Featuring tulips and a grotesque head in profile, this jar was designed to store herbs, powders, and other dry medicines that would have been protected from spoilage by a piece of parchment secured around the opening. The container was probably part of an order for 4,152 vessels placed by an apothecary in 1545 with Masséot Abaquesne, who ran a large workshop with his son, Laurent.
Mrs. Green Rainbow, Winnebago, NE; Sterling Whitesnake, Winnebago, NE., until 1964; James Howard, Oklahoma, 1964–ca. 1976; Ralph T. Coe, Santa Fe, NM, ca. 1976–(d.) 2010; Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts, 2010–2011
One of the most influential medical treatises handed down to Muslims was De Materia Medica, by a first-century b.c. Greek physician in Cilicia (southern Anatolia). The left page concerns making medicine from honey and water, prescribed to cure weakness and loss of appetite. A doctor holds a gold cup while stirring the boiling honey and water in a cauldron as he prepares to scoop it up for the seated patient. The architectural setting suggests that the drugs are being produced in a pharmacy like those attached to hospitals in the Seljuq lands. In the illustration on the right, a doctor and his assistant or patient stand on either side of a sieve through which grapes are pressed and then combined with brine and an onion-like herb to produce a medicine to cure digestive disorders.