Making and taking theriac: an experimental and sensory approach to the history of medicine

Abstract

This paper explores historically used medicaments by making them, or rather reworking them, in a modern laboratory and assessing them for taste, flavour and odour using sensory analysis and a trained panel of sensory assessors. Our test subject is the famous panacea theriac andromachalis, which is subjected to the methods of experimental history of science to create experimental data. We emphasize the importance of the sensory experience, in both the making and the taking of theriac. From antiquity and well into the nineteenth century, medical practitioners and patients held that the sensory qualities of medicaments were of significance. But sensory information is notoriously difficult to transmit textually, and today we know very little about the sensory characteristics of theriac, and other medicines of the past. This is a problematic lacuna in our knowledge of how actors perceived and used them. By choosing the reworking and sensory framework, we can approach early modern pharmacy both as a craft and as a creative process. Thus our study emphasizes the artisanal, or craft, aspect of medicine making. It indicates how the art of medicine making was integrated with and connected to a medical practice which relied heavily on direct sensory assessments of medicaments, disease and patients. Our purpose is, however, not to try to find out how historical medicine makers and patients ‘really felt’ when they experienced the act of smelling and tasting medicines. Our aim is rather to discuss what the sensory experience of making and tasting adds to the investigation of textual sources. Thus, by attempting to access information about the experience of medicine through experimental means, we aim to enrich and complement historical understanding of the medicines and medical theories of the past.

Pietro Pomponazzi and the Renaissance Theory of the Elements

“…For a more detailed exposition, see Burzelli,«A 'Heated' Debate»,and Burzelli,La natura e Aristotele insegnano, Pomponazzi's position will be scrutinised in detail later on in the analysis of his quaestiones (infra, T.5, p. 234, ll. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…p. 334. Further investigations into the intensification of qualities in the mixing process will be explored the following year in Petri Pomponatii De reactione,I,3, 97 Infra, T. 3, p. 198, ll. 27-31.…”

“…In the De anima, Aristotle had identified three faculties of the human soul -namely vegetative, sensitive, and rational -hierarchically arranged (De an. II,3,. Aristotle had later specified that the possession of the rational soul also includes within it the two lower faculties, which, although corrupted, remain in potency (De an.…”

“…Aristotle had later specified that the possession of the rational soul also includes within it the two lower faculties, which, although corrupted, remain in potency (De an. II,3,414 b 30;. The issue of the virtual presence of the lower souls in the intellectual soul had been analysed extensively in the Middle Ages as well.…”

“…The few manuscript materials generally available to scholars today have been published by Antonino Poppi, Bruno Nardi, Massimiliano Chianese, Stefano Preface VIII Perfetti, and Vittoria Perrone Compagni, who made available the texts -complete or partial -of some of Pomponazzi's university lectures. 3 Despite these meritorious editions, which required time and toil in reconstructing and commenting on the texts, it must be admitted that the amount of work still to be undertaken on Pomponazzi's lectures is immense. As Antonino Poppi pointed out in 1966, in the introduction to his edition of Pomponazzi's Expositio libelli De substantia orbis, «other physical and metaphysical issues of the Mantuan professor remain to be studied, but this work would require diligent research and editions of his numerous lectures, still unpublished, in order not to limit oneself to repeating the usual, hastily evaluative judgements».…”