Pharmaceutical and artisanal modes of classifying plant materials

3 Pharmaceutical and artisanal modes of classifying plant materials 

In addition to the division of materials according to the three natural kingdoms, eighteenth-century chemists and apothecaries divided materials into remedies deUvered by nature and remedies prepared by human art, the former being called simples (simplicia) and the latter composite remedies (composita) and chemical preparations (praeparata). Simple Medicines, the French chemist and ajMjthecaiy E. F. Geoffroy defined, 

Several historians of chemistry have asked this question before, but in a different way, as a question about chemical purity (see, for example Brock [1993] pp. 173-176). As long as chemical purity is not seen exclusively as a matter of experimental techniques, but also as a concept and an epistemological and ontological issue, this manner of phrasing the question does not differ in content from the question asked in this paragraph. 

In the eighteenth century the artisanal world of the apothecary trade was an enduring practical and institutional context for chemists experimental smdies and classification of plant materials. But chemists also presented other practically oriented classifications depending on their occupations and interests and the audience 

Eighteenth-century chemists were engaged in many different artisanal and commercial activities, which contributed to their experimental know-how and connois-seurship of materials as well as to their individuation, identification, and classification. The requirements of chemical teaching also informed chemists order of plant materials. The pharmaceutical criteria of classification were foregrounded 

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