The dark side of sunthesis? fraud and substitution in Graeco-Roman pharmacology

Totelin, Laurence ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9576-1643, Newman, William R., Kahn, Didier, Klein, Joel A., Hattab, Helen, Shapiro, Alan E., Guicciardini, Niccolò, Ragland, Evan R., Baker, Tawrin, Keller, Vera, Steinle, Friedrich, Schickore, Jutta, Ramberg, Peter J., Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette and Kursell, Julia 2024. The dark side of sunthesis? fraud and substitution in Graeco-Roman pharmacology. Newman, William R and Schickore, Jutta, eds. Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis, Archimedes (ARIM, volume 73), Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp. 15-40. (10.1007/978-3-031-76398-4_2)

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Abstract

This paper examines one specific aspect of the compounding—sunthesis in Greek—of remedies in ancient pharmacy, namely the substitution of one or several of the ingredients stipulated in the original recipe. This aspect has both positive and negative facets. The positive is the art of substitution, which should theoretically rely on sufficient knowledge of the powers of ingredients to replace like for like. The negative facet is the implication of the potential for fraud or adulteration, which led to the development of tests to determine the authenticity of a given preparation or its ingredients. The paper examines the boundary between substitution and fraud and assesses the roles that these two phenomena played in the development of ancient pharmacy.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World
Publisher:	Springer
ISBN:	978-3-031-76397-7
Last Modified:	19 Feb 2025 16:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175399

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