IZI travel tours for the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj

The History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, Romania, shall soon join the IZI travel free audio tours application. Now part of a growing community of cultural and tourist sites, the small museum, part of the National History Museum of Transylvania, shall soon provide for its visitors free explanations, in both Romanian and English, about the building, the old pharmacy, the medical equipment and several of its most significant exhibits on display. Stay tuned for when we go public!

About the museum and audio tours under construction for the History of Pharmacy Collection

Some of the exhibits to be included in the above-mentioned tours

 

Mystery artificial breathing machine

The medical equipment collection of the History of Pharmacy Museum in Cluj includes a mystery item, lacking an inventory no and thus identification details. It is a mobile artificial breathing machine, probably used during surgery, under anesthesia.

Research through public consultation is ongoing for establishing its dating and production details. The suggested determination is mid twentieth century, manufactured in Chotěboř, the Czech Republic a.k.a. Czechoslovakia, possibly used on the front.

 

produced in Chotebor, the Czech Republic

 

Collection of medical equipment

The History of Pharmacy museum in Cuj-Napoca includes and exhibits, in a room that was not part of the old apothecary shop, a distinct collection of ca. 500 items used in the hospitals and medical cabinets of Cluj between the 1890s and 1980s. Among the most valuable exhibits one can mention the earliest electrocardiograph from Romania, of the Einthoven type, single channel, produced in Paris in 1915, and Röntgen machines from the period 1915-1920. The largest lost has been donated by Prof. Pompiliu Manea in 1997, but other items have been subsequently offered by doctors and other private citizens.

The collection includes medical prints, X-ray machines, physiotherapy, gynecology, ophthalmology, dentistry microscopes and other kinds of instruments, tools and apparatus. 

Detail of the Boulitte Einthoven electrocardiograph of 1915

Ophthalmology lenses

Gynecological instruments

Radiostat for physiotherapy