pharmacists in bruges in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Evelien Vanden Berghe
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. -I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old. A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896 The pharmacist’s profession grew out of that of the grocer-druggist. Practitioners belonged to the ‘Neeringhe van de Cruydhalle’, had premises in the municipal market hall and were meesseniers or traders. They sold spices, confectionery and dried fruit. Over time, some of them began to produce their own preparations in addition to selling them, marking the first steps into the profession of pharmacist. That profession gradually became more official:
a series of municipal by-laws were introduced to regulate and standardise the sector. The first ordinance concerning pharmacists dates from the late fifteenth century (1497) and focused on the control of their preparations. It was above all in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, that a whole series of new regulations were imposed. A later by-law of 1582 specifies that pharmacists had first to complete a threeyear apprenticeship and undergo a test of their knowledge. This approach not only enhanced the quality of pharmacists’ training, it also gave customers a degree of confidence in their abilities. The key development was in 1697, when the first Bruges pharmacopoeia appeared. The pu-
blication of this official list of medicines, their effects and instructions for use, did not proceed smoothly. Pharmacists objected especially to the stringent regulation not only of the preparations themselves, but also the price they were permitted to charge for them. To make matters worse, rather than a pharmacist it was – horror of horrors – the physician Dr Vanden Zande who drew up the pharmacopoeia. An ordinance dating from 1760 refers to a new, second, pharmacopoeia, but no trace of this has so far been found. The key innovation did not occur until the eighteenth century, when the Collegium Medicum was founded to regulate the medical professions and on which there were two permanent seats for pharmacists. Meanwhile, there had been a pharmacy in the
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