Workshop Secrets

In the 17th century only 27 pharmacies operated in Hungary. People tried to make do with home apothecaries, portable medicine chests and products procured from olejkár, other travelling merchants of spice and fabric.

Olejkár, travelling medicine merchants of Slovak origin, probably learned their craft from Jesuit monks who settled in Upper Hungary in the 16th century, and sold their wares all over Europe.
 

Home apothecaries were mostly portable, lockable cases filled with elongated bottles, or pieces of furniture with many doors and drawers used by nobility. 

The Prince of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen (1613–1629) often bought pharmacy chests from Vienna or Venice for his ailing wife, Zsuzsanna Károlyi.

The first modern pharmacies were established by monastic orders but by the second half of the 18th century the number of secular pharmacies also increased, as sovereign Maria Theresa (1740–1780) made it obligatory to set up a pharmacy in each county.

The Jesuit Order founded pharmacies all over the country, for instance in Eger in 1713. Pictured are faience liquid medicine containers with the coat of arms of István Telekessy Bishop of Eger (✝1715).     

Baroque cartouches: ornate labels, are formally related to coats of arms, so they often carry other information in addition to the name of the medicine. They may refer to the owner of the pharmacy, the religious order operating the pharmacy, or even the name of the pharmacy itself.

The reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II (1780–1790) also affected the operation of pharmacies. The first important step was the development of the so-called taxa, i.e. official pharmaceutical price list.

First edited in Hungary by János Justus Torkos (1699–1770) in Bratislava in 1745. Before that the so-called Viennese price lists were used.  The first pharmacopoeia i.e. drug reference book and price list valid for the entire Habsburg Empire was published in 1776.     

The significance of price lists is that the name and recommended retail price of medicines are typically recorded not only in Latin but also in the official language of the given country. 

The cross system denoting the strength of different drugs which is still in use in Hungary, was introduced in the 1810 Buda taxa. 

Joseph II’s health reforms also affected pharmacies, as they required the pharmacy rooms to be clean, dry, bright, spacious and well ventilated, in accordance with drug storage and preparation regulations. 

Pharmacies had to include an officina, a laboratory, and a warehouse to store ingredients. The number and size of warehouses could vary. 

Initially pharmacies’ selling space or officina opened directly onto the street. Not only were medicines prepared and stored here, but it also functioned as an important social space. 

At the centre of the officina stood the work table or dispensary table where pharmacists stored their most important tools. 

The most valuable pieces of officina furnishings were the pharmacy jars of various materials, shapes, sizes and decorations, which not only played a functional role but also represented the authority of the pharmacist and the pharmacy. As the rules for storing medicines in pharmacies became stricter, so did pharmacy containers change. 

In the 15th century various albarellos appeared, some slim in the middle, some more stocky, some spindle-shaped which used to store powders, ground herbs and ointments. 

These jars, mostly decorated with copper green, manganese violet, cobalt blue and ochre yellow glazes, may have had cartouches, or labels too, although this was not yet common. 

Another characteristic type of pharmacy apothecary jars in addition to early clay containers are wooden medicine jars, already prevalent in the earliest pharmacies. 

These cylindrical jars contained shredded or powdered herbs and resins, as well as chemicals and medicines less sensitive to humidity. 

The most popular woods used for apothecary jars were linden, maple, ash, various fruit trees and poplar. The shape of wooden jars was mostly functional, decorativity was only secondary. 

Wooden vessels were banned in pharmacies in 1920, citing hygiene considerations. 

In the Dutch Low Lands the city of Delft became the centre of faience production in the 16th century, with the aim of competing with expensive Chinese porcelain. 

One of the distinctive motifs of Delft pharmacy vessels are mostly blue on white background. This is called the alla porcelana, which was perfected in Italy. Their impact was evident on the products of local workshops across Europe. 

The majolica technique, which got its name from the island Mallorca, spread from the Middle East to Spain, and via Mallorca to Italy. 

From the second half of the 15th century to the end of the 17th century the most significant of the Italian majolica workshops were in Faenza, Deruta, Urbino, Venice, Savona, Gaffagiolo, etc.

Changes in fashion and style influenced the wooden pharmacy jars as well, thus they were repainted often. 

A characteristic feature of Baroque and Late Baroque apothecary jars is marble imitation, where the marble effect was created using different shades of green, red and white, blue and white and dark grey tones. 

The mortar was one of the most important tools in a pharmacy, because solid ingredients such as bark, roots, seeds, bones, ores and crystals had to be crushed, milled or pulverized for medicine production. 

The mortar became the symbol of pharmacists as early as the 13^th century.

Creation of Italian Renaissance inspired ceramics decorated with floral patterns and after 1670 with animals and buildings, can be linked to the Anabaptist Hutterites: the Habán people.

Hutterite or Habán artisans, who probably fled Switzerland through Northern Italy finally reached Hungary, settling on the estates of Protestant lords in Upper Hungary, Western Hungary and Transylvania. 

After Maria Theresa disbanded the Hutterite communities, they dispersed throughout the country and many found work in the emerging craft production communities, so their influence prevailed. 

Habán pottery was frequently used in home pharmacies, but church- or aristocrat-founded pharmacies ordered their characteristic white pots as well.

The beginning of Hungarian ceramics industry can be traced back to the faience workshop of Holič, founded in 1743.  Similar products were later produced by the workshop in Tata and Buda, the latter founded by the ceramicist Domonkos Kuny (1754–1822) and operating in Buda between 1786 and 1818.  

The cartouches or labels appearing on Domonkos Kuny’s apothecary jars were characterized by their distinct “zopfstil” (classicist late Baroque style) and a double-curved leafy closure at the top. 

Stoneware appeared in the 1780s. 

In Hungary pharmacy vessels were also made in factories founded in Košice, Kremnica, Spišská Nová Ves, Rožňava, Miskolc and Pápa, as the growing number of pharmacies represented significant demand in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In Europe the emergence of the profession of pharmacist or apothecary can be attributed to healing orders. Monastic pharmacists grew and harvested the plants and herbs used in medicines in monastic herb gardens.

Until the 13th century pharmacy developed in interaction and parallel with medical and natural sciences. Doctors prepared their medicines themselves up until the decree of the German-Roman emperor Frederick II in 1241, in which pharmacy features as an independent field. 

Pharmacists mainly dealt with the manufacture and sale of medicine, but due to the lack of doctors they also played a healing and advisory role for centuries. 

Pharmacists belonged to the upper class of urban bourgeoisie, and in the 15th-18th centuries they played a major role in the development of natural sciences.

Training of pharmacists was also influenced by the decrees of Maria Theresa. From 1773, prospective pharmacists had to take exams before university professors, even though their training remained guild-based until 1851. 

The place of training for the pharmacist candidates was the pharmacy, and their master was the pharmacist. After the school years, the owner of the pharmacy issued an assistant certificate, and after gaining experience abroad, the pharmacist candidate took an exam before the city medical officer and two pharmacists. 

The training of pharmacists gradually reached university level. At the University of Pest they were able to obtain a doctorate in chemistry from 1852 and a doctorate in pharmacy from 1859. 

Assistant certificate of pharmacist Mihály Szénn, issued by the Order of Mercy in Eger in 1791. The certificates were also important because Maria Theresa’s 1773 decree forbade all monasteries to either sell or dispense medicines free of charge. 

The only exceptions were a few specially licensed pharmacies of the Order of Mercy, or monasteries that had no secular pharmacy within a two-mile radius. 

Due to how rare pharmacies were and the general lack of pharmacists, plenty of makeshift medical solutions were used in Hungary in the 17^th century. 

Due to the precarious social and economic conditions and poor hygienic standards, home pharmacies and family herbariums played an important role among the nobility and wealthier citizens. 

The Herbarium written in Hungarian by Péter Méliusz Juhász (1532–1572), a reformed pastor and botanist, was published in print in 1578.

Herbariums that appeared in print from the 1520s onwards were written in the commonly used language of each country. The good quality engravings included made it easier to identify plants, which was very helpful for doctors and pharmacists. 

Ordinary village people usually utilized natural medicines available in their environment or turned to healing specialists and priests for help.

János Benedeki Enyedi ó: Pharmacy of Village Folk appeared in print in 1801.  The author, a surgeon himself, collected the diseases and symptoms seen during his healing work, along with their remedies. 

He recommended his book to village priests with the aim of helping villagers who lack medical help. Pastors were able to choose the right medicine recipe based on the symptoms, which they could have prepared in the nearest pharmacy.