Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

The surprise visitation was carried out a physician and an
apothecary. The physicians, surgeons, midwives and barbers would
then be examined and if found satisfactory given licences or
certificates. The apothecaries had to produce their prescription
register to ensure that all were carried out according to the
Neapolitan Pharmacopoeia. He would then have to swear to show all
simple and compounded drugs and herbs, so that it could be certain
that they had all the required elements. All the herbs were examined
by the inspecting apothecary and if found not good they were
rejected and burnt.
‘If it is necessary to gather information against any subject in serious
and important cases, such as of bad medicines which caused death,
crippling or bodily damage, we order that in like cases you do not
impose financial penalties, as they are corporal cases. Instead you
will send the information to us, folded and sealed, to that, having sent
it, we can administer the tool of punishment to the delinquents, as an
example to others.’
The protomedicati faded out in the nineteenth century finally stopping
in Spain in 1822 and in Italy in 1870. (Originally available, but no
longer so at:
www.le.ac.uk/history/deg2/medicine/neapolitanprotomedicato.htm)
1586 ‘A New Herball or Historie of Plants’ by Rembert Dodoens, physician
to the Emperor. Imprinted in London by Ninian Newton. Originally
written in German it was translated into French and this was
translated into English by Henrie Lyte. Each herb is described under
the headings: the kinds, the description, the nature, the virtues and
the dangers. This one of the earliest herbals to deal systematically
with the adverse effects.
Opium: The dangers ‘The use of poppy is very evil and
dangerous, and especially opium, the which taken excessively, or
too often applied upon the flesh outwardly, or otherwise without good
consideration and advice, it will cause a man to sleep too much, as
though he had the lethargy, which is the forgetful sickness, and
brings foolish and doting fancies, it corrupts the sense and
understanding brings palsy, and in time it kills the body.’
Hellebore ‘White hellebore, which some call sneezing-powder, a
strong purger upward, which many reject, as being too violent:
Mesue and Averroes will not admit of it, “by reason of danger of
suffocation,” “great pain and trouble it puts the poor patient to,” saith
Dodonæus.’