In the 17th century the Dutch Republic was the centre of the world trade in exotic drugs and spices. They were sought after both as medicines and as luxury objects for the bourgeois class giving rise to a medical and moral anxiety in the Republic. This ambivalent view on exotic drugs is the theme of the poetry of Joannes Six van Chandelier 16201695. Six who himself ran the drug shop The Gilded Unicorn in Amsterdam addresses a number of exotic medicines in his poems such as musk incense the mira