Herbæ medicæ: an approximation to the pharmacy's history and the New Granadans Jesuit apothecaries

Abstract

With the founding of the Society of Jesus in the 16th century, scientific and social research was strengthened. This religious community focused on peripheral destinations, travelling to remote places with its gospel message and, additionally, with a characteristic spirit of curiosity and systematization. Evidence of this is the extensive river mapping that the missionaries produced on their journeys away from the main cities where they established their operational bases in the New Kingdom of Granada. One of these bases was pharmacological, in view of their enlightened knowledge and their capacity to investigate new medicines in regions such as the Orinoquia. This article presents the context of their establishment in the territories of today’s Colombia.