The pharmacist's costume

Habit d'apoticaire, in
“Recueil les costumes grotesques et les métiers de Nicolas de Larmessin”.

Reproduction of a 17^th-century engraving depicting the typical costume of a pharmacist, imagined as consisting of the tools of the trade – an alembic is worn as a hat and iconographically the most significant element, but there are also typical jars, tools, containers, a syringe and various medicinal plants. All visual elements are identified by inscriptions in French. From the work “Recueilles costumes grotesques et les métiers de Nicolas de Larmessin”.

The alembic is a distillation still, borrowed from alchemy, consisting of three parts. The cucurbit, a heated pot that contains the liquid to be distilled,   the ambic, covering the cucurbit like a cap, collecting the vapors and leading them down a descending tube, and   the receiver, holding the condensed distilled liquid. The term comes from Arabic (al-anbīḳ), in itself a borrowing from Greek (ambix), meaning cup or beaker.

Alchemical laboratory tools in the old pharmacies

Apothecary laboratories included a series of instruments and containers that any alchemist would have easily recognized, especially the alembic, retorts and crucibles. Many of the processes were also similar: distillation, fermentation, separation, calcination etc.

Alembic – distillation still consisting of three parts:

-        the cucurbit, a heated pot that contains the liquid to be distilled

-        the ambic, covering the cucurbit like a cap, collecting the vapors and leading them down a descending tube

-        the receiver, holding the condensed distilled liquid

The term comes from Arab (al-anbīḳ), a borrowing from Greek (ambix), meaning cup, beaker. 

Depiction of an alembic in a medieval manuscript

Retorts were also used for distillation and they had the cucurbit and the ambic joined into a single piece. Retorts are in fact spherical bowls with a very long, descending neck.

Retort and receiver

Crucibles are small containers made of metal or refractory materials in which various substances were heating to high temperatures. The term comes from Latin, where crucibulum designated a pot used for melting metal.

Lot of crucibles discovered in the alchemical lab from the Oberstockstall Castle in Austria

Discover more about the links between alchemy, iatrochemistry and pharmacy visiting the "Pharmacy and Alchemy" temporary exhibition on display until the end of 2017 in Cluj-Napoca, at the History of Pharmacy Collection, part of the National History Museum of Transylvania.

Join the Facebook event HERE.

Alembic and retort in the reconstructed laboratory of the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca

The laboratorium in the old apothecary shop of Cluj

The apothecary laboratory of the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca is reconstructed in the basement and can be accessed, though not quite easily, in the corner of the Materials’ Room. Mind the steps – they are cut-out, asymmetrical, and very steep. Though the basement is the oldest part of the building, the so-called Maucksch-Hintz House, with Renaissance door frames and even reused Roman epigraphic monuments, one cannot be certain that it was ever used as a laboratory or just as a storage space. Its main problem is not the access, uncertain during the day as the current steps were installed in the 1970s, but the evacuation of smoke (an inevitable result of using the stove for various apothecary procedures) and the problematic ventilation of the basement. What is more, when the pharmacy was nationalized, the lab was already located on the first floor, in today's Books' Room.

Mind the steps!

Two rooms are reconstructed downstairs, one just for storage and one for the actual preparation of medicines. The latter contains the reconstruction of an apothecary stove and various original tools and utensils from old pharmacies in Transylvania: an alembic, a retort, several glass tubes and crucibles, types inherited from alchemy, percolators, graded cups, mortars, three-legged pots and many other items. Before the chemical synthesizing of the ingredients, the preparation of drugs involved relatively simple procedures such as the crushing, boiling, distillation, maceration and percolation of various plants, minerals and substances of animal origin.

Listen to this presentation free online on izi.Travel HERE. 

Reconstructed apothecary laboratory in Cluj-Napoca

Cordial waters and alchemy

One of the highlights of the "Gold and gems" temporary exhibition currently on show at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca is the recreation of cordials and a discussion on how they were produced. 

Cordial waters were based on the idea of the alchemists’ Aurum potabile, pure gold liquefied according to secret methods, considered universal medicine (panaceum) and a true Elixir of Life. Alchemists believed gold to be a pure substance, thus its consumption could only benefit the body. Still, some 15th-16th c. texts mention intoxications with gold and even deaths.

Cordial waters imitated the properties of that noble metal. Their golden color was obtained with saffron (Crocus sativus, the most expensive of spices, as each flower only has three stigmata), but the most expensive variants also contained flecks of gold.

Recreation of cordial water containing saffron and gold flecks

Crocus sativus flower,

Another connection to alchemy is that cordials contained alcohol, obtained through distillation in the alembic and the retort, two of the typical instruments of the alchemists. The alembic had three parts: the curcubit, the heated still pot containing the liquid to be distilled, the ambic, which fits over the mouth of the cucurbit to receive the vapors, with an attached downward-sloping "tube" and the receiving kabila. Retorts have the ambic and the cucurbit made into one.

Alembic and retort in the reconstructed laboratory of the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca