MEDICINES, POISONS AND REMEDIES

Pharmacology in Rome from the ancient world to modernity

From the furnaces of Roman metalworkers to the perpetual fire of the Vestals, from the convent apothecaries of Trastevere to the Kircherian Museum of the Collegio Romano: this itinerary spans two thousand years of the history of pharmacology in the Eternal City. Five stops to discover how Rome healed, experimented and poisoned — from the Tiber Island, where the serpent of Asclepius arrived in 291 BC, to the herb gardens of the Carmelites, to the Hospital of Santo Spirito, one of the oldest in the world still in operation. A route that tells not only the history of remedies, but the history of the power to define what a medicine is and who has the right to heal — a question as old as medicine itself, still relevant in the contemporary world.