The work, published in 1872 by Dr Giberto Scotti, a district medical officer in Como, aimed to provide fellow doctors, as well as chemists, pharmacists, botanists and naturalists, with a source of information—including critical analysis—on the valuable plant-based medicines that abounded in the region. Remedies unknown or often absent from the pharmacology treatises in use at the time, yet effective and less expensive than the better-known and more exotic ones.
In short, a way of sharing, with a wider audience, his own and others’ observations and experiences regarding the vast array of indigenous plant remedies available in the countryside, and thus proving useful to both doctors and patients. The species, whose botanical characteristics, pharmacological history and therapeutic uses he describes, number over 400.
The author begins with those of the province of Como, which, however, in his own words, being a vast and varied territory in terms of vegetation zones and soil types, represent practically all the medicinal species of the Italian peninsula.
In fact, in his treatise, the author also provides information on medicinal plants from all over the world.
