Rosettes and Astrology

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I think this is plausible. The only issue is, history would have recorded such a miracle apothecary, with a strange magic book. Yet we have no such description of anyone.

At any moment in the past there must have been tens (hundreds?) of thousands of such swindlers. In fact, every physician in the Middle Ages was necessarily a fraud 90% of the time.  Prescribing bloodletting for anemia, mercury as elixir of long life, etc.  

And the same for many priests of all faiths -- only with amulets, relics, and prayers rather than medicines. 

Even today.  Check the TV or YouTube for plentiful examples.

For most patients the remedy or prayer would not help, or make things worse. Those failures would of course be blamed on the disease itself.  But some patients would become healthy again, independently (or in spite of) the remedy or prayer.  Then the healer would of course claim the merit for that.  Payments and donations from those few patients would still make the job profitable.

Only very few of those charlatans were recorded in history -- not for their miraculous cures, but for being associated with kings and other famous people, or for having written books.

All the best, --stolfi

(I read somewhere that sometime in China patients paid their doctors only while they were healthy, not when they were sick. And I read somewhere that in some parts of Western Eurasia patients pay their doctors all the time, whether they are  healthy or sick.  Even the latter policy seem to be smarter than paying your doctor only when you are sick.  But I am a dumb cynical socialist, what do I know...)