| Abstract (croatian) | The thread of Croatian pharmaceutical science is woven into the solid
texture of natural science and is often revealed as a separate superstructure,
and occasionally as a component part of its woof. The onset of modern pharmacy,
we call it Pharmaceutical post- impressionism, dates back to the period
in which the university was re-established in Zagreb. That period was a turning
point of a kind, a period when individual scientific penetrations into
modem pharmaceutical science surpassed the traditional pharmacy. Pharmaceutical science soon became a totality of organized and generalized knowledge
of medicines, acquired through discovery and theoretical organization
of the facts and occurrences in man's knowledge of the preparation, condition
and use of medicines and establishment of regularities governing the existence
of these facts and occurrences .
Pharmaceutical science in Croatia has been a n autonomous science since
the establishment of the university course of pharmaceutical studies in Zagreb
in 1882. That was the period when the medieval ars pharmaceutica was
irrevocably transformed into Scientia pharmaceutica. Since that time, the
Croats could engage in pharmaceutical sciences also at home, were no longer
faced with the unavoidable departure to study abroad, and some were able
to pass on their knowledge to younger generations in their homeland.
The first scientific paper on chemistry, published in an eminent international
journal, was written by the pharmacist Julije Domac in 1881, the same
person that, in 1896, founded the Institute for Pharmacognosy, the first such
institution in the world. In addition to their profe ssional education, many
young people got carried away by science because pharmaceutical studies
had immediately become the focus of pharmaceutical scientific thought as
well as the work place of scientists and teachers. Professors Gustav Janeček
and Julije Domac were the main exponents of pharmaceutical teaching and
science in Croatia for almost half a century. Up to the First World War, Pharmaceutical
studies in Zagreb were the only of the kind in south-eastern Europe.
Pharmaceutical gatherings (conferences of department heads) fostered
the pharmaceutical science and profe ssion in Croatia. The metric system was
introduced in 1876, and the first Croatian drug list was published in 1888
under the title Croatian and Slavonian Pharmacopoeia. The Croatian Pharmaceutical
Society started the professional and scientific periodical Farmaceutski
vjesnih (Pharmaceutical Herald) in 1907, followed by other Croatian
pharmaceutical journals and, finally, the international scientific journal of
Croatian pharmacists Acta Pharmaceutica. Besides the Faculty of Pharmacy
and specialized institutions, the Croatian pharmaceutical and chemical industry,
starting with the first drug factory at Pregrada (1893), the first research
laboratory at the Kaštel factory (1936) up to the Research Institute
within the pharmaceutical industry Pliva (1952), have also contributed to
the development of pharmaceutical scientific thought in Croatia . |
