21/06/2017

Imported apothecary goods in Transylvania

Just like today, a significant category of customers preferred foreign, famous, and expensive goods. One could buy such from the pharmacies, for healing various of the era's afflictions (including syphilis), for disease prevention (prophylactic products that included exotic fruits such as lemons and spices such as cloves, cinnamon, Aloe Vera, pepper, etc.), for beauty, for hygiene, animal poisons, aphrodisiacs (the lizard Stincus Marinus) and abortives, or simply gifts. The Maucksch-Hintz pharmacy that hosts the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj for example Selters mineral water imported from the area of Strassbourg, exotic medicinal plants from the Orient (obtained through intermediaries such as merchants in Poland or Vienna), such plants from the new American continent (such as tobacco), drugs wrapped in royal paper from the Netherlands or France and many others.
Follow the free online tour "Imported products" on the izi.TRAVEL profile of the History of Pharmacy Collection, part of the National History Museum of Transylvania in the capital of that province, the city of Cluj-Napoca. 

Orange peel (Aurantior cortex)

Spices as apothecary ingredients

Stincus marinus

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