Showing posts with label apothecary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apothecary. Show all posts

Saturday, February 18, 2023

Guild of Pepperers

The Guild of Pepperers was established as early as 1180, and was responsible for the quality of spices and the setting of weights and measures related to spices. Pepper was a popular spice in Medieval Europe. Found originally on the Malabar Coast of India, it was spread to other regions. The dried cubebs were easy to transport without spoiling; added to dishes, either whole or ground, they brought a new flavor to Mediterranean and European cuisine.

Pliny, however, complained about pepper in his Natural History:

It is quite surprising that the use of pepper has come so much into fashion, seeing that in other substances which we use, it is sometimes their sweetness, and sometimes their appearance that has attracted our notice; whereas, pepper has nothing in it that can plead as a recommendation to either fruit or berry, its only desirable quality being a certain pungency; and yet it is for this that we import it all the way from India! Who was the first to make trial of it as an article of food? and who, I wonder, was the man that was not content to prepare himself by hunger only for the satisfying of a greedy appetite?

He also claimed that Rome spent 50 million sesterces a year on pepper!

The Guild of Pepperers managed prices and purity for not only spices like pepper, but also herbs, perfumes, drugs, and even sweets. This variety led to the name of the guild changing in 1345 to the Worshipful Company of Grocers of London. The illustration is their coat of arms.

Many of their members, however, were more than grocers; they fell into the category of what we would call apothecaries, and in 1617 this group formed their own Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. This Guild still exists today.

The Worshipful Company of Grocers of London, however, had its chief purpose taken over by Customs and Excise after 1666. Now they are mostly a charitable organization. Their headquarters, the Grocer's Hall, is where they receive and process applications for grants and scholarships. They are still one of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies.

...and what, you might ask, are the Great Twelve City Livery Companies, and are they important? I'll talk about that next time.

Friday, February 17, 2023

The Medieval Drugstore

The Ancient Greek ἀποθήκη (apothḗkē, "storehouse") became Latin apotheca and gave us the English word apothecary, used for both the place one would go to find pharmaceutical preparations and for the pharmacist himself who made the medicines to sell to doctors or directly to people requesting them. Apothecaries were also sources of medical advice for the common people. (Kings and wealthy folk had personal physicians.)

The apothecary was a source of many, many substances used either alone or in combination. Typical medical materials were herbs familiar to the modern seeker of comfort, such as chamomile, garlic, mint, or witch hazel. Less familiar as medicinal sources were dung, urine, animal fats, and even saliva. All these might be used in the production of materia medica, medicine.

The apothecary, as an expert in chemistry, was also a source of non-medicinal products: cosmetics, perfumes, dyes, and soaps.

Apothecary shops existed thousands of years before Chaucer, who wrote in The Canterbury Tales:

    Though in this toun is noon apothecarie,
    I shal myself to herbes techen yow,
    That shul been for youre hele and for youre prow.


    [Though in this town there is no apothecary,
    I myself shall teach you herbs
    That shall be for your health and for your pride.]

Apothecaries became more and more respected over time, and finally gained their own livery company, the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, in 1617. That was not their first time in a guild, however: in 1617, they broke away from their original guild, the 12th century Guild of Pepperers. I'll tell you about them tomorrow.