materia medica

Materia medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing. Nowadays we would call these drugs. In Latin, the term literally means "medical matters".The term was used from the period of the Roman Empire until the twentieth century, but has now been generally replaced in medical education contexts by pharmacology.One of the best-known early uses of the term was in the title of a work by the Greek physician Dioscorides in the first century A.D., entitled de materia medica libri quinque (concerning medical matter in five volumes). This famous commentary covered about 600 plant drugs plus a number of therapeutically useful animal and mineral products.
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Materia med·i·ca n. The branch of medical science that deals with the origin, preparation, dosage, and administration of drugs. [more]Materia medica - Community and Resources

Noun
1. the science or study of drugs: their preparation and properties and uses and effects
(synonym) pharmacology, pharmacological medicine
(hypernym) medicine, medical specialty
(hyponym) pharmacokinetics
(class) adjuvant

materia medica

That branch of medical science which treats of the nature and properties of all the substances that are employed for the cure of diseases.
  

Material or substance used in the composition of remedies; -- a general term for all substances used as curative agents in medicine.