ON THE DIVISION FOR THE HISTORY OF PHARMACY. HISTORY AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

The Division for the History of Pharmacy has been active for many years and it has played a significant part in the last thirty years of research on the history of Polish pharmaceutical sciences. The Division was established in 1977, with the initiator of the project, Barbara Kuznicka, being put in charge of organizing and heading the body. In 1987, due to the fact that the scope of research was enlarged to include the history of chemistry, the division was transformed into a Division of the History of Pharmacy and Chemistry. In 2004, the Institute of the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences reactivated the Division for the History of Pharmacy and the Division for the History of Chemistry. The current paper presents the history and research programmes of the Division basing on the correspondence, reports and archival sources relating to its activities; it also discusses the implementation of the research programmes and an outline of the current research projects. The latter are to describe the history of natural medicines in the 19th century, ethnopharmacy, pharmaceutical historiography, the iconography of medicinal plants and the recent history of pharmacy in Poland.