Monardes, Nicolás
First edition of this exceptionally rare and early Spanish medical and pharmacological treatise, historically attributed to Bautista Monardes but now more generally assigned to Nicolás Monardes (c. 1493–1588), whose later writings on medicinal substances from the New World would establish his international reputation and became the foundation for later works. The Pharmacodilosis belongs to an earlier phase of his career and addresses a central question in Renaissance medical practice: the relative merits of simple remedies and compound medicines. Monardes was witness to the debates surrounding pharmaceutical practice in Renaissance Spain; this is a significant work for the study of the medical culture of Seville in the decades preceding the introduction of American medicinal substances into European therapeutics.
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The Pharmacodilosis is of particular interest in relation to the subsequent development of Monardes's medical thought. As one of his earliest known published works, appearing nearly three decades before the first part of his celebrated Historia medicinal (1565), it provides an early indication of his interest in the properties, preparation and therapeutic use of medicinal substances. Although the present work concerns the interpretation and use of established remedies rather than the American materia medica for which he became famous, it offers a useful point of reference for understanding the pharmacological background to his later investigations. His subsequent study of medicinal products arriving in Seville from the Americas would extend these concerns to substances largely unknown to the classical authorities.
The work takes the form of a dialogue between a physician and an apothecary, allowing the author to examine differing approaches to the preparation and administration of medicines. At the center of the discussion is the preference for natural, individual medicinal substances, associated with the authority of Greek and Roman medical writers, as opposed to the elaborate compound preparations characteristic of the Arabic pharmacological tradition. The dialogue thus reflects a broader intellectual development in 16th century medicine, as humanist scholars and practitioners reassessed inherited medical authorities and sought to recover the terminology and therapeutic principles of antiquity.
The choice of dialogue is particularly appropriate to the subject. By presenting the physician and apothecary as interlocutors, the work brings into focus the relationship between medical theory and the practical preparation of remedies, at a time when the responsibilities and expertise of these two professions were closely connected but increasingly differentiated. Its publication in the vernacular also places the discussion within the professional world of Spanish medical practitioners rather than exclusively within the Latin scholarly tradition.
Extremely rare, we locate a single copy in OCLC, at Wellcome Library, plus two copies according to CCPBE, in Spain. We are unable to locate a single copy in North America.
Palau (175478), who attributes the work to Bautista Monardes, describes it as an exceptionally rare pamphlet.
Palau, 175478.
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