ABOCA Museum - Aboca MuseumMuseimpresa
Herbs and health over the centuries | Aboca Experience
ABOCA Museum - The herb roomMuseimpresa
The beginning
When Valentino Mercati founded Aboca in 1978, many people had forgotten the importance of one of the deepest, oldest and most enduring bond that has ever existed: the one between man and nature.
ABOCA Museum - Rariorum plantarum horti medici amstelodamensis of Jan Commelin (17th century) by Jan CommelinMuseimpresa
However, this history was already displayed by herbals, pharmacopoeias and ancient mortars, and by those same herbs that, for centuries, had enabled man to cure diseases and satisfy his health needs.
ABOCA Museum - Later wiew of the mortar roomMuseimpresa
Since 2002, this history has been enclosed in the halls of Aboca Museum. Artefacts are the witnesses of a meeting that changed the evolution: the one between simple herbs' virtues and the human intellect, which turned them into precious resources for the human health.
ABOCA Museum - Still life with wooden boxes and pharmaceutical jarsMuseimpresa
Collecting the past to build the future
Aboca's permanent collection, first assembled in the founder's private home, then transferred to Palazzo Bourbon del Monte, contains today a rich variety of tools for processing, preserving and studying herbs.
Having lost all practical function, these ancient objects fulfil an even more necessary one: preserving past traditions and knowledges, transmitting to later generations a renewed faith in the resources that nature continues to offer.
Plants and humans, after all, have lived in symbiosis since the dawn of time. Before chemistry allowed the synthetic production of substances, man kept searching in nature, and in the wild herbs, the ingredients for his own wellbeing.
ABOCA Museum - The ancient apotecary shopMuseimpresa
The art of curing with herbs
Firstly with monks, thanks to their observation and experimentation, and then with apothecaries and pharmacists, with the technique and the study, each one allowed, over time, the transition from an intuitive use of herbs to a more conscious use of them.
ABOCA Museum - Florilegium of Sir John Hill (1757) by Sir John HillMuseimpresa
The herbaria
However, the urge to represent and describe plants, as well as to use them, starts only in the Middle Age. This will results in the birth of Herbaria, ancient illustrated botany books. From then on, the circulation of a more homogeneous and universal phytotherapic knowlendge is due to them.
The botanical illustrations contained in herbaria were the result of an accurate observation of the herbs, a dialogue that man and plant built on paper through the artist. The drawing helped apothecary to recognise, memorise and identify the complex nature of each plant species.
A connection written on tools
From the 1500s, many of the bronze mortars used for the preparation of natural medicines began to express, through the decorations, the strong connection there was between the apothecary and his most precious ingredients: acanthus leaves, flowers, buds, bunches of grapes.
The traditional decorations of pharmaceutical potteries included palmettes, ivy leaves, pine cones or stylised fruits, explicitly indicating the ingredients they contained.
ABOCA Museum - View from the inside of the poison cellMuseimpresa
Over time, the art of producing remedies became more complex
Masters began to handle increasingly complex preparations, that were the result of combining ingredients of different natures, skilfully mixed and dosed. Not only plants, herbs and extracts, nature also offers resources among animal products. Medicinal recipes extend... hundred of ingredients are reached.
99 ingredients for a Teriaca
The forerunner of this type of compound was definitely Teriaca, one of the most famous medicines in the history of pharmacy. In its various versions, it achieved the greatest possible number of ingredients within a single compound, skilfully dosed and combined.
But even if some drugs are potentially dangerous...
However, even in the pharmaceutical art some caution is necessary: besides their many virtues, herbs can also hide true poisons! Only human knowledge can transform every ingredient, with the right dosage, in a natural resource for all living.
ABOCA Museum - The Ancient libraryMuseimpresa
...men can find the cure to illnesses through nature
Aboca Museum, and its one of a kind Ancient Library, recover and pass on these millenial knowledges, attempting an advantageous new balance between man and nature. Everything we need already exists, in nature.
