ABSTRACT
Although food was considered to be most effective in maintaining and restoring the balance of the humours, there were occasions when diet alone was insufficient to prevent the onset of disease or provide its cure, and drugs were used instead of, or in combination with, dietary therapy. Italy's geographical position made it an important centre of imported spices. Until the fifteenth century in many Italian cities the spicers' guilds, including those of Bologna and Imola, contained not only spicers or apothecaries, but also men with medical qualifications and, where permitted, the two worked in collaboration to offer medical care to the citizens. The range of medicines available to the friars and other patients is indicated by the sales and purchases listed in Diotaiuti's accounts from Imola. Imola, together with some other combined purchases of butter, anise oil and mallow, and butter, violet oil and chamomile, suggest that many of the simpler medical applications were still being mixed in convent infirmaries.
