“They Steal it from the Sultan’s Pharmacy.” Pharmaceuticals and Medicines in Early Modern Transylvania

Abstract

This article examines the trade in drugs and chemicals in early modern Transylvania through various primary sources. In the first section I discuss how the correspondence of Transylvanian envoys at the Ottoman court with the Transylvanian elites suggest that certain healing products were in high demand in Transylvania. In contrast to these purchases of medicines and drugs on command, the sixteenth–seventeenth‑century rate lists, customs tarriffs, and the customs registers of Cluj and Sibiu reveal the dynamics of the trade in chemicals and drugs from Vienna or the Ottoman Empire. In the seventeenth century, the imports of these goods became more diversified.