Business, regulation and professionalisation pharmacy: the apothecary's shop of the General Hospital of San Andrés (1770-1809)

Abstract

In the second half of the 18th century, pharmacy underwent a process of a process of increasing specialisation, both academically and professionally. academic and professional fields. The proper classification of materia medica, through the Linnaean system, as well as the examination of their the examination of their properties by means of chemical analysis gave pharmacy an identity that distanced it from a simple trade and marked it out as a and marked it out as a scientific discipline, which also proved to be an important economic activity. also revealed itself as an important economic activity. In This paper analyses a space in which this modernising process is manifested modernising process: the apothecary's shop of the General Hospital of San Andrés, where the person in charge, Vicente Cervantes, put into practice the modern the modern postulates of chemistry and pharmacy.