”Libro di me, Gio Batta Gussetti”

Among the books preserved in the history of pharmacy collection, we have a favorite one, a volume printed in Venice in 1596, which includes recipes for the preparation of various medicines, including the famous Theriaca Veneta. As indicated in the title, the volume was meant to be useful to doctors, pharmacists, and all families. It seems that its former owner, a merchant from the the Veneto area, Giovanni Battista Gussetti, who bought the book in Vienna in 1687, was just as passionate about it as we are. Wanting at all costs to be recorded as the owner of this volume, he left several annotations on both the cover and inside the book. Part of the Pharmatrans project, we tried to fully decipher the texts handwritten in Italian, but we encountered difficulties in the case of the one on the cover, which, being written in ink on parchment, has faded over time. In order to render the inscription more visible we asked for the help of our colleagues from the restoration laboratory of the National Museum of Transylvanian History, and we used their UV lamp and special glasses. At the same time, through the expertise of Dr. Miu Lucretia from the National Research-Development Institute for Textiles and Leather, we have learned that the parchment was made of sheepskin, and has been well preserved, considering its age.