[Nicolas Houel and Michel Dusseau, apothecaries of the XVIth century in Paris].
These two apothecaries of the XVIth century of Pharmacy in Paris were outstanding personalities. Nicolas Houel founded a charity in the south of Paris at Saint-Marcel suburb: The House of Christian Charity. It was a philanthropic organization composed of a chapel, an orphanage, a hospital, an apothecary's shop and a medicinal plants garden called Le Jardin des apothicaires. This institution is at the origin of the future Paris Pharmacy College (1777) and of the Paris School of Pharmacy (1803). This apothecary was also an artist, a poet, the author of artistic and scientific works. He wrote three pharmaceutical books between 1571 and 1573. The first one Pharmaceutices libri duo is about laxative and purgative medicines in accordance with Mésué's concepts, the second is a Plague Treatise and the third a Theriac and Mithridat Treatise. Michel Dusseau is the author of the first pharmaceutical book written in French prose. It was published in Lyon in 1561: l'Enchirid ou Manipul des miropoles. The life of Michel Dusseau had remained quite unknown but we recently managed to identify four generations of Dusseaus: Christofle, the ancestor, who lived in the XVth century and was not an apothecary, Michel a juror of the Paris apothecaries community and the author of the Enchirid, Pierre, Michel's son, also an apothecary, and lastly, Pierre's children who were the 4th generation. L'Enchirid is a "Manual for myrrh sellers ", a galenic pharmacy book divided into three parts. The first part shows how to prepare medicines, the second deals with pharmaceutical operations, the third is dedicated to the preparations of galenic forms. This book was well appreciated by French apothecaries in the XVIth-XVIIth centuries but sank into oblivion because of obsolescence.
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D005602:France; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D010595:Pharmacists / Q000266:history*