Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 54. (Budapest, 1970)

TANULMÁNYOK - Kubinyi András: The Social and Economic Standing of Persons Concerned with Health Treatment in Buda at the Turn of the 15th and 16th Centuries (angol nyelvű közlemény)

could not become their rivals. It is obvious from the text that the things "belonging to the apothecaries" constituted the wider category, while the drugs the narrower [69], Most probably the spices, minerals and other articles which were used for making medicaments, could be obtained in the apothecaries even wanted for purposes other that drug-making. For example a regulation fixing the prices of drugs in the Vienna of the (resumably) fifteenth century (i.e. it did not deal with the apothecary-goods in their stricter sense) besides the various tinctures, laxatives, pills, scents, ointments, plasters, oils and distillates, mentions plants, and not only herbs, but marjoram, violet and roots, including parsley as well as asparagus, and seeds including melon, pumpkin etc. among the "medicaments" [70]. Even the source material avaiable on the Hungary of the 16th and 17th centuries, a period later than ours does not permit as to range all the articles „belonging to the apothecaries" under the term drugs. An outstanding expert of that period, Sándor Takáts, was right in saying: „Our ancestors termed all the objects bought in the shop (ie. in the apothecary) "patikaszerszám", apothecary instrument. But these objects were far from being just drugs.

.. Cloths, household articles and drugs were the common goods." "We should not mix up the old apothecary with the pharmacyshop

... Consequently one is not justified to use the old word patika (apothecary) in its present meaning, because it did not mean a pharmacy but a grocery, a shop." [71], In our period the candles should be mentioned first among the "apothecary instruments". Between 1494—95 the Court bought mainly these from the apothecarians [72]. An account prepared in Buda for the younger brother of King Ulászló II, Prince Sigismund, later to become King of Poland, offers an especially good picture of the goods of the "apothecaries" of Buda. The Prince lived with his brother in Buda in the first years of the 10th century. He hardly bought any medicaments or related things in the apothecaries there [73], But the "apothecary" supplied the Prince with ink for writing [74], red and green sealing-vax [75], paints [70], candles [77], and (mainly in the heating season) fragrant materials to fumigate the apartments [78]. Most probably the frankincense also served for that purpose [79]. Then in cannot be a mere accident that Article VI of 1521 (the Corpus Iuris mistakenly attributes it to 1522) lists the apothecarians among the merchants, and at a high place when it fixes the amount of the special property-tax to be paid the profiteers (usurers, as it is put). According to it: "all merchants, traders, apothecarians, drapers, shopkeepers and other profiteers are obliged to contribute one twentieth of their goods, if they live in a town surrounded by a wall". [80]. According to this the apothecarians stood on the same level with the most important categories of the medieval merchants. After all all signs indicate that the apothecarians were regarded first of all as merchants, and as that, belonging to the leading strata of the town. E.g. in medieval Vienna there were five bigger corporations with a patrician character : the guilds of 1. the apothecarians, 2. the cloth-cutters, that is drapers, 3. the miniers, 4. the wholesale dealers, 5. the scribers [81]. On the basis of the very close economic and family-connections between Buda and Vienna in the Middle