Article ID: CBB349622990

Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy (2017)

unapi

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.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB349622990/

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Authors & Contributors
Macchio, Marina
Camana, Carla
Riva, Ernesto
Caccioppoli, Carmen
Buscaroli, Giulia
Rispoli, Gennaro
Concepts
Pharmacy
Apothecaries
Medicine
Therapeutics
Physicians; doctors
Theriaca
Time Periods
17th century
16th century
Renaissance
18th century
Early modern
Medieval
Places
Italy
Florence (Italy)
Bologna (Italy)
Venice (Italy)
Tuscany (Italy)
Padua (Italy)
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