author
Friedrich A. (Friedrich August) Flückiger
1828–1894
A Swiss pharmacist, chemist, and botanist who helped shape the study of medicinal plants, he is best remembered for bringing careful scientific method to pharmacognosy. His work links old-world pharmacy, botany, and the early modern history of drugs.
1 Audiobook
Pharmacographia A history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India
by Friedrich A. (Friedrich August) Flückiger, Daniel Hanbury
About the author
Born in Langenthal, in the canton of Bern, on May 15, 1828, Friedrich August Flückiger became a major Swiss figure in pharmacy and botanical science. He studied chemistry in Berlin and continued his training in Geneva, Heidelberg, and Paris, building the broad scientific background that later defined his writing and teaching.
Flückiger worked as a pharmacist in Burgdorf and went on to teach at the University of Bern, later becoming a professor in Strasbourg. He is especially associated with pharmacognosy, the study of natural medicinal substances, and with efforts to make pharmacy more rigorous and evidence-based.
Readers may know him best through books such as Pharmacographia and The Principles of Pharmacognosy, works that helped document and explain plant-derived drugs for scholars, pharmacists, and physicians. He died in Bern on December 11, 1894, leaving a lasting mark on the scientific study of materia medica.