Page 10 - Pharmacy History 31 Mar 2007

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found Montpellier swarming ‘with Apothecaries, Distillers, Chymists, and Quacks of all kinds...’ Sir Hans Sloane (famous benefactor who donated the Chelsea Physic Garden by Deed to The Worshipful Society
of Apothecaries in 1722) studied at Montpellier where he started his plant collection. During the 16-17th century wars of religion, Protestants were barred from study at many universities (Paris, Antwerp and also in England). They gathered at the medical school
in Montpellier, before dispersing throughout Europe e.g. Charles de l’Ecluse (Clusius), Matthias de l’Obel (Lobelius), Jean Bauhin, Conrad Gesner and Felix Platter.
Montpellier’s Botanical Garden, founded in 1593, was the first in France. It was a model for the design of other botanical gardens established in France, including the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Like the earlier PG
of Pisa and Padua, the Montpellier Garden was designed as a ‘living encyclopaedia of plants, especially those for medicinal use. La Pharmacy de la Misericorde, an 18th century pharmacy in Montpellier has a gem of a collection of over 300 ceramics from the last three centuries. It was run as
a pharmacy by the nuns of the Order of Little Sisters of Misericordia until several decades ago.
Heading north we visited the village of St Julien en Beaujolais, the home town of Claude Bernard, an eclectic scientist known as the Father of Physiology and best remembered
for the concept of homeostasis. The museum is located beside the home and vineyard where he grew up. A glass of good Beaujolais wine sent us, well satisfied, on our way to Beaune.
Beaune is perhaps best known as
the centre of Burgundian wine but, as remarkable are the historic and beautiful wooden buildings of the Hotel-Dieu. Its roofs, covered with glazed multicoloured tiles, create wonderful geometrical patterns. The buildings, dating from 1443, have
a Flemish Gothic character. The hospital was founded by Nicolas Rolin and his wife Guigone de Salins
at the end of the Hundred Years War, as a hospital caring for the poor, nobles and middle-class alike, until the 20th century. A retirement home is retained. The remarkable Great Hall of the Poor, opened in 1452, retains its original size. Behind each bed was a chest for the patient’s clothes.
In the Middle Ages, hospitals had their own pharmacy for preparation of the remedies, from mineral, animal and vegetable material. Herbs came from the jardin des simples located beside the pharmacy. Hotel-dieu Pharmacy has a bronze mortar dating from 1760. Paintings show the drying and powdering of plants, grinding with mortar and pestle, distillation and medical compounding. The pharmacy has an impressive collection of earthenware pots and glass bottles for remedies such as woodlice powder, eyes of crayfish, vomit nuts powder, elixir of property. A community of hospitals, known as the Hospices de Beaune, runs vineyards and the most famous wine auction in the world, to maintain funding.
Paris offers several museums, with specific interest to pharmaceutical history.
Musee Pasteur (Institut Pasteur) provides a fascinating insight into
the work of Louis Pasteur during
the 19th century. The laboratories display his work on the chiral molecules of tartaric acid; on the correctness of the germ theory of disease; on pasteurisation; on parasites killing large numbers of silkworms and affecting the silk industry;
on anaerobic organisms; and on artificially generated and attenuated organisms to produce vaccines. Upstairs are the rooms of the private apartment where Pasteur lived for seven years. His remains are held in the crypt of the same building.
Musee de l’Histoire de la Medicine, (Faculte de Medicine) covers medical history from ancient Egypt to
fairly recent times including early French commercially manufactured pharmaceuticals.
Musee de l’Assistance Publique- Hopitaux de Paris is devoted to the
history of the hospitals of Paris from the foundation of the Hotel-Dieu
in the 7th century to the beginning
of the 20th century. Pharmacy is well represented with interesting technical equipment and jars.
We continued our tour in London with a visit to the Old Operating Theatre (from 1822, St Thomas’s Hospital site Southwark) that was rediscovered in the roof space of
St Thomas’ church and restored in 1956. It is a remarkable example of a Victorian operating theatre and the only one known to exist. Exhibits tell the history of surgery and nursing. The Herb Garret (possibly less vulnerable to rats) associated with the Operating Theatre was used by St Thomas’s Apothecary to store and cure herbs. St Thomas’s employed
its first apothecary in 1566 and last in 1871. He was the chief resident medical officer, responsible for compounding medicines and also for diagnosis of non-surgical patients. He had to pay for all drugs required by the hospital, out of his own fees. This system sometimes resulted in complaints that the Apothecary made savings on the drug bill at
the expense of the quality of the medicines. Herbs were grown in the Hospital Garden, brought in by Herb Women or purchased from the City Apothecaries.
The Hunterian Museum within
the Royal College of Surgeons of England, takes its name from the surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter (1728-1793). His collection of anatomy and pathology specimens, purchased by the government in 1799 formed the basis of the collection.
By the end of the 19th century the museum contained nearly 65,000 specimens covering anatomy, pathology, zoology, palaeontology, archaeology and anthropology.
The recently refurbished Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine is one of the world’s greatest collections related to medical history. We were privileged with a special exhibition of rare books from the collection.
10 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 3 ■ no 31 ■ MARCH 2007