Pharmatrans » Research

Glass apothecary containers

August 26, 2023

Apothecary bottles and jars reveal several interesting technical details, that tell us about how and sometimes when they were produced, as well as elements of use and reuse. Glass produced evolved significantly between the 18th and the 20th century, from handmade free-blowing to automated mass production. Though thorough research is needed in identifying the exact production techniques and their introduction in Transylvania, the lot of apothecary containers in the History of Pharmacy Collection from Cluj-Napoca show the transition from older glass items (with significant asymmetries and irregularities, tall bases, and crude pontil marks) to the manufactured and eventually industrial ones (with relief decoration). One notes crude or polished pontil marks (created with the removal of the glass rod), seam marks (from molding), faceted and sanded surfaces, colored glass and transparent class painted over in dark colors (to protect the content from sunlight), or milky glass imitating porcelain. Due to the transparency of glass, these items also include spectacular examples of hand-painted enamel decoration and of reuse, featuring two inscriptions, on opposite sides, sometimes indicating the same content, but written in a different style.

The first pharmacy museum in Cluj

August 8, 2023

The first history of pharmacy exhibition opened in Cluj in 1917 and was on display for the general public until 1918. The more than 1000 artifacts had been gathered by Dr. Iuliu (Gyula) Orient (1869-1940), professor of toxicology at the Hungarian and subsequently Romanian university of Cluj. Dr. Orient was also a surgeon, a pharmacist, and a passionate collector of old apothecary goods. At the end of the 19th century he started collecting such artifacts and after discussing the idea with Béla Pósta, the director of the Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum (National Transylvanian Museum), he launched a public call for donations that would allow for the foundation of a pharmacy museum. Between 1902 and 1918, Iuliu Orient donated his own collection and various artifacts offered by other pharmacists in answer to the public call to the museum. He was directly involved in organizing this initial history of pharmacy display in two of the ground floor rooms of the history museum. Dr. Orient published several studies describing his collecting efforts, sometimes his disappointment with the process, and the structure of the exhibition – with the various historical pharmaceutical artifacts on display in/on original pharmaceutical furniture. Today, these rooms house the library of the National Museum of Transylvanian History, on C. Daicoviciu st. 2, Cluj-Napoca.

Reused apothecary jars

July 31, 2023

Apothecary jars were specialized items, often bought in lots, sometimes customized, thus rather valuable. For this reason, they were often reused. Some inscriptions have been repainted (with an identical text in case the writing had faded, or with a different text if the content had changed). Other inscriptions have been effaced or covered with paper labels. Our collection includes jars with two or more inscriptions, painted on the body, written on labels (sometimes overlapped), or inscription fields that have remained empty. Inside some of the covers and on some of the jar bases one finds notations of contents and quantities removed/remaining. One wooden jar preserves two successive labels, with the printed data of two different pharmacies (thus the first was likely sold and reused, including the jars). Other jars have special labels with the notation of their weight (when empty), marked TARA or T. This allowed pharmacists to calculate the exact weight of the remaining content without having to remove it from the jar.

”Res Ladani” as paperweight

May 13, 2023

Among the stranger artifacts in the collection one can mention three dry, dark, not very appealing spirals recorded as small paperweights. The material they are made of though has prompted us into researching the different types of materia medica preparations, thus discovering their true identity. The small spirals are in fact a vegetal resin obtained from the Cistus ladanifer plant, a native of the Mediterranean. The substance, known as Resina Labdani (or Ladanum / Labdanum) was used in the making of both perfumes and medicines, in cures against cold, cough, menstrual troubles, or rheumatism. During Antiquity, the substance was collected by combing the beard and fur of goats and sheep that grazed among the bushes of this plant. For easy transportation and preservation, pharmacists would prepare the resin as a small spiral, that was not used for weighing down paper sheets, but for different preparations. The collection also preserves two wooden jar for the preservation of Ladanum, as their inscriptions suggest.

In search of the György Hintz pharmacists

April 29, 2023

The pharmaceutical profession and the baptism name György were traditional among the men of the Hintz family. In 1863 Dr. György Hintz (I) took over the pharmacy in the corner of the main square in Cluj, having inherited it from his mother, Matilda Mauksch. György Hintz I was the first Transylvanian to obtain a doctorate in pharmacology. He subsequently taught pharmacy-related topics at the university in Cluj, forming future pharmacists. He was also general curator of the Lutheran church. When he died, at just 50, from appendicitis, the pharmacy was run by a hired administrator until his son, György Hintz II, completed his studies and took over the family business in 1898. György Hintz III worked with his father since 1939 and was chief pharmacist 10 years later, when all private pharmacies in Romania were nationalized. In 1949 the Communist regime closed down the Hintz pharmacy and turned it into a museum five years later. György Hintz III and his brother, Gábor, continued to work in public pharmacies in Cluj, but were denied top positions. In the 1980s, the entire family left the country. While owned by the family, the pharmacy was called “Dr. György Hintz”, sometimes also “Saint George” or ”The Red Cross”.

Credits for the portraits of the three pharmacists:

György Hintz (I) – photo by Ferenc Veress, glass negative in the collection of the National Museum of Transylvanian History.

György Hintz (II) and (III) – photos by Ella Hintz, wife of the first and mother of the latter, images in the collection of the Hintz family, digitally processed by Melinda Blos-Jáni.

In search of pharmacist Tobias Mauksch

April 20, 2023

Tobias Mauksch (1727-1802, sometimes spelled Maugsch or Maucksch), a Saxon from present-day Slovakia, was the most successful pharmacist of Cluj during the Baroque period. In 1760 he obtained an exclusive privilege from empress Maria Teresia. He became the only one with the right to run a pharmacy in the free royal city Cluj and to pass down the business to his children. Tobias had bought, from his uncle’s widow, the old urban pharmacy that had functioned since around 1550 in one of the buildings that stood around St. Michael’s church, and moved it to the house on the corner of the main square. He had the building renovated and decorated with interior painting in 1766. Tobias became curator of the evangelical church, chief of the police force, and even a senator of Cluj. He married twice and had 18 children. Two of his sons continued his profession and for them he acquired another pharmacy, in Târgu Mureș. The Unicorn pharmacy he bought in Cluj was gifted to his son-in-law. He died in Cluj, at the age of 75, and is buried in the Central Cemetery. His sons, Tobias Samuel Mauksch and Johann Martin Mauksch, ran the pharmacy in Cluj successively, but they both died relatively young. The business remained in the property of the latter’s widow and then daughter, Mathilde Augusta, under the coordination of paid administrators (Daniel Slaby from Bratislava and his heirs) and was eventually taken over by Mathilda’s son, György Hintz.

A number of artifacts connected to Tobias Mauksch have been preserved in the pharmacy collection from Cluj, three manuscripts and a glass container with a depiction of a stag, likely used in the pharmacy from Târgu Mureș. A portrait labeled Tóbiás Maucksch has been preserved by the Hintz family, but remains unclear if it depicts the privileged pharmacist or his son, Tobias Samuel. The funerary monument of the first has been recently restored by Dr. Georg Hintz.

In search of countess Kemény Teréz

March 27, 2023

The first step in identifying the owner of the 18th-century medicine chest in our collection was to closely analyze the manuscript preserved in one of the drawers. This is in fact an invoice issued by pharmacists Anthonius Perestick for medicines dispensed from the pharmacy in Șimleu that countess Terézia Kemény paid for in cash on October 13, 1787, in Nușfalău. Terézia Kemény, born in 1739, was married to baron Bánffy Mihályi, and died in Cluj, in 1806, at 66 years of age. Her portrait once stood, beside her husband’s, inside the Bánffy palace in Cluj. During her research in the archives, Dr. Mária Pakucs has also identified Terézia’s and signature, noting that the countess continued to sign with her maiden name, as her own family was among the most important in Transylvania. Mother of five, Terézia Kemény looked after her family by owning and periodically refilling a medicine chest, essential especially during their numerous travels. The invoice preserved in the chest, listing medicines dispensed over several months, was probably paid at the Bánffy castle in Nușfalău (Szilágynagyfalu), Sălaj County.

The portrait is published in BORDÁS BEÁTA, A KOLOZSVÁRI BÁNFFY-PALOTA. MÚLT ÉS JELEN, KOLOZSVÁR, 2019, p. 108.

Ear candling

March 6, 2023

Among the mysterious artifacts in our collection we can mention a 10-cm-tall wooden cone with concave base, with no data on original context of use and means of acquisition. Such artifacts have usually ended up in the museum from pharmacies nationalized in 1949, have not been published before, and the inventory ledger only records brief descriptions. We have thus turned to the expertise of practicing pharmacists, namely to a Facebook group that reunites such specialists from Romania. They have kindly clarified the function of this item: such cones were used in modelling ear candles, employed in the (medically not recommended) treatment of ear inflammation, hearing troubles, headaches and the removal of ear wax. The base concavity prevented wood deformation during sterilization.

The surprise in the theriac jar

January 10, 2023

While collecting samples of materia medica for analysis, we discovered a circular metal item in a theriac jar dated 1905. According to the label, the medicine was prepared in Szendy Antal’s “Hungarian Crown” pharmacy in Baia Mare. Some of the black-colored dried substance was still preserved on the bottom of the glass jar and in it what we thought looked like a coin. The item was taken to the restoration laboratory of the National Museum of Transylvanian History, where Radu Cordoș cleaned the corrosion as much as possible. It seems the item was not a coin after all, but a blank with two asymmetrical perforations. With the kind help of Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore, PhD, affiliated to the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, we discovered analogies and the ongoing mystery function of the coins/tesserae, sometimes perforated, and relief metal lids sometimes found in theriac jars in Italy, for example, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Future XRF analyses, revealing the metal composition of the theriac “coin” from Baia Mare might shed some light into the matter.

Parchment and vellum analysis

November 23, 2022

Two cultural artifacts made of animal skin, part of the History of Pharmacy Collection, were analyzed through a collaboration between specialists of the National Museum of Transylvanian History (conservators, restorers, investigators) and PhD Lucreția Miu from the National Research-Development Institute for Textile and Leather in Bucharest.

The first artifact is a document with seal, representing the diploma through which pharmacist Blasius Galambos was granted a nobility title in 1644. The direct examination of the material and analyses performed with a portable microscope have revealed the fact that the document was written on vellum (parchment made from calf skin). The outer side of the skin, supporting the text, was carefully processed, while the inside shows traces of processing technique errors.

The second document, a diploma issued for pharmacist Samuel Velits, dated 1776, was made of goat skin, written on the outer side. The dents where hair follicles have been removed are visible in those areas where the text support preparation was partially removed through repeated manipulation.

12 3

Category: Research