.
Interesting claims
Pharmakeia and the sorcery charge
Some religious readings note that the New Testament Greek pharmakeia is often translated "sorcery," and claim this proves scripture condemns medicine itself. Viral in anti-medicine circles.
Assessment: A misuse of the lexicon. Pharmakeia referred to potion-mixing in ritual practice, not physicians, and ancient Christians used doctors freely. The word's ambiguity is real; the conclusion built on it is not.
Stories
Circe and the potion women
The old stories kept the ambiguity: Circe, called polypharmakos, knowing in many drugs, turned men to swine with a cup; Thessalian witches drew down the moon with herbs; Medea brewed age out of bodies. Pharmacy and sorcery were one profession before they were two.
Assessment: Documented as Greek myth and as social history: herbalists, midwives, and poisoners really did occupy one ambiguous social role for centuries, which the witch trials later helped resolve by fire.