Because Back In The Day Poison Antidotes Could Make Or Break Your Everything, The Struggle Was REAL!

Located on the first floor of the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, attached to the Church of Santa Maria della Scala, in the Trastevere area, there is an ancient and precious place. What can be considered the first true pharmacy of the capital: L 'Antica Spezieria di Santa Maria della Scala. Originally built to meet the needs of the same Carmelite friars, dedicated to the cultivation of medicinal plants, the Antica Spezieria of Santa Maria della Scala became so important over time that it was considered a point of reference for cardinals, princes and doctors themselves. of the popes, so much as to get the appellative of "pharmacy of the popes".

Its premises, including a free clinic, remained open until 1978. Original crushers, mortars and distillation stills, together with vases, scales, precious majolica, form the picture of this place where the cabinets show painted images of the fathers of medicine such as Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Mitridate and Andromachus. Dating back to the eighteenth century, the furniture, the shelves, the windows and the counter, are presented in all their splendor past. In the back room, dating back to the nineteenth century, a liquor laboratory and an environment that served as a library, medical office and warehouse.

The Antica Spezieria of Santa Maria della Scala is also adorned with various relics of great importance: such as the Treatise of the Simple, a very rare herbarium attributed to Fra 'Basilio, an eighteenth-century pharmacist, containing a list of all the herbs used in the pharmacy, preserving a dried example on the corresponding page. Or the vase of theriaca, a drug developed by Andromachus the Elder, a doctor of Nero, for the study of an antidote against poisons.