The curiosities of three apothecaries

Three apothecaries, who have lived between the 16th and the 17th centuries, Basilius Besler, Ferrante Imperato and Francesco Calzolari, set up famous private collections of curiosities (in Nuremberg, Naples and Verona, respectively). They practised pharmacy in their dispensaries, while cultivation natural history, and came into contact with the greatest scientists of their time. Besler, who directed the bishop of Eichstätt's gardens, managed the publication of a splendid Four Seasons Herbarium. Several books, written for the most by the apothecaries themselves, describe their museums, in which gathered,without apparent order, precious speciments from the three kingdoms of nature. The works of Besler, Imperato and Calzolari well illustrate close and constant relathionships established between pharmacy and natural sciences throughout the course of history.