Sergio Attanasio and Antonio Lavecchia present «From Apothecaries to Pharmacists»

The richly illustrated volume of over 300 pages describes the fascinating developments of the Pharmaceutical Art and follows its fundamental stages from Prehistory to the early 1900s, telling the stories of the men and women involved in the extraordinary evolution of this science. An excursus, which starts from the archaic practices of the doctor-apothecary-sorcerer, passing through the teaching of Hippocrates and medieval beliefs and superstitions, up to the triumph of knowledge and techniques accomplished between the 1800s and 1900s, which not only helps to understand the evolution of substances for therapeutic use in their history, but also traces the complex path that the apothecary and pharmacist profession has had over the centuries, its autonomy, its cultural and human baggage, its level of knowledge that be widely differentiated.

We also wanted to investigate, also through archival documents, the organization of the pharmaceutical profession in Naples: the Statutes, Regulations and Pragmatics of Medicine Apothecaries, the regulation of the production and distribution of Theriaca, the provisions for the Government of the Pharmaceutical Profession up to the Neapolitan Pharmaceutical Association and the Order of Pharmacists of Naples, the first to be established in Italy.

Through ancient city guides, old photos and paper documents, the diffusion of Pharmacies from the Historic Center to Chiaja is analyzedin via Toledo and in the villages from the mid-1800s to the early 1930s. Also illustrated are the unpublished ancient artistic furnishings of Ferrante Imperato’s Spezierie in Santa Chiara (1566), of Giuseppe De Martino at Seggio di Nido (1686), of the Santa Casa degli Incurabili (1751) and of the Finizio apothecary in Sorrento (1789). . The latter two fortunately still exist. Finally, the set of furniture, tools, historiated vases and medicines from the apothecaries between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. All this also with a view to safeguarding what still remains of this artistic heritage often put into crisis by the new demands of the pharmaceutical profession.

In creating this work, recourse was made to ancient texts, composed of pharmacopoeias, formularies, dispensaries, treatises on chemistry, physics and medicine which over the centuries have accompanied the work and profession of apothecaries and pharmacists. Through these forays, common threads have emerged, such as the need to protect the discipline, the need to disseminate knowledge, love for the health of others, the difficulty in spreading scientific knowledge, the need to do so for protection of the apothecary profession and for the health of the sick, with the sensitivity not to neglect a millenary scientific and artistic heritage.