This well-crafted study uses the extensive account books of a thriving Florentine pharmacy, the Speziale al Giglio, to shed light on the Renaissance medical marketplace. Drawing on forty-nine shop registers running from 1464 to 1598, the authors present a detailed analysis of apothecary clientele, their consumption patterns, the popularity of particular medicinal wares and other products, and the credit relations governing purchases. At the heart of the study are the data culled for a one-year period, from August 1493 to July 1494, encompassing the purchase of over 16,000 individual items in nearly 12,000 transactions by 2,247 clients. From this massive but disparate evidence, the authors draw important conclusions about Renaissance commercial culture and the ways that ordinary Florentines managed health and illness.
Part one, ‘Selling Health’, situates the shop in its urban and commercial contexts. Founded in the 1460s, the Speziale al Giglio functioned simultaneously as a sales outlet, a distribution point for medical advice, and a production site for making medicines. The Giglio dealt in a wide range of goods – medicinal simples, oils, spices, honey, wax, distillates, manufactured products such as syrups and plasters – some of which were obtained from clients and suppliers as payment in lieu of cash. The shop thereby functioned as a brokerage that facilitated both the petty exchange of commodities and the bulk distribution of goods. As the authors note, this intricate exchange network significantly affects the historical reading of apothecaries’ inventories. Snapshots of commercial stock often over-represent commodities enjoying a long shelf-life that were stockpiled for future use, while underestimating the importance of products having a limited shelf-life, such as compound drugs and prescription medicines made on the spot.
Part two, ‘Customers and Credit’, considers the people who frequented the Giglio and how they obtained credit – a key form of trust. Most Florentines did their everyday shopping on credit, but credit played a particularly important role in the medical sector, since treatment often placed an urgent, unexpected burden on household budgets. Shop credit was not available to all; rather, it hinged on a combination of wealth, status, and personal connection to the apothecary. The Giglio records make clear that business decisions were deeply bound up with social relationships and a high degree of inter-connectivity: who a client knew and how he knew them influenced the apothecary’s willingness to extend credit. The authors usefully distinguish between ‘crisis’ clients (mainly poor artisans, labourers and servants who established accounts only in times of need) and ‘habitual’ clients, who regularly patronised the shop to purchase luxury items as well as medicines. What marked elite consumers was less their access to medicines than their avid consumption of sugar, sweets and spices.
Extending credit meant that apothecaries accepted financial risks. When recovering unpaid debts, the Giglio apothecary tried to reach negotiated settlements that allowed established relationships to continue. Rather than forcing clients to repay their entire balance in one fell swoop, the Speziale al Giglio preferred to set up repayment schedules that managed the debt over time. This approach proved pivotal to success in the intensely social apothecary trade of fifteenth-century Florence.
The final part of the study, ‘Products’, examines the shop’s best-selling items – wax, sugar and spices, medicines – both as individual categories and in relation to each other. This section advances our understanding of Renaissance healthcare in important ways. Many historians have argued that medicines formed a relatively unimportant part of the apothecary’s trade. By contrast, the Giglio evidence clearly demonstrates that medicines, mainly in the form of purges, syrups and electuaries, were ‘the most important class of goods for retailing’, constituting forty-two per cent of sales c.1500 (p. 159). This figure exceeded sales of wax products, such as candles and torches for funeral rites, which accounted for twenty-eight per cent of retail sales, as well as foodstuffs (in the form of sweets), which represented twenty-five per cent. Medicinals provided a steady income for the shop, whereas demand for wax was more irregular. Importantly, because many remedies incorporated sugar, whose price declined in the late fifteenth century, medical treatment introduced middle-class Florentines to sweets. Medicines thus not only served the sick but also helped to construct taste and influence broader consumption patterns.
Still, rich and poor had access to a different range of pharmaceutical products. Costly purges might include rhubarb, manna, musk, and powdered gems; poorer customers settled for purges concocted from less expensive ingredients. A wide range of alternatives existed even within the category of store-bought medicines – a fact that challenges a simple dichotomy between ‘popular’ homemade remedies and those manufactured by professionals. Rounding out the volume is a brief epilogue that sketches the Giglio’s evolution in the sixteenth century, along with a useful glossary of terms.
This detailed study of a single Florentine apothecary shop offers valuable insight into the extent to which commercial culture conditioned the everyday management of health and illness in a vibrant Renaissance city.
