From the Greek Medical Manuscripts of the Ottoman Empire to the Pharmacopoeia I of the Greek State: Pharmacy and Political Change in Southeastern Europe

Résumé 0

The article studies the transition from the medical manuscripts that circulatedas a means of knowledge preservation and professional regulation in the early modernGreek world to the first edited pharmacopoeia of the Greek state in 1837. The transitionis examined in parallel to the changes in the political, scientific and professional domainsattested in southeastern Europe from the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenthcenturies. After an overview of the Greek state’s legal interventions in the pharmaceuticaltrade, in the context of which the pharmacopoeia was promulgated, and of the efforts totranslate the pharmaceutical terms by court physicians and pharmacists, the article comparesthe materia medica of the Ελληνική Φαρμακοποιΐα (Greek Pharmacopoeia) with that of twomedical manuscripts that circulated in the period before the formation of the Greek state. Bystudying the process of incorporation and/or exclusion of pharmaceutical ingredients duringthe establishment of a new legal culture and of a more formal way of regulating pharmacy inthe southeastern Balkans, the article discusses important issues in the history of pharmacy,especially its relationship to politics, ideology and professional rivalries.