Pharmatrans » Study visits

The Botanical Museum in Cluj-Napoca

November 3, 2023

The Botanical Museum in Cluj-Napoca, part of the ”Alexandru Borza” Botanical Garden, functions under the administration of the Babeș-Bolyai University. One the museum sections focuses on medicinal plants, presenting around 800 such plant parts, with their respective therapeutical indications. The museums includes both exotic and local plants and drugs, and even two lots of healing herbs employed by village healers (so-called ”wise women’s pharmacies). A number of extracts and preparations on display have been obtained in the second half of the 20th century from the education materials company run by Ludwig Wilhelm Schaufuss. The Botanical Museum is located in the building of the Botanical Institute, at the entrance of the Botanical Garden.

The Pharmacy Museum in Krakow

June 8, 2023

The Krakow Pharmacy Museum, administered by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Jagiellonian University, was established in 1946 and is the largest museum of its kind in Poland, occupying all the floors of a historical house in the center of the city. The building hosts the pharmacy collection since 1991. The display is impressive, with numerous and varied types of artifacts, including a series of entire officinae from different periods and areas of Poland. The last pharmacy with furniture included in the display has ceased functioning in 2009. One must also note the great variety of materia medica, ranging from stuffed crocodiles and sea horses to chemical substances, vegetal matter and even a human skull. The basement reunites tools from historical pharmaceutical laboratories, while the attic recreates a herbarium, with numerous plants hung to dry. Though the display is classical and devoid of interaction or technology, the value of the collection is remarkable and the bilingual explanations are of very good quality.

The College of Pharmacists of Valencia

May 29, 2023

Part of The Hygeia Legacy international seminar we have visited the headquarters of the College of Pharmacists of Valencia (Muy Ilustre Colegio Oficial de Farmacéuticos de Valencia). Housed inside the charming 19th-century Fernando Ibáñez Payés urban palace, the college has a rich collection of old pharmaceutical books as well as historical artifacts connected to the production and marketing of pharmaceutical products in Spain. The institution itself is remarkable through the antiquity of the documents attesting it, from the 15th century, that make it the oldest college of pharmacists in the world.

Natural Science Museum in Milan

September 26, 2022

Civico Museo di Storia Naturale of Milan contains, like all natural science museums, numerous materials linked to the history of pharmacy – from minerals, plants, animal and fossil elements with apothecary uses, to Wunderkammerns and the scientific tools and curiosity that accelerated the knowledge of the natural world. The museum in Milan, that we visited in September 2022, contains a new exhibition of minerals, some of which were also used in the making of medicines and still are today. There is also the old but scientifically very interesting display of fossils and natural specimens that were sometimes in the attention of pharmacists throughout history, including, for example, dioramas with narwals (the horns of which were though to belong to unicorns and posses great healing powers).

The pharmacy collection of the Science Museum in Milan

September 15, 2022

In September 2022 we have visited the history of pharmacy collection of the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. It is one of the smallest collection of this impressive museum of science and technology, exhibited for the first time in 1957. It was meant to evoke the atmosphere of the old monastic pharmacies (as one of the museum buildings is a former Olivetan monastery). At the same time, the display was intended to point to the connection between art, science, and technology. The furniture is not from an old pharmacy, but from a religious context, and the stuffed crocodiles dated to the 19th century, a time when it was no longer fashionable to decorated pharmacies with exotic animals. Most of the artifacts in this collection were obtained from the antiquities market, thus their original contexts of use remain unknown, but the small display is very beautiful and evocative. In 2016 all items were conserved/restored. We thank Mrs. Simona Casonato and her colleagues for the special guided tour.

Pharmacy and contemporary glass art

December 1, 2021

Another old pharmacy in Venice is currently one of the location of the Berengo Collection, hosting contemporary glass art exhibitions. The sign of the apothecary shop is preserved inside the oficina, a painted and gilded wooden sculpture of Christ the Savior (probably the name of the shop and the oldest historical artifact in the location). The original furniture has also been kept in the main room to the street, with decorative reliefs inscribed ”Mitridato” and ”Teriaca” (the names of two related recipes of a famous antidote and cure-all produced in Venice), the dispensing table and some of the drug containers. Though the combination of the old pharmacy and the glass art creations is impressive, the patrimony goods are in need of conservation and research.

”Ai do San Marchi” Pharmacy

November 30, 2021

The ”Two saints Mark” Pharmacy (the funny name probably started from the fact that the patron saint of Venice was painted on each side of the shop’s sign) is entirely preserved inside the Ca Rezzonico Museum. The pharmacy functioned in Campo San Stin between the 16th and the 19th century, but in 1908 the window of the last owner sold everything to a French collector. Still, as the latter was unable to take the goods out of Italy, he donated the entire furniture, containers and laboratory tools to the municipality of Venice. The three reconstructed rooms (the oficina, the small laboratory, and the back room) are complete, with all pieces of furniture, Venetian drug jars made of majolica, Murano glass retorts and containers, even the doors to the outside, with small glass panels, and the painted sign mentioned above. This is an impressive reconstruction and the most complete 18th-century pharmacy preserved from Venice. We thank Dr. Daniele D’Anza, of the Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento veneziano, for the special guided tour.

Pharmacy and perfume

November 29, 2021

The museum in the Palazzo Mocenigo, in Venice, dedicated to the history of the 18th century, includes two rooms dedicated to the history of perfume. The topic is of great interest to our project, as the same ingredients and technologies were often employed in the making of perfume and of medicines – especially the strong fragrances of animal origin, such as musk, ambergris, civet, and castoreum, but also some of the vegetal ones, like long pepper and anise. The entire museum is fascinating for the richness of its patrimony and for the reconstruction of a period when Venice was the hub of European trade in luxury goods (including spices and exotic goods).

Wunderkammer

November 27, 2021

The cabinets of curiosities, in which the emperors, kings and noblemen of Europe gathered, for study (and display) the most novel and strange natural specimens and the most interesting man-made artifacts, often included items also used in the preparation of drugs. Such Wunderkammern, fashionable especially between the 16th and the 18th centuries, houses bezoars, narwal horns (believed to be unicorn horns), sawfish rostrums and vegetal and mineral specimets from exotic territories thought for due to their healing properties. The GIANCARLO LIGABUE musej of natural history from Venice includes the reconstruction of such a cabinet of curiosities, as well as displays focusing on the artifacts of Venetian explorers who contributed to the research and systematization of the natural world. We were also impressed by the very modern and interactive curatorial principles at work in this museum.

The pharmacy at the Ercole d’Oro

November 26, 2021

There are so many old pharmacies in Venice, that some have remained in situ, turned into contemporary shops (especially those of the perfume company The Merchant of Venice). One of the most spectacular such locations is the Ercole d’Oro pharmacy near the church of Santa Fosca, in the district of Cannaregio, with 17th-18th-century furniture and artifacts. We have admired the painted ceiling, the exquisite furniture with reliefs and sculptures, the drawers with apothecary inscriptions, the pottery jars, as well as an interesting depiction of drug-making, on a wooden plaque commemorating the renovation of the 18th century.

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Category: Study visits