A franchise is a legal document issued by a government or a sovereign granting the right to carry out commercial activities. In Germany franchises were granted to individuals for the privilege of purchasing or inheriting an apothecary, or the exclusive rights to sell a medicinal product within a city or town.
This franchise issued in 1728 by German Emperor, Carl IV, granted permission for David Liebel of Nuremberg to "prepare and sell life pills, a nostrum which would insure the user against plague, poisons and all human illness".
The text is hand written in gothic script and elaborately decorated. It is twenty-two pages long and has a red wax seal housed in a round carved wooden box.
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