Presented at the National Congress of the History of Pharmacy in Pesaro
Matera was the protagonist at the 73rd National Congress of the History of Pharmacy, held in Pesaro, city of culture 2024. The event, organized by the Italian Academy of the History of Pharmacy at the historic Villa Caprile, saw the participation of experts and enthusiasts who discussed developments in the field of historical pharmacy. Among the speakers, the pharmacist from Matera Nunzio Longo presented a study on the “Speciaria sixteenth-century Matera”.
Longo’s discovery is based on sixteenth-century documents preserved in the State Archives of Matera, which have made it possible to reconstruct the history of the first pharmacy in the city, located at number 1 of Salita Duomo. The physicist Eustachio Verricelli, in his “Cronica de la città di Matera 1595-1596”, describes the therapies and medicinal plants of the time, highlighting the existence of an “excellent natural pharmacopoeia of Matera”.
During the presentation, Longo illustrated the pharmaceutical treatment methods of the time, inspired by luminaries such as Galen, Mattioli and Dioscorides, and based on the “theory of opposites”. The historicity of the documents led Longo to also cite the Melfi doctor and philosopher Vincenzo Bruno, who referred to “Hippocratic medicine” and the “theory of humours”.
Longo mentioned the manuscript “Platea di Santa Lucia”, which describes the relationship between the Benedictine nuns of Santa Lucia and the apothecary Don Angelo Giordano, to whom the first local pharmacy was rented.
Nunzio Longo declared: “It is a source of pride to have presented the ‘speciaria matera’ at the National Congress of the History of Pharmacy because Matera has demonstrated that it has an immense historical value in the pharmaceutical field since 1598”.
The Regional President of Federfarma Basilicata, Antonio Guerricchio, complimented Longo for the discovery, underlining “the importance of this further historical discovery which makes us understand that we are part of a territorial assistance system that starts from very far away”.
