Drug expertise and drug experts in Antiquity, Oriental Middle Ages and Occidental Renaissance : knowledge, know-how and social impact
Résumé
Ancient physicians such as Dioscorides and Galen write treatises about materia medica, drug classification and use. They often relate their personal experience in collecting medicinal substances. Paramedical drug specialists are rare: Galen mentions servants acting under his guidance, or sellers of medicinal components; but he is the specialist. The target audience of pharmacological treatises and drug narratives is mostly physicians or at least people with a comparable social status.
In the Oriental Medieval world, physicians continue to be the drug experts and to write pharmacological treatises. However, physicians as well as patients must buy their drugs at the market, from druggists. Druggists’ social and economic position is regarded as extremely important by the authorities; hence a specialized police or muḥtasib, which controls drugs, prevents cheating, and establishes the relation between the expertise of physicians and the know-how of druggists.
The Renaissance humanists (such as Leonhart Fuchs and Conrad Gesner) translate and comment on Dioscorides and Galen, teach medicine or write treatises on medicinal substances, targeting students and physicians. They recognize the qualifications of druggists, whose competence depends on their understanding of Greek authors.
We will examine the difference of social and economic status between drug experts and physicians; the ways physicians speak to druggists: terminology, instructions, assessment of their work; the relationship between trade activity and know-how; and a gender issue: the physician’s point of view on druggists compared to midwives, both paramedics who possess know-how and skill.
Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
---|