A closer look
If you needed to cure a cough or discreetly assassinate a political rival, you went to the same store. In Renaissance Florence, the Arte dei Medici e Speziali was the most powerful guild in the city. Because apothecaries ground their own raw materials, they strictly controlled the trade of both life-saving herbal remedies and lethal toxic compounds. They essentially functioned as the city’s highly-regulated corner drug dealers, holding the keys to the medicinal and murderous underbelly of the Medici elite.
