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