Porto's Health & Pharmacy Museum

The disease is older than the human being ,and the proof of this are fossils, skeletons and prehistoric artifacts. One of the main transmitters of disease is the mosquito that we can find in this exhibition, preserved in amber.

The Egyptians believed in life after death, but for the soul to be resurrected, a well-preserved body was needed. The viscera, like  stomach, intestines and lungs, were removed and placed in canopic vessels.

The great achievement of Greek medicine was its search for natural bases to explain the disease, its causes and treatments. Medicine and pharmacy were not based on religion and magic or superstition. The term "father of medicine" is traditionally applied to Hippocrates.

Traditional Chinese medicine is linked to the cosmological doctrine of the Yi-King. Our body is full of energy that, when estimulated, relieve pain. This anatomical model  indicates that they studied and knew the human body energy circuits.

Among the indigenous peoples of South America, death is a return to the original habitat, a process of spiritualization, after the materialization of the human body that occurred during childbirth. They live with the idea of ​​returning to the «ideal world».

At the time of the discoveries, great progress was made with the intersection of diverse medical theories, in addition to classical doctrines. Therapeutics were traditional methods: purges, bleeds, enemas. 

Pharmaceutical advertising appears essentially in the middle of the century, with the the development of chemical medicines. These advertisements were created with the intention of getting people to start consuming these drugs, making a very exaggerated side exalt.

This Pharmacy, which existed inside a palace in Damascus in the 19th century, functioned as a teaching and pharmacy center. Since the 19th century, Damascus has taken on an important component in the development of teaching and the practice of pharmacy and Islamic medicine.

This Pharmacy, located at Rua Sá da Bandeira in Porto, owes its name to Emílio Faria Estácio (1854-1919), a pharmacist at the University of Coimbra. In 1975, a large fire at Rua Sá da Bandeira hit the Pharmacy and destroyed much of its interior.