[Not Available]. / Platon im Arzneibuch und der Heller am Tresen. Pharmazie im 16. Jahrhundert zwischen Humanismus, Stadtgesellschaft und Okonomie.

The study focuses on the development of pharmacopoeas during the early, modern time. First, the >Nouvo Receptario< of 1499 came out in Florence as the first printed pharmacopoea of a north-Italian town, edited by the guild of medicines and apothecaries. Following trading routes the idea of >pharmacopoea< arrived in Nuremberg, where the counsil of the town asked the humanist Valerius Cordus to prepare such a book. Printed in 1546, it quickly became the standard in preparing medicines for other towns in southern Germany. At Augsburg, a wealthy and powerful town, the physicians wrote their own pharmacopoea which was printed in 1564. The comparison of the three pharmacopoeas shows that its printing depended on the social structure and the financial aspects of each town. But even if the apothecaries, the doctors or the mayors were trained in the humanistic tradition, the materia medica still continued in the arabic tradition, i.e. the old drugs and preparations remained in these pharmacopoeas, probably for financial reasons.

[Medical magic of Paracelsus and Paracelsus followers: weapon salve]. / Magische Medizin bei Paracelsus und den Paracelsisten: Die Waffensalbe.

The doctrine of 'transplantatio morborum' may be considered a branch of the 'magia naturalis'-philosophy which was widespread in the sixteenth century. According to this doctrine, ailments and remedies can be transferred from one body to another. A further example of this field of medicine is gun salve, which we find mentioned particularly in the works of the Paracelsists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even though salve of various types had already been used for some time in the treatment of stab wounds, gun salve was imputed to have magnetic properties which gave rise to 'actio in distans', whereby the smearing of gun salve onto the weapon caused the wound to be healed. An early example of a description of its formula can be found in the first book of the 'Archidoxis magica': one of the works which have been wrongly attributed to Paracelsus. Early in the seventeenth century, this formula for gun salve--frequently with modifications--found its way into the writings of the followers of Paracelsian doctrine: of Oswald Croll, for example, or Rudolph Goclenius. When the concept of 'actio in distans' was propounded, an argument soon developed as to whether gun salve should be classified under 'magia naturalis' or 'magia daemoniaca'. Determined opposition to Goclenius was proferred in the person of Jean Roberti, a Belgian Jesuit who accused the Protestant Goclenius of consorting with demons. A number of treatises appeared in close succession, with Johann Baptist van Helmont emerging as the mediator in the argument. Yet he too came under attack at the hand of the Jesuit Roberti, with the result that, at least by the time Athanasius Kircher had also become embroiled in the debate, the dispute was pursued principally between orthodox Trentino Catholicism and heterodox Protestantism. An analysis of the writings on the subject of gun salve demonstrates how easily a discussion which was originally of a purely medical, scientific nature could lead to a religious controversy in that denominational age.

[Ludwig Haberlandt (l885-l932) and the development of hormonal contraception]. / Ludwig Haberlandt (1885-1932) und die Entwicklung der hormonalen Kontrazeption.

Ludwig Haberlandt, physiologist in Innsbruck, tried in the late twenties to develop hormonal contraceptives based on sexhygienic ideas of Sigmund Freud. Although the chemical-physiological knowledge of that time encouraged this plan, after Haberlandt's death in 1932 his tests were dropped and forgotten. It was after World War II, when research in this field was begun in the USA by Gregory Pincus, supported by "Planned Parenthood Federation" under leading of Margret Sanger. Although clinical tests proved to be successful, restrictive social-political conditions in the fifties delayed this project considerably. But in 1958 the first Anti-Baby-Pill reached the US-market.