Edición y estudio de la "Theórica y práctica de boticarios" de Fray Antonio Castell

Abstract

Within the literature of pragmatic character, legal and historiographic texts, on one side —as well as albeitería, falconry and hunting— have been object of attention in the last decades together with those of medicine, botany and pharmacy, on the other side. It seems logical that we pay attention to medical and pharmaceutical treatises, but not only due to its possible literary values, but mainly, because of its important sociohistorical and linguistic testimony. We have addressed in this dissertation the study of the work by Fray Antonio Castell, Theórica y prática de boticarios; published in Barcelona in 1592. This work presented a first difficulty which is that only six copies of the book remain all over the world, that is why it is practically unknown nowadays; however, it was very renowned and valued by the scientific community until XIX century. We have paid attention to the formal, linguistic, lexical and content aspects, but during the course of the research we found an extremely important detail: its numerous coincidences with the work written by the French doctor Brice Bauderon, Paraphrase sur la Pharmacopée divisée en deux livres, published in Lyon in 1588. This discovery induced us to think that the work by Castell is a very faithful translation of the Paraphrase, since he could have got to know Bauderon and his work when he was studying in Montpellier. We believe that despite this fact the study of Castell’s Theórica has validity because it approached a very important work to the praxis and scientific thinking of his time.