The thread of Croatian pharmaceutical science is woven into the solid texture of natural science and is often revealed as a separate superstructure, and occasionally as a component part of its woof. The onset of modern pharmacy, we call it Pharmaceutical post- impressionism, dates back to the period in which the university was re-established in Zagreb. That period was a turning point of a kind, a period when individual scientific penetrations into modem pharmaceutical science surpassed the traditional pharmacy. Pharmaceutical science soon became a totality of organized and generalized knowledge of medicines, acquired through discovery and theoretical organization of the facts and occurrences in man's knowledge of the preparation, condition and use of medicines and establishment of regularities governing the existence of these facts and occurrences . Pharmaceutical science in Croatia has been a n autonomous science since the establishment of the university course of pharmaceutical studies in Zagreb in 1882. That was the period when the medieval ars pharmaceutica was irrevocably transformed into Scientia pharmaceutica. Since that time, the Croats could engage in pharmaceutical sciences also at home, were no longer faced with the unavoidable departure to study abroad, and some were able to pass on their knowledge to younger generations in their homeland. The first scientific paper on chemistry, published in an eminent international journal, was written by the pharmacist Julije Domac in 1881, the same person that, in 1896, founded the Institute for Pharmacognosy, the first such institution in the world. In addition to their profe ssional education, many young people got carried away by science because pharmaceutical studies had immediately become the focus of pharmaceutical scientific thought as well as the work place of scientists and teachers. Professors Gustav Janeček and Julije Domac were the main exponents of pharmaceutical teaching and science in Croatia for almost half a century. Up to the First World War, Pharmaceutical studies in Zagreb were the only of the kind in south-eastern Europe. Pharmaceutical gatherings (conferences of department heads) fostered the pharmaceutical science and profe ssion in Croatia. The metric system was introduced in 1876, and the first Croatian drug list was published in 1888 under the title Croatian and Slavonian Pharmacopoeia. The Croatian Pharmaceutical Society started the professional and scientific periodical Farmaceutski vjesnih (Pharmaceutical Herald) in 1907, followed by other Croatian pharmaceutical journals and, finally, the international scientific journal of Croatian pharmacists Acta Pharmaceutica. Besides the Faculty of Pharmacy and specialized institutions, the Croatian pharmaceutical and chemical industry, starting with the first drug factory at Pregrada (1893), the first research laboratory at the Kaštel factory (1936) up to the Research Institute within the pharmaceutical industry Pliva (1952), have also contributed to the development of pharmaceutical scientific thought in Croatia .