Specialized investigations

In the beginning of June 2022, project team members and collaborators have met to decide upon the types of investigations that are required and that can lead to the best results in the research of the apothecary containers that still preserve some content in our collection. The analyses will mainly focus on the 18th-century medicine chest and its components, but will also include some of the more than 100 other containers and materia medica samples, certainly the mummy fragments and a bottle for Theriaca. The team has taken the following decisions: a set of investigations will be performed by Dr. Magó Andrea Beatrix at the Conservation and Restoration Laboratory of the National Museum of Transylvanian History (material determinations for textile fibers, paper and materia medica); XRF and SEM-EDX investigations of anorganic materials (glass, metal) and materia medica will be contracted to the National Institute of Research and Development for Izotopic and Molecular Technologies in Cluj-Napoca, in collaboration with the Faculty of Chemistry; and 10 samples of organic materia medica (complex 18th century preparations) will be sent to the Analytical Chemistry Center of the University in Pisa for chromatography and mass spectometry.

We thank our collaborators, Dr. Márta Guttmann, Dr. Magó Andrea Beatrix, and Drd. Grapini Sabin-Pompei.