The transformations of a mercury jar

It all started with a pair of beautiful, hand-painted eighteenth-century apothecary glass jars from the Pharmacy Museum in Cluj. The items were once used in the "Red Crab" Apothecary Shop from Bratislava, hence the red crab depicted on top of the signatures that read "Mercurius niger mosc[at]" and "Mercurius Phoshpor[ic]." In the Early Modern period many mercury preparations were actual used as medicine, though toxic in higher concentrations and/or dosage. The jars are included in the temporary exhibition on show, The History of Poison.

Working with the items I felt inspired and prepared a large linocut depicting historical apothecary jars, among which one of the jars in question. The signatures proved rather tricky, as due to the printing itself, left and right become reversed, so inscriptions have to be rendered flipped horizontally (a usual procedure is to draw looking at the model through a mirror, though my hemispheres seem to get too much confused and I simply transfer such elements). The full work is available in my Etsy shop.

Mirrored drawing of the signatures

Detail of the linoleum plate

 

Detail of the printed linocut

 

 

Lard and the old apothecary shops of Transylvania

“Axungia porci [lard] is very important for apothecaries as it is used in large quantities for pomades and unguents. One should buy lard before Christmas, in the months of November and December, when it is best and cheapest. The butcher’s opinion must be taken into consideration. It is best to buy large fat pigs or pigs fed with corn, since their fat is hard. Other lards are softer and never solidify, unlike lard from pigs fed with corn. In summer it melts and turns into oil and is thus unsuitable for preparing unguents.”

 Tobias Maucksch (1752-1802) thus advised his son Johann Martin in 1793 in his famous INSTRUCTIO that describes the functioning of the "Golden Stag" pharmacy from Târgu Mureş.

 

Details of the signatures of apothecary jars for the preservation of lard

The History of Pharmacy Collection of Cluj-Napoca, part of the National History Museum of Transylvania, includes four jars made of faience and porcelain for the preservation of lard. They are inscribed AXUNGIA PORCI, sometimes in shortened forms. Three of the jars are dated to the nineteenth century and one to the eighteenth century and they had been used in Saint George’s pharmacy from Cluj-Napoca (where we are now), the Engel pharmacy from Iaşi and the pharmacy of the Misericordians from Oradea [Ordo Sancti Joannis de Deo]. 
This FOCUS group is the mini-exhibition for the month of March 2016 at the collection in Unirii Square 28, in the heart of Cluj-Napoca. For details of other temporary exhibition, tickets, timetable, see the blog in Romanian HERE.
For the Romanian version of this article, see the official blog of the collection HERE. 

Exhibit of the month section at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca

ANISE AS APOTHECARY INGREDIENT

Anise (Pimpinella anisum) is a native plant of Egypt, Greece, Crete, and the Asia Minor, known by the ancient Greeks and cultivated by the Romans in Italy. Star anise (Illicium verum) is very similar in flavor, but the plant is different, native of China and Vietnam.

Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder mention, besides the old cook books, the use of anise during the Roman period as a spice, mostly for the preparation of a digestive cake served at the end of dinner. During the Middle Ages, the plant started to be cultivated in Central Europe as well. Anise seeds are among the ingredients of absinthe, a highly alcoholic spirit created in Switzerland in the end of the eighteenth century, very popular and the artists and writers of Paris during the nineteenth and the twentieth century. Considered toxic, absinthe was forbidden in several states in 1915, but recent studies have shown that the absinthe's psychoactive properties have been exaggerated and a revival of absinthe began in the 1990s.

Due to its properties and strong flavor, anise was also used in pharmaceutical and para-pharmaceutical products; it was recommended in cold, cases of difficult digestion, but also to refresh one’s breath, as ingredient of dentifrices. Anise seed oil had external use, against parasites. In homeopathy, anise was prescribed as expectorant, anti-spasmodic, carminative, and anti-microbial.

 The History of Pharmacy Collection of Cluj includes five vessels (of which four are exhibited here), dated to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for anise seed powder and anise oil. The jars were used in pharmacies from Cluj, Baia Mare, Braşov, and Sibiu.