Mysterious and Fascinating Florida

Since 1979 when I first set foot in Florida, I have been in love with its beaches and historical sites. To say that Florida is mysterious, fascinating, weird, intriguing, historical, beautiful, dangerous, colorful, sunny, and magnetic, is an understatement.

One of my favorite comedic reel digital creators is “#OnlyInFlorida.” He finds hilarious videos highlighting Florida’s fauna and flora and sometimes the bizarre quirks of the human species. He is “Floridaing” every day and is glad that “I’ve got it on my flip phone.” The said phone often matches the color of his t-shirt.

Florida’s fun in the sun residents do not stop at displaying trash cans and mailboxes that are elaborate and beautiful works of art; they decorate with giant concrete or fiberglass creatures of the sea, dotting the landscape in the most unusual places.

Where else can you find more gators and pythons than you can shake a stick at while stepping on shifting wet grass and trying to capture that perfect photo of a white crane balancing on top of a dead tree, surrounded by murky water?

There are 1.3 million gators in all 67 counties in Florida. The estimated population of Burmese pythons across more than 1,000 square miles of the Everglades is 30,000-300,000. The invasive species of snakes have caused significant ecological destruction.

Driving on the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, a sign pops up now and then indicating a panther crossing. I have never seen such a creature cross the highway but its existence in the surrounding swamps with thick and lush vegetation and palm tree forests is fascinating.

Florida may hide the famous fountain of youth and its burial grounds in St. Augustine. La Florida was the magical land where Ponce de Leon and his Spanish conquistadors landed in their search for eternal youth. The place where Ponce de Leon and his crew first arrived a thousand years ago is now the Fountain of Youth Park.

There is a coral rock castle and garden in Homestead, Florida, built out of 1,100 tons of rock for a mysterious purpose that only the Latvian American eccentric builder, Edward Leedskalnin, understood. He had hoped that his labor of love work of oolite limestone would eventually attract his beloved who had spurned his marriage proposal previously in Latvia. Sadly, he died alone in his castle.

Where else can you come in contact with invisible and stingy no-see-ums, with sharks, manatees, sting rays, man-o-war jelly fishes, see-through moon jellies the size of UFOs that sting even when dead, and other dangerous creatures right at the water’s edge?

Where else can you visit the opulent mansion of the Barnum and Bailey Circus Museum with its gorgeous grounds, flora, and statuary, but in Sarasota, Florida?

Only in Florida, between Arcadia and Bradenton, you find in the middle of nowhere, passing by swamps, more swamps, and pastures, Howard Solomon’s medieval residence. The sculptor built a 12,000 square foot castle from refuse. Resplendent with a moat, towers, and eighty stained-glass windows, his castle is silver in color because it is covered with aluminum printing plates from a local newspaper.

His shiny castle, which has a real, full-sized Spanish galleon, was built by necessity as his property flooded during the rainy season and he did not factor that in when he bought the land. A real gator is “guarding” the tenth century galleon.

Sadly, Floridian Horse Creek would never rise high enough to float the galleon out to the emerald, green ocean. Howard not only turned recyclable trash into a local curiosity, but he also became the “Rembrandt of Reclamation.”  Nobody knows the effect that so much aluminum has on the surrounding swampy environment.

Only in Florida can you sit on the sugary white sand, watching the green waves crash against the pristine shore and suddenly you start coughing with hundreds of other beach goers surrounding you in a giant coughing unison.

It is the unpleasant and dangerous side-effect of red tide, an algae bloom, being blown from far out at sea. This toxic red tide bloom constantly affects Tampa Bay and its vicinity, and it is caused by poor water quality and pollution from fertilizer plants and other sources. It increases if the Gulf water happens to be warmer than usual. The east coast has an equally toxic algae bloom called the blue-green algae, sometimes affecting the St. Lucie River estuary.

Caren Schnur Neile wrote about the online headline of February 14, 2019, news story from WBGO public radio from Newark, “After 16 months of Dead Fish, Manatees and Dolphins, Florida’s Red Tide Ebbs.” How much it ebbed is revealed in the photo underneath with a row of dead fish on the pristine white beach.

Only in Florida you can find an apple tree that can kill you and gators love its fruits when they fall in the swamp. The Tree of Death, Hippomane mancinella or manchineel grows in South Florida’s coastal areas, South America, and the Caribbean.

Growing in brackish water, the manchineel thrive in mangroves. The name comes from the Spanish word manzanilla, “little apple” or manzanilla de la muerte, “little apple of death.” Touching it causes severe blistering and allergic reactions that could lead to death in some people.

There are many areas in Florida that claim the existence of ghosts, no one more famous than Henry Flagler, the tycoon who built the railroad between Jacksonville and Key West. Although he died in 1913 in Palm Beach, his body was shipped to St. Augustine by train and laid out in the rotunda of his beloved Ponce de Leon hotel. He vowed never to leave his hotel. A janitor found a mysterious tile with his portrait on it. To this day tourists are enthralled to search for this tiny tile that is alleged to have Henry Flagler’s face on it.

People would be surprised to know that Florida has an 800-year-old building, built 300 years before Columbus discovered the New World. Located on the Dixie Highway in North Miami, known as the “Old Spanish Monastery,” this building is part of St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church. How did it make its way to Florida?

William Randolph Hearst purchased the monastery in 1925 and had it dismantled and packaged with hay in 11,000 shipping crates, carefully numbered. Two sawmills were built to make the crates.

Because of the outbreak in Spain of the hoof-and-mouth disease which could have been spread by hay, the shipment was quarantined by Customs. The crates were opened, the hay was burned, and the blocks were repackaged randomly. The crates were stored for 26 years in a warehouse in New York. Hearst sold the shipment of crates, and two men moved it in 1952 to Florida with the idea to make it a tourist attraction. Unfortunately, the entire now misnumbered shipment became a giant and expensive jigsaw puzzle.

According to the Archives, twenty-three men spent 90 days to open all the heavy crates, some weighing more than a ton. The wooden crates were then burned, and 7 tons of nails were salvaged from the ashes.

The 800-years old monastery was reconstructed in 19 months at a cost of $1.5 million. The bankrupt investors sold the building to the St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church. The baptismal font and the original iron bell are still part of the former monastery. Each stone block has the mark of the stonemason who cut it 8 centuries ago.

Florida has a true medieval structure which the Spanish began building in 1672. It is the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, a fort built out of coquina, a bonded composition with seashells that can resist cannon balls. It took 23 years to complete.

La Florida is beautiful beyond description, a remarkable place to explore.

 

 

 

Shark Biting Odds

The odds of being bitten twice by a shark is one in 9 trillion, yet one Oregon man named Seth, according to Nat Geo, was bitten twice by a great white shark, six years apart.

The first time it happened in Florence, Oregon. Seth was surfing alone.  The second time happened in the same place, while surfing with his friend Gus.

The first time a great white, attacking from below with great force, wedged Seth’s surfboard in his mouth, with Seth balancing on top. The pressure from the shark’s jaw, crushed the board with Seth’s foot inside of it. Eventually, after some thrashing, the shark let go, and Seth swam to shore. Bleeding heavily, he was taken to the hospital by a nearby cop and treated for his lacerations with 25 stitches. He was lucky to escape with his life. The marks on the fiberglass board tell the horrific fate he barely escaped.

The second time a great white knocked him off his board, and ripped into his board, which was still tethered to his ankle too close for comfort. The shark dragged him a bit, and then released the board. Seth and Gus paddled to the shore unscathed, as fast as they could.

That day Seth escaped the shark’s menu. Again. And so did his friend Gus.

The adrenaline draw of big waves and surfing drowns out any fear of sharks who also love big waves and opportunistic meals even in murky water when they cannot see well.

Brian, on the New Smyrna Beach in Volusia County, Florida, the capital of shark bites in the United States, was the second double casualty of a shark attack, a black tip this time. His two encounters happened within the same year. Both times the shark bit his leg above his foot, and the second time bit his foot almost off.  Doctors managed to repair the damage, and he is lucky to have escaped alive. He continues his relentless obsession with surfing.

 

The Train Wreck of Democrat Socialism

“Communism was never conclusively destroyed, and it was never condemned in some kind of court.”   Vladimir Bukovsky

Without brakes, a train will eventually derail and cause an unimaginable disaster and suffering. Similarly, a free society like the United States which tolerates divergent opinions and groups, will be unable to stop the existence or the activism of communist organizations, groups, and individuals who rebrand themselves as Democrat Socialists who want to fundamentally change America from a constitutional republic to a socialist republic.

Socialist appears to be a much less threatening term than communist, and it is very appealing to half of the country who has slept soundly through American history classes or has been indoctrinated since the 1980s by Howard Zinn’s manufactured version of American history.

Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism are incomprehensible terms and notions to most Americans because they did not study specific details about socialism or communism and how many millions have been killed by the Communists under the ruling of the Communist Party.

Democratic Socialism is a term invented by Democrats who love euphemisms and rebrand old and dangerous ideologies that would benefit their plans for total control of the population that would become dependent on them.

Most Americans adopt the exact words and phrases of the daily MSM broadcast and regurgitate them ad nauseam without really understanding what they are saying, and what they are asking for. Such blatant useful idiot ignorance inevitably leads to New Yorkers voting for a Muslim communist as their Democrat mayoral candidate.

A train that derails causes immediate reaction and alarm. But, once people vote for the pie in sky promises of socialism, communism, Democrat Socialism, the results take years before the oppression of what they voted for rears its ugly head. By then, the possibility of reversal is farfetched. It may take decades to reverse the damage. It is easy to vote for a communist, all you need is a ballot and a ballot box. But you need a revolution to reverse course and undo the damages caused by the Communist Party or the Democrat Party rule.

The Bolshevik activists of the Soviet Union, Germany, England, and America of the 20^th century had fanned across the world to indoctrinate poor farmers, factory workers, and all the useful idiots they found into the wonders and freedoms of the promised land of socialism. The Communist Party was going to give them anything free they desired. When the activists were met with pointed questions and resistance by the populace, those farmers and workers were beaten up and disappeared. It was indoctrination by force and by the promise of murderous violence.

Once the Communist Party was successful in eliminating several monarchies, the socialist republics that replaced those monarchies began to build walls, prisons, and gulags (forced labor camps) to keep their populations in, restricting most of their freedoms.

Sadly today, the new generations of indoctrinated Americans have not been taught about the major failures of Marxist economics and the murder of 100 million innocents at the altar of communism.

Vladimir Bukovsky wrote about the absurd theories of Marx and about his predictions that never came true. The numbers of the “proletariat” actually decreased significantly in the developed capitalist countries. Their living standards have increased and not fallen. Marx was wrong about “super-monopolization.”  Small producers have grown and still do. The “market economy” improved the “means of production.” Socialism destroyed their centralized economies. And who are the “proletarians” of today? Marx wrote about “the crises of over-production every ten years.” It never happened because supply and demand controlled that possibility.

The reality is that the socialist regime and their central planning under the guidance of the Communist Party have never been successful at anything except oppressing the masses, paying them the lowest wages possible, and making their lives a continuous misery for most of the twentieth century. They never supplied enough goods to keep their citizens well fed, happy, warm in winter, with a plentiful supply of water, medications, and other necessities for a decent life. The only ones who lived well were the Communist Party members, their apparatchiks, their informers, the standing army, and the security police.

Despite the constant semantics and euphemisms rebranding communism in a positive light by the Democrat Party and the left, we do not have a proletariat in America, nor workers, we have employees. And we are not a democracy; we are a Constitutional Republic. If we are smart enough, we can keep it, but if we keep following the Democrat Party’s direction, we might all be “Democratic Socialists,” whatever that means.

Final note from RevealedEye: 

"Accepting Socialism is basically admitting you can't compete in the real world. You are saying, 'I'm willing to give up my liberty, my religion, and my dreams as long as the state will take care of me.' Accepting Socialism is accepting failure."

 

Rainmaker CEO Defends Cloud Seeding

In a second interview published recently, Rainmaker CEO, Augustus Doricko, defends to Shwan Ryan his company’s recent cloud seeding with silver iodide to make rain, two days before the massive flood in Texas which killed over 120 people and caused unimaginable destruction to property and terrain. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/217-augustus-doricko-did-cloud-seeding-cause-the/id1492492083?i=1000716870097

Silver iodide (AgI), a chemical made up of silver and iodine, has been used in various industries, in agriculture as pesticide, photography, disinfection, and in cloud seeding to create rain.

The compound can be toxic, can cause reproductive problems, and even cancer. Some of the toxicity symptoms are coughing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. If contacted by skin directly, it can result in severe burns and cause death if inhaled.

The potential for accumulation of silver iodide particles in soil, water, and organisms through repeated use could disrupt the ecological balance, could pose risks to wildlife and humans via the food chain.

Texas Hill Country was overwhelmed by tropical rain which dumped a lot of precipitation within a brief period of time. Did Rainmaker’s cloud seeding two days prior contribute to the disaster?

The CEO claims that their actions had nothing to do with the massive flood because they suspended operations. His company “seeded two clouds with 70 g of silver iodide” [via airplanes]. Doricko stated that they flew one twenty-minute mission. “The clouds dissipated two hours after the mission,” Doricko added. “Did we seed the storm itself,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

Doricko told Shawn Ryan that the most successful missions ever conducted by Rainmaker have produced tens of millions of gallons of precipitation; but “they got hundreds of millions of gallons of precipitation, trillions cumulatively.”

Who were Rainmaker’s cloud seeding customers in Texas?

According to Doricko, “We have customers throughout Texas, the South Texas Weather Modification Association, the West Texas Weather Modification Association, groups of counties and individual farms, which pay us for cloud seeding that have historically needed more water.”

Doricko said that the dispersed silver iodide did not remain in the clouds, it was precipitated by the rain. The aerosol dissipated, he said. There were “twenty plus hours between the [Rainmaker’s] mission and when the flooding ensued, and the winds were blowing north-west.” He claimed that any remaining aerosol would have blown out of the direction of the storm.

Ryan asked Doricko, who hired them specifically to create this precipitation. Rainmaker was hired by the South Texas Weather Modification Association, counties, and farms who needed more water, Doricko replied. They suspended operations on the afternoon of July 2 when their meteorologist determined that there was an inflow of moisture from the Gulf.

Shawn Ryan asked directly, who is regulating Rainmaker. Permits are given by the state, Doricko said, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Suspension criteria require Rainmaker to stop operations if the National Weather Service issues a flash flood warning. The warning was issued at 1 a.m. on July 3”, Doricko said.

 

 

 

 

 

The Heavy Rains of My Childhood

I spent my early years before first grade with my maternal grandparents. My grandpa had golden hands, he could fix anything and was the best mechanic in the village. His outdoor shop with an awning between the summer clay brick hut and the nice brick home contained any tool imaginable that a Mr. Fix-It would need. He repaired engines, tractors, bicycles, and any motorized thing that the villagers brought to him for a small fee or a barter. He loved history and sometimes accompanied the archeologists who had rented his home for the summer while they were digging for Roman treasure at the edge of the village where the ruins of an old church were dug up by a farmer who was trying to plow his field.

Grandma was the best homemaker, having raised six children; she kept them fed and alive in circumstances that were often quite difficult. She raised a garden every year, one pig, chicken, ducks, and a milk cow. Grandpa Cristache raised rabbits. I was not too fond of eating rabbit stew; they were my pets who hopped around the yard, sending the chicken scurrying for shelter.

We had a torrential rain last night and it reminded me of the rains I used to love in the country at my grandparents' farm. Their yard was always a mess of bird poop when it was dry and a soggy mess when it rained. Grandma and I loved the rain for entirely different reasons. We sought shelter under the awning of the concrete patio of the summer clay brick home; Grandma Elena would busy herself with some chore while seated, resting her weary and tired body, and I watched mesmerized the rain pouring small creeks down the muddy yard. I could not wait to jump in the puddles! We made mud poppers, the closest we would ever come to having the bursting sound of firecrackers.

The rain was always peaceful, no furious thunder or lightning, just endless tapping rain on the tin roof, tap, tap, tap. It made grandma happy because she did not have to water her garden by opening the ditches running in front of the house to divert water into her patches of lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, corn, and cabbage. She did not have to sink her feet and half her legs into the muddy ditches to break the dams with a hoe to make the water flow. The skies provided steady, soaking water; she was free of all the demanding work she otherwise would have had to do to irrigate her garden that would feed us and the animals throughout the year from the jars of carefully canned vegetables stored in the root cellar.

I used to go down from time to time with my best friend Steluta, to cool off on the hottest days of summer. It always smelled like fresh dirt and onions, no matter what grandma stored there. There were rows of jars filled with tomato sauce, pickled beets, large jars of pickled red bell peppers, cauliflower, hot red and green peppers, cabbage, and fruit preserves like strawberries and plums, from her abundant harvest.

She preserved the best small plum-shaped green tomatoes with walnut pieces stuffed inside. It was a delicious treat for special guests, served on little crystal plates with a glass of cold water from the fountain in the yard. Rows of apples were lined up in the damp air. I do not know how they survived until winter, but they were still edible, albeit wrinkled.

White jars of lard with pieces of rendered pork added light to an otherwise dank and semi-dark root cellar. Grandpa never installed any kind of light there because, for the longest time, nobody had electricity in the village until the early 1970s. And the village was only 9 km from the largest city of 600,000 inhabitants, 2 km from the largest refinery, and was connected by gravel roads to a main, paved highway. We carried a match box and lit a candle from the shelf.

The worst part of living with my grandparents was the sleeping quarters in the small house made of clay bricks with two tiny bedrooms, one for me and one for my grandparents. The rooms were clean, but we were eaten alive at night by fleas from grandma’s army of cats she fed to control the mouse population attracted by her upstairs barn in which she stored wheat and corn. Mom would come from time to time and dust all the cats with flea powder and that helped for a short while, but they returned with a vengeance. And the cats could not kill all the mice that had taken up residence inside the walls and in the upstairs barn. At night, we could hear the four-legged menace trotting inside the walls.

I was always sad when, every Sunday, after a brief visit, mom would leave to go back to the city, with the empty promise, which I always believed, that she would come back and take me with her. I was sad because it never happened. She did not have day care nor babysitters while she and dad went to work. The living conditions were much cleaner with my parents, but I was not old enough to be left alone in the tiny apartment.

Grandma left me alone to roam with my village friends. She only worried if I did not come back by suppertime. On rainy days, I would be my grandpa’s shadow, asking constant questions. Grandpa, although annoyed occasionally, loved me because I was, at that time, his only grandchild. My insatiable curiosity knew no bounds. When I got tired, I sat quietly in a rickety chair and watched the drumming rainfall turn every plant into a beautiful, lush green and the ground into a muddy brown smelling like earthworms.

 

 

Rewriting History to Fit the Latest Narrative of Climate Change

In the latest twist of remaking Western civilization history, Jorge Pisa Sanchez wrote in Nat Geo’s History magazine that “environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.” So “plagues and climate change” were the culprits for the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The source of this new twist is Kyle Harper, a classics professor at the University of Oklahoma. In 2017, he [offered] “an ambitious synthesis on the causes of the empire’s decline.” He argued that “the fate of Rome was played out by emperors and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers, and slaves. But it was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes, and solar cycles.”

As proof, the article cites the Antonine plague (165-180 A.D.), the Cyprian plague (circa 249-269 A.D.), and droughts in the Mediterranean (368-369 A.D.) caused by climate shifts.

Harper drew conclusions from “data from climatology and epidemiology.” The article does not explain how and where this data came from. The Roman Climate Optimum is “believed to have lasted from circa 550 B.C. to 150 A.D.” What this belief is based on is not explained.

The article cited firsthand accounts of agronomist Columella who “indicated that in the first century A.D. rainfall in central and southern Italy was more frequent in summer than it is today.” And how do we know that?

The vast Western Roman Empire depended on its supply of grain and food on the many provinces that they had conquered. These areas produced the grains needed to support the army and the local population.

The Nat Geo article suggested that a tiny change in the Earth’s tilt reduced solar energy penetrating the atmosphere from the mid-third century A.D. which impacted the climate, making things cooler and less productive agriculturally.

What is the scientific evidence? Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (in north Africa) wrote as an eyewitness account that the world has grown old and in wintertime showers were not so abundant to nourish the seeds and the sun is not so hot to “cherish the harvest.” And the grain fields are not so “joyous,” and the autumn harvest are not so “fruitful in their leafy products.”

So based on this scant written evidence of a Bishop, we are now told to believe that the Western Roman Empire fell because of plagues and climate change. Never mind that the climate has changed for millennia across human history. And plagues and disease have affected, diminished, and killed some empires. But the Western Roman Empire did not fall because of climate change or bacteria.

Yes, cities were densely populated, and fires, and disease (tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria), and plagues have killed many across centuries in such closed quarters. Empires, including the Roman Empire, were affected by such occurrences.

Bishop St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote in a sermon De Mortalitate (On Mortality) about the plague in the middle of the third century which originated in Ethiopia, Egypt, Levant, Asia Minor, Greece, and even Italy (249-269 A.D.). The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D., two centuries later for entirely different reasons.

Paulus Orosius, a fifth century Christian historian, who was not present at the Cyprian plague, wrote about it in terms that indicated nothing but devastation for Italy. How credible is this historian two centuries later, a man who was not there?

The Nat Geo article talks about “climate refugees,” a term coined by the global warming crowd, in the form of nomadic herders from the “Eurasian steppe, from the Hungarian plains to Mongolia.” These nomads allegedly forced other “nomadic peoples from the north toward the land of the Roman Empire.”

The Nat Geo article states, “it now seems certain [how certain is that?] that epidemics and droughts were a notable factor in the process that led to the definitive fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D.”

Sanchez, writing for Nat Geo, ends his article very carefully with, “Our understanding of precise climatic conditions from that time remains incomplete, especially across a region as vast as the Roman Empire.” He warns against ‘deterministic conclusions’ because “history cannot be explained simply by a variation in temperature or rainfall or by the outbreak of plagues, however deadly they may be.”

Yet the title of his Nat Geo article clearly states, “Plagues and climate change, the fall of the Roman Empire, environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.”

Edward Gibbon wrote in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”

‘Climate change’ or plagues did not cause the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But many other variables were significant such as the sack of the Eternal City (Rome) in 410 A.D. which dealt a psychological blow to the Empire and the entire world; the Gothic invasions; the inability to control the vast and far reaching borders of the empire; the population reduction due to infertility from potential poisoning by lead pipes which carried water to the Western empire’s cities and provinces; drinking from lead cups and using lead as sweetener and cosmetics with lead would have certainly caused severe arthritic transformations in the population at a young age; the inability to defend its territories and borders with enough soldiers to keep the invading hordes out.

There is no direct data relating to temperature earlier than a couple of hundred years ago. Scientists use “proxies” such as tree rings and layers of ice deposited on glaciers and polar caps. But during the Roman Empire there were no tree-ring studies and glaciers in the Alps are far north. The Roman Empire's Worst Plagues Were Linked to Climate Change | Scientific American

John Haldon et al wrote that “Harper’s assertions that Rome fell as a result of environmental stress, in particular through a combination of pandemic disease and climate change is a conclusion cast under serious doubts.”

 

Pharmacies, Apothecaries, and Such

As a fresh legal arrival in America from communism, the requests I kept getting from my relatives left behind, besides the blue jeans everyone loved, was medicine, medicine that was non-existent in pharmacies or in very short supply in the socialist republic ruled by the inept Communist Party that had no idea how to run an economy and if they did, they did not care that people suffered and died needlessly.

For some reason, the extended family thought that I could walk into a U.S. pharmacy and purchase whatever I wanted, without a doctor’s visit, and without a prescription for a valid, demonstrable ailment. A refusal to deliver their requests put me on a do not contact because she is not going to deliver list. I had no money, no resources, and no prescriptions.

Looking at the history of pharmaceuticals and the places where medicinal drugs were made, the apothecary, it is self-evident that there was a definitive split between apothecaries and doctors – their distinct roles were to mortar and pestle a potion/compound upon the request of the doctors.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Fredrick II, who was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Emperor, but king of Sicily, promulgated in 1231 the Constitution of Melfi which determined that doctors were not to prepare remedies for disease, only prescribe them.

Based on surviving painting, murals, and wood carvings of apothecaries (“storehouse” in Greek) in medieval Europe, they looked very much like the apothecary in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. Potions, ointments, plants, and liquids were stored in ceramic jars on shelves around the store and a counter circled the shelves. Amulets, candles, and sponges were hanging from hooks.

What exactly did apothecaries think had curative powers in medieval times? Precious and semi-precious stones like agate were thought to cure eye problems; mineral water which is still believed today to have curative powers; products from animals (quite a big trade still exists in China today of different animal parts, some which result in the cruel slaughter of endangered species, often just to harvest their fins, tusks, or other organs); products from humans such as nails, urine, blood; spices; and a large variety of dried plants and mushrooms.

Because convents, monasteries, and abbeys were places of learning, could afford to purchase expensive hand-illustrated and written one of a kind books, and had special gardens called herbularius dedicated to medicinal plants called simples, they received the pilgrims and the poor who were offered hospitality within the abbey, in a wing called hospitals; the monks often treated their sores, ailments, and diseases for the duration of their stays. The monks were the teachers, the herbalists, the apothecaries, the doctors of first resort, and spiritual guides.

A pharmacopoeia, De Materia Medica, by the Greek physician Dioscorides, was found in monasteries in the medieval west as well as in the Arab world. A pharmacopoeia was a compendium published as an authority for standards of strength, purity, and quality of therapeutic drugs. It described how each drug, potion, poultice was formulated, their chemical properties, quantities, and preparation methods so that the resulting product would be ‘standard’ every time.  Today we have the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (USP), the European Pharmacopoeia (EP), and the British Pharmacopoeia (BP).

There is a fresco from an apothecary in northwestern Italy in the 15^th century; ceramic vessels with medicinal ingredients are lining the shelves and a precision scale/balance is present, as well as a mortar and pestle.

There is reference to an apothecary in Camadoli, east of Florence, in 1048. In the same town, a monk called Romuald founded a Benedictine group that ran a hospital for the poor.

In 1221 a Dominican convent was built in Florence next to Basilica of Santa Maria Novella which ran the precursor of the modern drugstore. “Apothecaries were obligated to label the bottles, indicating when the remedy was prepared.”

On the bell tower of Florence Cathedral there is a 14^th century panel carved by Nino Pisano, panel which represents medicine with apothecary jars.

In 1281Paris the Faculty of Medicine forbade apothecaries “to visit the sick or dispense any medicine without a prescription from a physician.” It is not known for sure how knowledgeable physicians of that time were about drugs and their efficacy in the treatment of disease. In modern times, it is fair to say that pharmacists know more about drugs than doctors do.

The rise of professional guilds further regulated the activities of apothecaries. For example, in 1353 the king’s statutes regulated by law the Guild of Spice Merchants-Apothecaries in Paris. One could not practice mixing potions “if he did not  know how to read prescriptions or had no one who knew how to do so.”

Apothecaries could not sell poisonous and dangerous medicines, bottles had to be labeled with the year and month of preparation, and products had to be sold “at a loyal, fair, and moderate price.” Perhaps modern medicine could learn a thing or two from such modest inclinations, following the medieval price regulation.

To ensure compliance, “a master of apothecaries with two physicians from the dean of the Faculty of Medicine inspected each apothecary at least twice a year” to make sure the substances within the shop were good. (Nat Geo 2025)

Women were not allowed to be apothecaries, they were only relegated to midwifery. Women were skilled in medicine and healing but were not accepted in Europe as they were accepted in the New World of 1682.

According to Nat Geo, there is record of a prescription in 1462 for the King Henry IV of Castile by the Spanish apothecary Fernando Lopez de Aguilar, for stomach water at a cost of 48 maravedis. The liquid contains chamomile flower 2 oz, roses 2 oz, violets 2 oz, and King’s crown (Pyrenean saxifrage) 2 oz. (Nat Geo, July/August 2025)

With such a long history of apothecary science and art, will modern pharmacists survive technology and AI?