Pharmaceutical laboratories The Museum of Argote de Molina at Seville, Spain, c 1580

Pharmaceutical laboratories The Museum of Argote de Molina at Seville, Spain, c 1580. A reconstruction in the Lower Wellcome Gallery, Science Museum, London. Argote's friend, Nicolas Monardes (1493-1588) is seen looking at some plants. Monardes wrote the first account of many of the new plants discovered in America at this time. Although he never visited the New World himself, Monardes established a botanical garden in Seville where he cultivated specimens and studied the effects of medicinal plants imported from the Americas. He published his ïTwo books...about the Drugs from the West Indies used in Medicine in 1565, and it included the first illustrations of coca, tobacco and sunflowers, as well as many other plants. ©SSPL/Science Museum