Page 7 - Pharmacy History 31 Mar 2007

A traveller’s diary
Christine Clancy MPS
Christine Clancy, a NSW pharmacist, together with her medical practitioner husband and an art historian, were the guides for a History of Medicine and Pharmacy tour travelling from Venice to London in September 2006. The tour was run by Australians Studying Abroad P/L, a Melbourne based travel group with links to Monash University.
The aim of the tour was to to explore the intersection between art, culture and society, with the science of medicine and pharmacy, and followed the route taken by the Black Death in the 14th century. They visited hospitals, universities, medical museums, pharmacies and physic gardens. At the same time the group was able to look at Renaissance culture and medical and scientific advances from that time.
This report is enough to whet anyone’s appetite with an interest in the evolution of pharmacy and medicine to explore some of the places that we have read about and wondered about, and information about future tours is at the end of this article.
Venice, with its university town, Padua, was a logical starting point, as Venice was an entry port for the Black Death into Europe.
In Padua and later, Pisa, with visits
to the first two European university- based Physic Gardens (PG), we saw evidence of the importance of plants in medicine. Finding healing powers in plants is an ancient idea and plants have always been used for this specific purpose. No one knows of the first purpose-designed herbal or physic garden.
From the 5th to 11th centuries
AD, following the fall of Rome, knowledge of medicinal plants
from ancient Greek and Roman times was lost to Western Europe. However most of this knowledge was retained, added to and used in the Islamic academic centres of Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Andalusia. From about the 12th century, as
Arab armies travelled across north Africa, this knowledge began to filter back into Europe, through centres
of learning in Salerno, Palermo, Montpellier and Toledo. From Salerno we know of Donnolo, a Jewish scholar who published his Antidotarium. Salerno also produced Regimen sanitatis, a collection of dietary and pharmaceutical rules which ran into more than 300
Guide at the PISA Botanic Garden, showing a seed Pod from the museum exhibition
volume 3 ■ no 31 ■ MARCH 2007
Pharmacy History Australia ■ 7
editions (I have the edition from 1506!). Regulations decreed in 1231 and 1240 by Frederick II, Emperor of Germany and King of the Two Sicilys, facilitated the production
of new herbals. These regulations limited the number of pharmacists; stated that medicines must be
made up by two pharmacists under supervision of a Master of Medicine; and forbade doctors selling medicines themselves (and they were to denounce any cheating pharmacists!). While these regulatory proposals had little effect, they set the scene for later developments.
Monasteries throughout Europe continued up until modern times to cultivate herbs and produce herbal handbooks for basic
medical practice. These herbals in Latin or the vernacular language, provided prescriptions for remedies using mainly indigenous plants. Renaissance ideas brought major changes, with profound effects on medicine and pharmacy. Herbals of higher quality and greater accuracy of text and illustration could be produced and circulated in large
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