Geschichte der Pharmazie. Vol. 1, Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (review)

Rudolf Schmitz, with the assistance of Franz-Josef Kuhlen. Geschichte der Pharmazie. Vol. 1, Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters. Eschborn, Germany: Govi Press, 1998. xxv + 836 pp. DM 198.00; Sw. Fr. 176.00; öS 1,445.00.

This study of the history of pharmacy, from its beginnings until the end of the Middle Ages, is a fitting monument to the late Dr. Rudolf Schmitz, who died in 1992. Schmitz, founder and director of the Institute for the History of Pharmacy at the University of Marburg, played a dominant role in the academic recognition of the history of pharmacy and trained a generation of pharmaceutical historians. He was Doktorvater to more than 120 students whose dissertations he inspired and supervised.

This present volume is the first of two that Dr. Schmitz planned. It was completed and prepared for publication by his student and colleague, Franz-Josef Kuhlen. There is only one other work that covers the subject intensively, the Geschichte der Pharmazie of Hermann Schelenz, published in Berlin in 1904. Schelenz's tremendous research produced a volume that was essentially a collection of data chronologically arranged and well organized. Schmitz's study is, in contrast, the work of an analytical historian who places his subject within its cultural, philosophical, economic, and political milieu. Moreover, Schmitz's work reflects the research of the last century, a good deal of it by his students and under his direction for twenty-five years, and his own labors in the field. The magnitude of this endeavor is indicated by no fewer than 185 closely printed pages of bibliography and an index of almost 50 pages.

Thus the book presents an awesome display of knowledge and research. The history of pharmacy--largely the history of the materia medica, and of pharmaceutical functions as part of the history of medicine until pharmacy was separated from medicine--is completely covered, from the animism of prehistoric man to the highly developed Arzneitaxen (official price lists) in German at the end of the fifteenth century, and beyond. Six hundred pages are devoted to a comprehensive survey that is impressive not only for its reliable and thorough treatment, but for Schmitz's approach to history. He recognizes that the history of pharmacy did not develop in a vacuum, but that it is part of the cultural history of mankind; the introduction emphasizes that this was a fundamental concept in his teaching and writing, and the rest of the book makes it quite clear. Thus Schmitz discusses not only Plato and Aristotle, but the whole gamut of Greek philosophers, and his 33-page introduction to late medieval European pharmacy is devoted to the philosophers of the era, from the Scholastics to the Nominalists. Similarly, the chapter on the "development of the institution of the pharmacy" begins with some five pages on the general history and economy of the medieval city. There is no skimping, either, with the literature of pharmacy, from the Ebers Papyrus of 1550 b.c. through the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, and western European savants: the contributions and influence of each are covered in considerable detail.

The first part of the book, which covers the premedieval developments, includes the contributions of the Arabs. Their accomplishments in alchemy and chemistry, in pharmaceutical formulations, in hospitals, in the origin of an independent pharmacist who performed the totality of pharmaceutical activities, and in the establishment of the private pharmacy shop, are all spelled out. Schmitz maintains that the separation of pharmacy from medicine began in the Arab hospitals.

The second part, on European pharmacy after 1300, presented the historian with a formidable task. The innumerable towns and cities, monasteries, bishoprics, principalities of one kind or another, and later kingdoms, had their own particular medical and pharmaceutical institutions and regulations. Thus Schmitz is forced to treat the major cities...