Samples of the Collection of Old Medicine Raw Materials of the Department of Pharmacognosy of St. Petersburg Chemical Pharmaceutical University, Which Can Be Used in Food

In the world there are many collections of the pharmaceutical trend. In America, the exhibits of this profile are in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, in Europe these are collections of pharmacy museums in Heidelberg (Germany), Krakow and Warsaw (Poland), Basel (Switzerland), Riga (Latvia), and others. Some of them have many thousands of exhibits. There are also separate collections of pharmaceutical items for educational institutions, for example, a collection of old medicinal raw materials in Vigan’s Cabinet, Queen College, Cambridge (Great Britain). All these meetings, however, have long been known and described in detail. Most of them do not have a strict orientation and are presented, along with old medicinal raw materials, as well as tools and appliances, dishes, books, herbaria and various auxiliary items. All the more interesting is the collection indicated in the title of the article, which arose literally from non-existence. She was transferred to the educational institution at its creation, and this year she, like him, turns a hundred years old. It has a strict focus and is represented almost exclusively by medicinal raw materials. Studying the samples of this old collection, as a whole of medical profile, makes it possible to understand that many plants, which initially had only food use, gradually became pharmaceutical objects. Probably, it was the long practice of food use, with the fixing of associated pharmacological effects in the memory, that became the reason for choosing certain types of raw materials as medicinal. Ordinary foods, protein and starchy, began to be perceived as strengthening, mucous—as enveloping and anti-ulcer, some fruits and herbs—as antiscorbutic, sharp—as appetizing and improving the work of the stomach, and so on.