Apothecaries and cures in Early Modern Cluj

This is the title of my latest presentation delivered during the "Cluj/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg – 700" international conference held in Cluj-Napoca by the Sapientia and Babes Bolyai Universities. My presentation attempted to reconstruct the Early Modern history of apothecary shops and pharmacies of Cluj (i.e. between the 16th and the 18th century), identifying traits and developments in the field  (in comparison to the rest of Transylvania and Western Europe) and to verify is there are any novel strategies in marketing and retail employed by pharmacists to boost their sales. Until the article is finished for the collective volume of the conference, fell free to check my presentation on academia.edu HERE.

The full program of the conference is available in Romanian HERE.

One of the documents preserved at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj is an eighteenth-century manuscript, a tariffs project by Tobias Maucksch or Mauksch, the privileged pharmacist of Cluj, owner of the apothecary shop hosting the museum today.

Nineteenth-century guild certificate from Cluj

The National History Museum of Transylvania preserves in its collection a series of engraving plates for guild certificates. The nineteenth century plates were used to print "diplomas", official forms granted apprentices after presenting the masterpieces to the guild commission and becoming masters themselves. This particular print, recently pulled after the original plate, was employed by the carpenters' guild in Cluj, written in German and depicting a vedutta of the city of Klausenburg/Kolozsvar/Cluj. The main monuments are numbered and explained in the caption and the frame decorated with festoons is surmounted by the coat of arms of Cluj - a city gate with three towers.
The post card depicting this diploma can be acquired at the History of Pharmacy Collection.

An earlier and more famous view of the same city, labeled "Claudiopolis Coloswar vulgo Klausenburg, Transilvaniae civitas primara", has been created by Georg Houfnagel in 1617.