The Phytochemical Laboratory

The phytochemical laboratory Next comes the phytochemical laboratory, a room that demonstrates the development of the chemistry of natural substances, which began at the end of the eighteenth century when the French scientist, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), rejected the alchemical theory of phlogistics and laid the basis for modern chemistry with the principle of "nothing is created, nothing destroyed, everything is transformed".

The laboratory contains tools made of copper and ceramics but it was glass, the ductile material that could be moulded into any form, that replaced these materials as the most popular. The discovery during the nineteenth century of active vegetal ingredients separate from the plant (morphine, quinine, codeine, etc.) gave the pharmaceutical art a new direction. Apothecaries' laboratories began to produce industrial medicines derived from pharmaceutical chemistry.

HISTORICAL PHYLOSOPHICAL EXTENSION >>