A medicinal jar, drug jar, or apothecary jar is a jar used to contain medicines. Ceramic medicinal jars originated in the Islamic world and were brought to Europe where the production of jars flourished from the Middle Ages onward. Potteries were established throughout Europe and many were commissioned to produce jars for pharmacies and monasteries. [1] They are an important category of the Dutch and English porcelain known as Delftware. [2]
The jars were used by apothecaries in pharmacies and dispensaries in hospitals and monasteries. [3] [4] Apothecaries needed containers to store herbs, roots, syrups, pills, ointments, spices and other ingredients used to make remedies as well as the medicines themselves. [1]
Earthenware storage jars for drugs have been found on archaeological sites in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Greece and Rome. [5] The technology appears to have originated in Mesopotamia in 600–400 B.C. [6] A number of innovations occurred in Western Asia regarding pottery decoration, particularly the development of tin glazes to enable jars to contain fluids. [7] The tin glaze was believed to have originated in Mesopotamia in 600–400 B.C. [8] By the 12th to 13th centuries jars were lustreware which gave a sheen to the surface of the jars. [8]
Jars from Syria and Persia were taken to Spain from the 13th to 14th centuries after which Spanish and Italian potters began to manufacture jars. [6] [9] The tin glaze technique which allowed decoration of the jars was known in Europe as maiolica, faience or delftware. [8] These different terms referred not to technical differences in the jars' manufacture but stylistic differences. [6]
The style of jar known as albarello also came from the Middle Eastern Islamic potters. [8] [10] The albarello is cylindrical in shape usually with a narrow waist; it has a flange at the open end. A parchment cover could be tied over the flange to seal the contents. [8] Other jars were ovoid or globular in shape. Syrup jars had spouts and handles. [11] Other items used by apothecaries were dispensing and ointment pots, pill tiles and mortars. [11]
Potteries producing jars were located in Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Britain. [12]
Jars were widely used in Europe and Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century but during the 18th and 19th centuries production of glass storage bottles was increased. [13]
Animal, mineral and vegetable ingredients were stored in the jars. [14]
Vegetable ingredients included culinary herbs, fruits, roots, leaves, seeds, flowers, wood, oils, gums and resins. [14] Spices used for medicinal purposes included cassia bark, tamarind, nux vomica, senna, sandalwood, cloves and nutmeg. [5] These came from the Near East and later ingredients from the New World included copaiva balsam, sarsaparilla, tobacco, cinchona bark (quinine) and ipecacuanha. [14]
Some common animal products were contained, such as honey, butter, beeswax and chicken fat as well as more unusual ingredients including foxes' lungs, earthworms, scorpions, musk, ambergris and ivory. [15] Minerals used included precious stones and sulphur, mercury, antimony and other minerals. [15]
Medicinal jars are collected in the Wellcome Museum, Royal College of Surgeons and Royal Pharmaceutical Society in London, the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, [16] the Esteve Pharmacy in Llívia, Spain, the Pharmacy Museum at the University of Basel in Switzerland and the Pharmacy Museum, Jagiellonian University Medical College in Kraków, Poland.
Delftware or Delft pottery, also known as Delft Blue or as delf, is a general term now used for Dutch tin-glazed earthenware, a form of faience. Most of it is blue and white pottery, and the city of Delft in the Netherlands was the major centre of production, but the term covers wares with other colours, and made elsewhere. It is also used for similar pottery, English delftware.
Cinchona is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of trees and shrubs. All are native to the tropical Andean forests of western South America. A few species are reportedly naturalized in Central America, Jamaica, French Polynesia, Sulawesi, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of tropical Africa, and others have been cultivated in India and Java, where they have formed hybrids.
A potion is a liquid "that contains medicine, poison, or something that is supposed to have magic powers." It derives from the Latin word potio which refers to a drink or the act of drinking. The term philtre is also used, often specifically for a love potion, a potion that is supposed to create feelings of love or attraction in the one who drinks it. Throughout history there have been several types of potions for a range of purposes. Reasons for taking potions ranged from curing an illness, to securing immortality to trying to induce love. These potions, while often ineffective or poisonous, occasionally had some degree of medicinal success depending on what they sought to fix and the type and amount of ingredients used. Some popular ingredients used in potions across history include Spanish fly, nightshade plants, cannabis, and opium.
A bitters is traditionally an alcoholic preparation flavored with botanical matter for a bitter or bittersweet flavor. Originally, numerous longstanding brands of bitters were developed as patent medicines, but now are sold as digestifs, sometimes with herbal properties, and as cocktail flavorings.
Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it links health sciences with pharmaceutical sciences and natural sciences. The professional practice is becoming more clinically oriented as most of the drugs are now manufactured by pharmaceutical industries. Based on the setting, pharmacy practice is either classified as community or institutional pharmacy. Providing direct patient care in the community of institutional pharmacies is considered clinical pharmacy.
Faience or faïence is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery. The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) was required to achieve this result, the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. The term is now used for a wide variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares, often produced as cheaper versions of porcelain styles.
Apothecary is an archaic English term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica (medicine) to physicians, surgeons and patients. The modern terms 'pharmacist' and 'chemist' have taken over this role.
English delftware is tin-glazed pottery made in the British Isles between about 1550 and the late 18th century. The main centres of production were London, Bristol and Liverpool with smaller centres at Wincanton, Glasgow and Dublin. English tin-glazed pottery was called "galleyware" or "galliware" and its makers "gallypotters" until the early 18th century; it was given the name delftware after the tin-glazed pottery from the Netherlands,
Jesuit's bark, also known as cinchona bark, Peruvian bark or China bark, is a former remedy for malaria, as the bark contains quinine used to treat the disease. The bark of several species of the genus Cinchona, family Rubiaceae indigenous to the western Andes of South America, was introduced to Jesuit missionaries as a traditional treatment for malaria by indigenous people in Peru during the 17th century.
"Blue and white pottery" covers a wide range of white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, originally by brush painting, but nowadays by stencilling or by transfer-printing, though other methods of application have also been used. The cobalt pigment is one of the very few that can withstand the highest firing temperatures that are required, in particular for porcelain, which partly accounts for its long-lasting popularity. Historically, many other colours required overglaze decoration and then a second firing at a lower temperature to fix that.
Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. The most renowned Italian maiolica is from the Renaissance period. These works were known as istoriato wares when depicting historical and mythical scenes. By the late 15th century, multiple locations, mainly in northern and central Italy, were producing sophisticated pieces for a luxury market in Italy and beyond. In France, maiolica developed as faience, in the Netherlands and England as delftware, and in Spain as talavera. In English, the spelling was anglicised to majolica, but the pronunciation usually preserved the vowel with an i as in kite.
Dalby's Carminative was one of the two most widely used patent medicines given to babies and children at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Together with its rival, Godfrey's Cordial, they were known as "mother's friends" and were used for everything from colic and coughs to typhoid.
An albarello is a type of maiolica earthenware jar, originally a medicinal jar designed to hold apothecaries' ointments and dry drugs. The development of this type of pharmacy jar had its roots in the Middle East during the time of the Islamic conquests.
Tin-glazed pottery is earthenware covered in lead glaze with added tin oxide which is white, shiny and opaque ; usually this provides a background for brightly painted decoration. It has been important in Islamic and European pottery, but very little used in East Asia. The pottery body is usually made of red or buff-colored earthenware and the white glaze imitated Chinese porcelain. The decoration on tin-glazed pottery is usually applied to the unfired glaze surface by brush with metallic oxides, commonly cobalt oxide, copper oxide, iron oxide, manganese dioxide and antimony oxide. The makers of Italian tin-glazed pottery from the late Renaissance blended oxides to produce detailed and realistic polychrome paintings.
A show globe is a glass vessel of various shapes and sizes containing a colorful liquid. It has been a symbol of pharmacy from the 17th century England to the early 20th century in the United States. It marked the drugstore or apothecary in much the same way as the barber's pole marked tonsorial establishments in some countries. People who were illiterate needed such symbols to locate these medical practitioners.
The Esteve Pharmacy is a medieval pharmacy and museum located in the town of Llívia, in the comarca of Cerdanya, Catalonia, Spain. Llívia is a Spanish exclave within the French region of Pyrénées-Orientales. The Esteve Pharmacy, founded at the beginning of the 15th century, is one of the oldest pharmacies in Europe and keeps a collection of albarellos from the 16th and 17th centuries, glass from the 19th century, Renaissance boxes with portraits of saints and personages, a library, laboratory instruments, antique drugs and preparations, old prescription books, and a Baroque "cordialer" cupboard made by Josep Sunyer during the period when the Esteve family managed the pharmacy for up to seven generations. It is one of the most important collections of its kind in Europe.
The history of pharmacy as a modern and independent science dates back to the first third of the 19th century. Before then, pharmacy evolved from antiquity as part of medicine. The history of pharmacy coincides well with the history of medicine, but it's important that there is a distinction between the two topics. Pharmaceuticals is one of the most-researched fields in the academic industry, but the history surrounding that particular topic is sparse compared to the impact its made world-wide. Before the advent of pharmacists, there existed apothecaries that worked alongside priests and physicians in regard to patient care.
The history of pharmacy in the United States is the story of a melting pot of new pharmaceutical ideas and innovations drawn from advancements that Europeans shared, Native American medicine and newly discovered medicinal plants in the New World. American pharmacy grew from this fertile mixture, and has impacted U.S. history, and the global course of pharmacy.
Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take varied forms, including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is a visual art. While some ceramics are considered fine art, such as pottery or sculpture, most are considered to be decorative, industrial or applied art objects. Ceramic art can be created by one person or by a group, in a pottery or a ceramic factory with a group designing and manufacturing the artware.