720 william eamon
drug was cited in authentic ancient sources, including Galen. yet, with 64
different ingredients, how could one guarantee that all were genuine and
that none were in conflict with one another? Many of the ingredients that
went into making the drug—such as the famed opobalsum of antiquity,
the original Balm of Gilead—were exotic and difficult to find. How, then,
could one distinguish true theriac from the cheaper, imitation varieties
sold by charlatans?
exploration and trade not only transformed the european economy
but also changed the way people thought about the natural world. The
bustling commerce in spices and other natural goods made the flora and
fauna of distant parts of the world visible everywhere and made natu-
ral history the subject of everyday conversation. Historian Harold cook
observes, “the ways of life associated with commerce that increasingly
dominated europe focused attention on the objects of nature.”56 above
all, science and commerce had in common “a certain kind of interested
engagement with objective knowledge and an attentive appreciation for
collective generalizations based on exacting information about the object
with which they dealt.”57 The exotic and novel consumer items that popu-
lated the strange new world of things that was the renaissance riveted
attention on particulars. out of the intersection of commerce and natural
history emerged a new sensitivity to the “facts” of nature. That new aware-
ness would be crucial to what we call the Scientific revolution.58
Natural HistoryBetween the 1530s and the 1560s, the ancient science of natural history
experienced a renaissance in Western europe, and Venice played a
prominent role in its rebirth.59 in 1533, the Venetian Senate established
the first university chair for the teaching of medicinal “simples”—plants
essential to the fabrication of drugs—at Padua, and appointed Francesco
Bonafede to the position. Bonafede lobbied for the creation of a botanical
56 cook, Matters of Exchange, pp. 410–11.
57 cook, Matters of Exchange, p. 57.
58 lorraine daston, “Baconian Facts, academic civility, and the Prehistory of objectivity,
Annals of Scholarship 8 (1991), 337–63; daston, “Factual Sensibility,” Isis 79 (1988), 452–67;
Mary Poovey, History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth
and Society (chicago, 1998).
59 Brian ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe
(chicago, 2006).