The intership diploma of Croatian pharmacist Pavao Panac, HMMF-57, detail
The intership diplomas – before and after the founding of the Pharmaceutical Assembly
(Excerpt from the text: Fatović-Ferenčić, Stella. From Pharmacies to Faculties – The Collection of Diplomas and Charters of the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), as Attestation to the Development of Pharmaceutical Education in Croatia. // Diplomas and Charters from the Collection of the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy. Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Croatian Pharmaceutical Society, 2019. Catalogue of the exhibition, pp. 5-60.)
The internship diplomas template written in the time when pharmaceutical education still existed within the frames of the guilds, that is, before the Pharmaceutical Council was founded, held in its title the capitalised name of the pharmacist (owner of the pharmacy), where the trainee did his apprenticeship (Ego Georgius Augustin, Ego Antonuis Aslaitner, Infrascriptus Eduardus Meder Phar.). This emphasised the mentor who guided the trainee through his internship, which shows his role and efforts and which can be well seen with the earliest preserved Croatian internship diplomas: Pavao Panac from 1814, Pavao Panac Jr. from 1843 and Franjo Schezt from 1846. After the Pharmaceutical Council was established, this was no longer common.
The founding of the Pharmaceutical Assembly in 1858 made space for an intense development of the profession: Croatian language was introduced in official correspondence, in 1877 a metric system was introduced into the production of medicines, in 1882 a Pharmaceutical Course was started at the Faculty of Philosophy and in 1888 the first Croatian-Slavonian pharmacopoeia was published.
The Pharmaceutical Assembly was responsible for the enrolments, studies and exams of pharmaceutical trainees, as well as issuing the internship diplomas which used to be a requirement for entering one of the universities. From that period there are several preserved internship diplomas held by Croatian pharmacists: Maksimilijan Batistić from 1864, issued in Trieste; Valentin Vouk, also from 1864, issued in Ljubljana; Ivan Csillag from 1871, issued in Zagreb, Ladislav Gayer from 1885, issued in Osijek, Gustav Porschinsky from 1886, issued in Zagreb, Kazimir Seitz from 1890, issued in Zagreb, Milan Tkalčić from 1901, issued abroad, in České Budějovice, and Stjepan Milčetić, issued in 1909 in Zagreb. The diplomas from that period already with their titles reveal that they were issued by a competent body – the pharmaceutical council (Nos antistites gremii pharmaceutici, sometimes Commissio Zagrabiensis and similar), and the signatures are from the members of its committee.
