Simples cabinet of Hendrik de Bosch, Amsterdam, 1750-1770
Inv V09932

Simples – single substances – were raw materials for the manufacture of medicines. Usually they were dried parts of all kinds of plants and in addition whole animals and parts of animals and minerals. They virtually fill this cabinet and together they form a collection that has no equal in the Netherlands. So old, so complete and in addition containing two hand-written eighteenth-century catalogues. The collector and first owner was Hendrik de Bosch (1720-1772), a scion of a well-known Mennonite family and municipal physician in Amsterdam. In this capacity it was his job to provide medical care to impoverished citizens for a predetermined, meagre honorary fee. This simples cabinet was probably a kind of home dispensary of De Bosch’s. Because in Amsterdam doctors and surgeons were strictly prohibited from dispensing medicines to patients. That privilege belonged solely to apothecaries.