Historia plantarum, also known as Tacuinum Sanitatis, is a manuscript and encyclopedia of natural science containing descriptions of plants, minerals and animals with particular reference to their medical and therapeutic properties. Dated to 1395, it was executed at the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who later donated it to Wenceslaus IV, King of Bohemia and Germany. On the 295 pages of the manuscript, there are over five hundred illustrations of plants, which provide a detailed picture of the vastness of knowledge of the plant world reached in Italy at the end of the Middle Ages. There are also more than eighty illustrations of animals, from which healing substances were obtained, and more than thirty illustrations of mineral derivatives. Significantly, Historia plantarum allowed the European world of the time to radically modify western medical practices, which were previously linked more to tradition, and magical and religious beliefs, than to an objective study of the scientific discipline.

Il Ricettario Fiorentino, was published in Florence in 1498. A pharmaceutical code drawn up by the competent institutions with the task of standardizing the prescription and preparation of medicines, reducing quackery and the liberty to invent new recipes, establishing precise rules that the apothecary had to respect. in the exercise of his profession and which distinguished him from the simple grocer.

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