Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (review)

This book reconstructs the activities of the Florentine apothecary shop al Giglio at the end of the fifteenth century through a careful analysis of the accounts of its retail sales. The work represents an important chapter in the long history of the production, preparation, marketing, and regulation of drugs, though in this case study the authors go a good deal further than that. They take the Giglio as a vantage point from which to observe Florence of that time and enquire into scientific, social, and commercial behaviors during a period of drastic changes. The book is the result of a process of cross-fertilization occurring among widely disparate historiographic fields. Drawing on the history of medicine, material culture, and consumption, the authors develop an innovative approach thanks to which “classical sources” reveal new potential.

Readers of the book are led on a fascinating tour both inside and outside the shop through the social, political, professional, and scientific context in which the Giglio was rooted. In order to re-create this complex universe, the authors weave their way among a series of complementary perspectives, each of which corresponds to a different section of the book. The first section adopts a spatial approach. Here, the authors examine the relationship between the apothecary shop and the city—both topographically and in terms of relation, while shedding light on the citizenry’s expectations as well as on their relationship with power. But they also analyze the structure and organization of the shop, revealing the dynamics of relationships that existed among the Giglio’s personnel and with the public outside the shop. The particular nature of the merchandise sold and the processes connected with it, especially the ad personam assembly of medicines on the basis of the clients’ needs and specific health profiles, had the effect of making the shop a place where communication and negotiation occurred among physicians, patients, and apothecaries, but also among political and intellectual agents. In the second section the authors “people” (p. 81) the spaces mentioned above. They proceed to define the heterogeneous clientele—both individuals and institutions—and their economic behaviors, providing important indications on how the population of Florence perceived medicine, especially therapeutics. Credit appeared to be the supporting pillar that underlay economic exchange within a complex system of guarantees in which good relations could often prove to be more useful than economic means. Finally, the authors go on to study the groups of products sold and their patterns of consumption. The diverse nature of these products makes it difficult to apply anachronistic market categories and disciplines to a complex space such as the apothecary’s. Every type of merchandise sold—wax, spices, sugar, and medicines—corresponded to specific groups of consumers and economic behaviors that only partially overlapped. Some products were associated with specific moments, for example, wax with death, in a complex web of ceremonial and devotional practices and claims of status. Sugar, spices, and derivatives were also an important category of goods at a time when, in spite of becoming more affordable, they did not lose their appeal, and enjoyed renewed popularity because of the therapeutic properties attributed to them. Finally, the analysis takes a look at medicines, the sale of which constituted the core of drug business. By studying sales trends, the authors reflect on both medical theory and medical practice. The types of medicines marketed and an examination of how they were prepared, sold, and consumed gives a very complex picture. The apothecary shop supplied a vast range of products that met the needs of different social strata, their possibility of obtaining them, and the characteristics of individual patients in a context in which the personalization of drugs remained a crucial element.

While the sources used are essentially those that were issued by the Giglio for its specific needs, the study has the merit of showing that the relationship with drugs and medicine for both shop and client was not...