Old world pharmacy

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soyroger

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Yesterday I was at my internship at a compounding pharmacy when our electricity went out b/c of the storm in northern CA. We were left w/out being able to look up pt info in the system, print labels, search formularies, use the digital balances, etc. and the phones were down too. It's amazing how helpless we felt w/out modern technology.

After doing some Spring cleaning a little early I helped one of the pharmacists finish a tetracycline capsule compound for this lady's cat that she really wanted to pick up that afternoon. One of the techs found an old torsion balance and a couple small wooden boxes with apothecary and metric weights that I used to measure out the powders, weight of the capsules (empty and full), etc. It wasn't a huge deal or anything, but I found it so fascinating to use equipment from a generation ago. Last time I read an article about what pharmacy was like in the 19th century I couldn't stop telling my wife how interesting it must have been to practice in those days. She tells me I was born in the wrong century (for other reasons as well), but I think pharmacy history and how things were done years ago is so cool. This profession just gets better with each passing day. It's like so many other fine things that just get better with age.

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That's pretty interesting...I like reading the history of the apothecary. I remember back in high school when I worked at the mall. The power would go out and we'd have to pull out the manual credit card swipe machines and use calculators to tally up those remaining customers in the store.
 
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I'm not even kidding you, but I've been to The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum:

http://www.institute-shot.com/images/Pharmacy%20Museum%20New%20Orleans.jpg

three times. I love looking around.
(http://www.neworleansmuseums.com/directory/location.php?locationID=1274)

They have all kinds of really neat pharmacy antiques. The last thing that caught my eye was how the prescriptions were bound. At one point in time, scripts were looped through a metal wire into a circle. It was like a big, paper hoop earring.
 
I'm not even kidding you, but I've been to The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum:

three times. I love looking around.
(http://www.neworleansmuseums.com/directory/location.php?locationID=1274)

They have all kinds of really neat pharmacy antiques. The last thing that caught my eye was how the prescriptions were bound. At one point in time, scripts were looped through a metal wire into a circle. It was like a big, paper hoop earring.

How cool!! I want to visit. I've been to one in Florence, IT...and a few others. That one looks beautiful! Whenever I travel I try to pick up a mortar & pestle for my collection.

My uncle just visited the oldest pharmacy in continual operation in Europe...it's in Estonia; been around since 1422. Here are a few of the pics he took for me.

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Reminds me of the Apothecary in Madame Bovary...very cool.
 
Argh, I was in Florence recently and didn't get a chance to go there. I must make it a point to go next time.
 
How cool!! I want to visit. I've been to one in Florence, IT...and a few others. That one looks beautiful! Whenever I travel I try to pick up a mortar & pestle for my collection.

My uncle just visited the oldest pharmacy in continual operation in Europe...it's in Estonia; been around since 1422. Here are a few of the pics he took for me.

Europe has wonderful pharmacies. The pharmacies over there are very traditional, and they have a lot of charm.
I love the Youtube clip that WVU posted about laundry detergent! American pharmacies seem to have lost their emphasis on the pharmacy department.

In addition to the pharmacy antiques, the museum in New Orleans has antique medical supplies. Supposedly, the museum loaned a few of their medical instruments to the producers of the Brad Pitt movie: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Parts of the movie were filmed in the French Quarter near the museum.

They have a neat antique optical collection too. These glass eyes were amazing!


n83304022_30260325_1908.jpg



Spiriva, if you ever want to visit the museum, let me know. I'll meet you there. I really enjoy going, and the admission fee is very affordable at $5. It's just a street car ride away!
 
Wow, that Estonia pharmacy is a relic and the New Orleans museum looks similar to the Apothecary's Museum in Alexandria, VA I visited last year. When I was there they told me that they still haven't finished cataloging everything and some of the drawers are still full of old supplies/herbs/powders/etc.

The only museum (really a collection) I've been to in New Orleans was the one at Tulane that had all sorts of fetus specimen oddities. Something that wouldn't ever be compiled today, but I'm glad I saw it anyway.

Another point of interest from pharmacy in the civil war times is how prescriptions were mainly written in Latin and how they resembled a true recipe (Rx) with the active ingredients, excipients, fillers, flavorants, stabilizers all listed separately or done according to the druggist's discretion.
 
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