Hello Dr.Porter,
I was Benedictine monk in southern France in theearly 70s. We ran a pharmaceutical processing unit. It was housed on a site that had been used for medecine making since the 1200s. Back then, medicine making was called alchemy. Because the west did not possess the biodeversity in medicinal plants that the east did, alot of emphasis was placed on searching for coumpounds to help sich people. A major tool was esterifications created by circulating organics on prepared metallic salts, for example.
Some of the coumpounds described in the "triumphant chariot of antimony" by Basil Valentine, OSB are still in use today.
Gilbert Arnold, P.Eng.
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