Russia and the Medical Drug Trade in the Seventeenth Century.

Sassafras, the earliest drug to be imported, was sourced in fairly significant quantities from the mid-seventeenth century: 1 pud , or 40 funty (16.38 kg) in 1646. 83 This is significantly larger than the mid-century import totals for certain spices, some of which were traded in fractions of a funt, not multiples of it (see above).

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The reasons for starting the training programme are unknown, but it may be significant that 1654 saw the start of the Russo-Polish war (1654–67), as well as plague outbreaks.

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