"In Poland-Lithuania, the pharmaceutical recipe functioned as a contested epistemic space between authoritative Latin pharmacopoeias and the pragmatic vernaculars of manors and apothecaries. Investigating the adaptation of complex preparations like Theriac across printed recipes, professional manuals, and private manuscripts, we argue that medical knowledge transfer was not linear. Instead, it operated as an “adaptive technology” governed by nomenclatural instability, process codification, and the logic of substitution (quid pro quo).
Moving beyond textual analysis, our paper situates these linguistic shifts within the “material turn” of the history of science. We contend that the translation of an early modern recipe remains incomplete without its material reconstruction. In this context, translation shifts from the philological to the operative: the conversion of “tacit knowledge” and unwritten apothecary traditions into reproducible laboratory protocols. Through experimental re-enactments of 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian preparations, we demonstrate that historical substitutions were sophisticated chemical translations based on the sensory and therapeutic affordances of local flora, fauna and minerals. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach validates the innovative nature of local pharmaceutical praxis, disclosing how the “vernacularization” of medicine facilitated a distinct regional contribution to the early modern scientific landscape."