Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy.

This article examines the role of testing and innovation in sixteenthcentury Italian pharmacy. I argue that apothecaries were less concerned with testing drugs for efficacy or creating novel products than with reactivating an older Mediterranean pharmacological tradition and studying the materials on which it relied. Their practice was not driven by radical experimentation but by a "culture of tweaking"-of minute operational changes to existing recipes and accommodation of their textual variants-which was rooted in the guild economy fostering incremental over radical innovation and in a humanist reevaluation of past autorities. Workshop practice was also increasingly driven by a new ideal of staying true to nature fostered by the period's botanical renaissance. This led to an emphasis on ingredients over processes in the shop, and found clearest expression in the elaboration of a taxonomic "language of truth" that helped apothecaries discern between authentic and inauthentic materia medica and harness their sincerity in lieu of testing effectiveness.

Henri Bocquillon-Limousin (1856-1917).

A pharmacist facinated by materia medica Henri Bocquillon-Limousin (1856-1917) get married with the daughter of Stanislas Limousin in 1885. After being graduated from pharmacy high school of Paris, he joined the laboratory of Jungfleisch. Afterwards, he briefly worked in the municipal laboratory of Paris and then he turned to a pharmacy activity. He took up the pharmacy of his father in law in 1887. His research was mainly directed to materia medica and valorization of colonial medicinal plants. Thanks to a well expanded network of associates, he managed to obtain an important collection of medicinal plants which is actually preserved in "Francois Tillequin museum - Collections of materia medica" in the faculty of pharmacy of Paris. H. Bocquillon-Limousin is also well known for his numerous editions of Formulaire des medicaments nouveaux and his books in the field of material medica.

[The opinion of Herman Boerhaave on medicines, through a non-authorized book]. / Les conceptions d'Herman Boerhaave sur les médicaments, à travers un ouvrage non autorisé: le Traité de la Vertu des Medicamens.

The treatise of the Virtue of medicines - Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) was a well known physician from Leiden, who was essentially known in France for the syndrome that received his name and for three of his books, which had been translated in French, and had much success during the 18th century, Elements of Chemistry, Aphorisms and Materia Medica. There was also a fourth book, The Treatise of the Virtue of Medicines, redacted by his students from notes taken during his lessons, which was translated in French in 1729. This volume, in in-8e format, of 471 pages, did not have the same success as his other books. It is anyway very interesting, because it shows that Boerhaave, even if he were Professor of Chemistry was not at all an iatrochemist but behaved as an iatromechanic.

[Alchemy, freemasonry and homeopathy]. / Alchimie, franc-maçonnerie et homéopathie.

In this article we are showing that homeopathic doctrine has really esoteric and occult origins as it was suspected by a few authors, nevertheless we saw Hahnemann also using scientific writers. As early as twenty-two years old Hahnemann was initiate in the freemasonry, very in vogue at that time. He will be life long attached to it and will keep close to distinguished freemasons. Freemasonry has conveid enlightement philosophical ideas as well as occult, alchemical and theosophical ones by successive incursion of very different orders. Among these we can find a few rosicrucians orders. At the beginning of 17th century in Germany, the first rosicrucians authors appealed to Paracelse, and the first members of their legendary fraternity manifested their contempt for the practice of transmutation into gold and must devote themselves to gratuitous medical practice (famous utopia). Freemasonry took again these philanthropic views so that Hahnemann was certainly involved to the ideas of Paracelse and his followers through the Rosicrucians which played a substantial part within freemasonry before homeopathy rose.

[Lady's work and bestseller: the remedies of Madame Fouquet]. / Ouvrage de Dame et succès de librairie: les remèdes de Madame Fouquet.

During the 17th century, Mrs Fouquet who was the mother of the minister of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, was a charitable Lady who prepared medicines and distributed these remedies to poor people. One of her sons, Louis, who was the bishop of Agde, decided to publish his mother's formulas. He asked his own doctor, named Delescure, to carry out the edition of the formulas he had collected from his mother. The book was first published in 1675, and it twas published again more than fifty times, until 1765. This book was very useful for charitable Ladies and clergymen who purchased poor people with medicines.

[What was Montpellier's theriac]. / Ce que fut la thériaque de Montpellier.

The long-lasting fame of Montpellier's theriac does not come from the originality of its composition. In the Middle Ages, its formula followed Antidotarium Nicolai's while, in the modern period, it copied Galen's. This fame is explained by the reputation of the medical University, by the dynamism of its apothecaries and by the strength of Montpellier's trade networks.

[The theriac Diatessaron; oligopharmacy against polypharmacy]. / La thériaque Diatessaron Oligopharmacie contre polypharmacie.

The theriac of Andromachus was the symbol of polypharmacy and the theriac Diatessaron was a product of oligopharmacy. The four substances that entered in its composition were gentian roots, aritolochia roots, sweet bays and myrrh. The excipient, honey, was sometimes replaced by peppermint syrup. It was possible to add juniper berries extract. Symbolic interest of number four was confirmed by a reference to the four elements of Empedocles. The pharmacological activity, which was attributed to the diaressaron, was not very different from those of the great theriac. Since the end of 18th century, this theriac began to loose its prestige.

[At the origin of the theriac: the receipt of Andromachus]. / Aux origines de la thériaque: la recette d'Andromaque.

The Greek physician Galen of Pergamum (129-c. 210) has preserved in his two tracts De antidotis and De theriaca ad Pisonem the original recipe of the theriac under the name of Andromachus. Galen specifies that Andromachus was the first to add flesh of vipers in this pharmacological preparation. This paper intends to study the real originality of Andromachus compared with his predecessors and to examine in which sense he can really be considered as the inventor of the theriac.

[Theriac in modern period (XVIIth-XXth centuries)]. / La thériaque à l'époque moderne (XVIIe au XXe siècle).

After centuries of fluctuant usages, the theriac, this kind of universal drug to cure everything, was popular again starting from the XVIIth century and it will remain at the official french pharmacopea up to 1908. Viper was one of the key components, which was an opportunity for several authors to discuss about its real therapeutic value. Amont the tens of constituants of theriac, opium, in large quantities, was also an important part of this "électuaire". Its success was at the origin of many formulations (such as poors' theriac and celestial theriac), and falsifications, the most famous being the "Orvietan", driving pharmacists to produce it themselves. Counterfeiting being frequent, it became usual to prepare theriac publicly up to the french Revolution. Very much criticized, as a symbol of polypharmacy more and more rejected, theriac will progressively disappear during the XIXth century, sometime replaced nowadays by new universal drugs outside the pharmaceutical network.

Drugs held and sold by pharmacists of the Jewish community of medieval (11-14th centuries) Cairo according to lists of materia medica found at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah collection, Cambridge.

The importance of the Genizah for the research of the medieval Mediterranean communities, supplying information on almost every aspect of life, is well known among historian. Less known is that pharmacy was the most popular of all branches of the healing art in the medieval Jewish community of Cairo, according to the Genizah manuscripts. Sources for study of medieval practical drugs are extremely rare since most records naturally vanish over the years, and only some medical books, which contained theoretical pharmacology, have survived to the present day. Drugs lists enable us to understand medieval practical pharmacy and to reconstruct their inventories. This study reports on 71 original drugs lists that were found in the Genizah; they are different from merchants' letters dealing with commerce in drugs and give no instructions for the use or preparation of formulas as usually found in prescriptions. Twenty-six lists are written in Judeo-Arabic and 45 in Arabic, none of the lists is written in Hebrew. The longest list contains 63 identified substances. These lists were apparently used by pharmacists for professional and business purposes as inventories of drugs, records, orders, or even receipts. Two hundred and six different drugs are mentioned in the drugs lists of which 167 are of plant origin, 16 are of animal origin, and the remaining 23 are inorganic. The lists point directly to the place they occupied on the shelves of the pharmacies that could be found in the lanes and alleys of the Jewish quarter of Cairo. The most frequently mentioned substance were myrobalan (27), pepper and saffron (21), lentisk (15), almond, basil, rose, rosemary (14), cattle products, camphor and spikenard (13).

[Claude Bernard - then and now]. / Claude Bernard ­ hier et aujourd'hui.

The early life of Claude Bernard - dreamer and frustrated playwright - reveals no indication of his future scientific aptitude. Cartesian doubt, a principle that he would adhere to lifelong, clouded a failed pharmacy apprenticeship that led to medical studies in Paris - but without great success. Research was his only aim, it was made possible only by a lucrative but unsuccessful arranged marriage. His passion for work and over-riding principles of truth and proof would ultimately allow him to stand out from his peers with recognition by multiple French professional societies - and the wider scientific world. In today's world, the two centuries-long practice of homeopathy illustrates his abhorrence of ''practice without proof'': a dominance by economic factors that is apparent in cancer chemotherapy, where new drug approval is often based on statistics rather than genuine clinical benefit. Bernard was indeed sceptical about the (ab)use of statistics - a caution even more necessary today. His experimental method stands out as a signal principle in research. This was cleverly taken out of context by Emile Zola, who used it to support his ideas on the literary naturalism that appeared in his Rougon-Macquart cycle of books - and that led him to dedicate his book, Le Roman Expérimental, to Claude Bernard himself.

[Wilhelm Heinrich Schüssler's healing system "Biochemie" and its further development by Dietrich Schöpwinkel]. / Das "biochemische" Heilverfahren nach Wilhelm Heinrich Schüssler und seine Weiterentwicklung durch Dietrich Schöpwinkel.

The German Physician Wilhelm Schüssler (1821-1898) developed a healing system called "Biochemie". Basically it had merely the character of a substitution therapy with mineral compounds and was based on physiological considerations by Jakob Moleschott (1822-1893) and Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) which were fundamental for the development of the scientific discipline of biochemistry as well. Schüssler himself, however, who had been educated in homoeopathy, introduced more and more immaterial or "biodynamic" explanations for the therapeutic effect of the mineral salt preparations. This attempt was continued by his successors, namely by Dietrich (called Dieter) Schöpwinkel (1876-1946) who enriched the system with new preparations as well as several theoretical aspects strongly related to the dynamic approach.

[On the concept of bencao].

Being the typical traditional Chinese pharmacy closely related with medicine, Bencao is a knowledge of extensive contents including what is presently called Chinese materia medica. It also has a systematic theory and valuable experience of practice. Today Bencao is still of practical significance for medical and health work in our country.