Medical Equipment Room at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj

The History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, holds and exhibits, in a separate hall that was not part of the old pharmacy, a special lot of items that reflect the history of medical equipment in Cluj. You can visit it in Unirii Square no. 28 - find the visiting hours HERE.

The Medical Equipment collection in Cluj

This separate collection includes around 500 objects used in the city’s hospitals and medical practices between the end of the 19th century and the 1970s and 1980s. The most recent items are a couple of ecographs produced during the 1980s in Germany. The display is grouped according to medical specialties (stomatology, ophthalmology, gynecology and neonatology, physiotherapy, radiology etc.) 

Gynecology instruments on display

 Among the most valuable items one can mention what is probably the oldest electrocardiograph from Romania (of the Einthoven type, with a single channel, produced in 1915 in Paris), Röntgen machines from 1915-1920, old microscopes, various medical instruments and old medical prints. The most consistent lot was donated to the National History Museum of Transylvania (that owns the collection) in 1997 by Prof. Dr. Pompiliu Manea (through his company, TEMCO), but there are also objects donated over time by doctors and various other private persons.

Read more about the electrocardiograph in a previous blog post HERE. 

Detail of the Einthoven electrocardiograph

The vault is decorated with gilded stucco from around 1900 and during the Communist Period this room hosted a hat shop, accessible from the side, currently Ferdinand Street. The hall only became part of the museum shortly before the year 2000.

Listen to this presentation free online on the museum's izi.TRAVEL profile. 

Gilded stucco decoration and Netherlandish medical plates

17th-19th century apothecary closets

The furniture collection of the History of Pharmacy Museum in Cluj-Napoca includes four apothecary closets from different pharmacies in Transylvania. The oldest is a rare 17th-century example of such specialized furniture once used in the Black Eagle pharmacy in Sibiu. Each drawer is marked by painted signatures in Latin, indicating its contents - Lap. pumicis (pumice stone), Lap. Haematidis (blood stone), Borax, Vitriol Hungaricum etc. This is one of the oldest exhibits of the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj, part of the National History Museum of Transylvania.

17th century apothecary closet from Sibiu/Hermannstadt, Transylvania, Romania

 Two other such closets date back to the 18th century and their original places of use remain unknown, as they were part of older private collections. One of the closets bears a simple, vegetal decoration, as most of the apothecary ingredients were vegetal in origin at that time, but the second is special through its iconography. It depicts the stages of life, from childhood (a child sitting on a skull, a Memento Mori type scene), youth, maturity and death (a skeleton with a scythe). Though several levels of interpretation are possible due to the details included in some of these scenes (the Wheel of Fortune, snakes, the globe etc.), the primary meaning of this composition was that all people must die but the moment can be postponed by buying drugs from the pharmacy, thus a kind of commercial and a strange Baroque marketing strategy.

18th century apothecary closet depicting the four stages of life

Detail of an 18th-century apothecary closet with vegetal decoration

The final example is a 19th century closet from the old Hintz Pharmacy that currently hosts the museum. This large closet is half open, with shelves currently holding apothecary jars made of wood, and half closed, with drawers with signatures. One of the larger drawers depicted here is marked "Saccharum", sugar, which was sold in loaves and thus required larger storage units.

Read and listen more about the collection on its brand new IziTravel page and feel free to leave a review! We shall certainly appreciate it!

An 18th century apothecary chest

This apothecary chest, preserved at the History of Pharmacy Museum in Cluj-Napoca, was the 18th century variant of the first aid kit. Noble families carried them around during their numerous travels through Transylvania and abroad, when they did not have easy access to doctors, pharmacists, or apothecary shops. Most of the contents are common, such as mustard seeds, but others were exotic and expensive. This apothecary chest, the property of noblewoman Tereza Kemény, also included two small jars and one drawer for bezoar stones or powders. Bezoars were stones from the stomach of ruminants from Asia or America, believed to be the most powerful antidotes. In a world where nobles were obsessed with the fear of being poisoned, such presumed medicines were very much in demand, though some contested their efficacy even back then.

The apothecary chest of Tereza Kemény

Two small jars with signatures including alchemical symbols on the paper lids - bezoar powders

"Bezoard" inscribed on one of the drawers of the portable pharmacy

Check out the museum's new IZI travel profile, with free audio tours and presentations in both Romanian and English:

The History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj, the second in Transylvania after the museum in Sibiu, is part of the National History Museum of Transylvania the main exhibition of which is closed, but several temporary exhibitions are always on display. When visiting Cluj, be sure to check it out as well, in the city's most beautiful pedestrian square, called because of it Museum's Square.

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