ANISE AS APOTHECARY INGREDIENT

Anise (Pimpinella anisum) is a native plant of Egypt, Greece, Crete, and the Asia Minor, known by the ancient Greeks and cultivated by the Romans in Italy. Star anise (Illicium verum) is very similar in flavor, but the plant is different, native of China and Vietnam.

Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder mention, besides the old cook books, the use of anise during the Roman period as a spice, mostly for the preparation of a digestive cake served at the end of dinner. During the Middle Ages, the plant started to be cultivated in Central Europe as well. Anise seeds are among the ingredients of absinthe, a highly alcoholic spirit created in Switzerland in the end of the eighteenth century, very popular and the artists and writers of Paris during the nineteenth and the twentieth century. Considered toxic, absinthe was forbidden in several states in 1915, but recent studies have shown that the absinthe's psychoactive properties have been exaggerated and a revival of absinthe began in the 1990s.

Due to its properties and strong flavor, anise was also used in pharmaceutical and para-pharmaceutical products; it was recommended in cold, cases of difficult digestion, but also to refresh one’s breath, as ingredient of dentifrices. Anise seed oil had external use, against parasites. In homeopathy, anise was prescribed as expectorant, anti-spasmodic, carminative, and anti-microbial.

 The History of Pharmacy Collection of Cluj includes five vessels (of which four are exhibited here), dated to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for anise seed powder and anise oil. The jars were used in pharmacies from Cluj, Baia Mare, Braşov, and Sibiu.