Abstract

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of autobiographies of dispensing chemists for the history of science. The analysis of the autobiographies of E. W. Martius, D. H. Hoppe, F. T. Kützing and other pharmacists of the 18th and 19th centuries shows, that these books give many informations about the history of medicine, chemistry or botany. The memoirs of pharmacists, published in the later 19th and 20th centuries, for example by Th. Fontane or by H. Sudermann, are especially interisting origins for the history of pharmacy.