Red Crayfish Pharmacy

Red Crayfish Pharmacy
Red Crayfish Pharmacy
	Lekáreň U červeného raka
	Entrance to the Museum of Pharmacy in Bratislava, Slovakia
General information
Type	defensive barbican
Architectural style	baroque
Location	Old Town of Bratislava, Slovakia
Address	Michalská Street No. 26, Bratislava
Current tenants	Museum of Pharmacy
Renovated	18th century
Owner	City of Bratislava ; Tera Trade [1]

Last updated May 04, 2019

Red Crayfish Pharmacy (Slovak : Lekáreň U červeného raka) is a baroque building and former pharmacy from the 16th century in the Old Town of Bratislava, Slovakia.^[2] Since 1953 it houses the Museum of Pharmacy of the Bratislava City Museum. Today, the exhibition features three of the original five rooms of the former pharmacy complete with historical furniture, pharmacy equipment and Baroque – Classicist paintings and wall decorations. The museum contains an original edition of works by Paracelsus from 1574.

Slovak or less frequently Slovakian is a West Slavic language. It is called slovenský jazyk or slovenčina in the language itself.

The Baroque is a highly ornate and often extravagant style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It followed the Renaissance style and preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain and Portugal, then to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century.

Pharmacy academic discipline studying preparation and dispensation of medicines

Pharmacy is the science and technique of preparing, dispensing, and review of drugs and providing additional clinical services. It is a health profession that links health sciences with pharmaceutical sciences and aims to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of drugs. The professional practice is becoming more clinically oriented as most of the drugs are now manufactured by pharmaceutical industries. Based on the setting, the pharmacy is classified as a community or institutional pharmacy. Providing direct patient care in the community of institutional pharmacies are considered clinical pharmacy.

History of the pharmacy

The original pharmacy “Red Crayfish” appears in records as early as the mid-16th century. In 1773 the pharmacy is listed as one of five operating in Bratislava.^[3]

History of the building

Michalská Street No. 26 is a baroque burgher’s house built within the barbican of the Michael's Gate adjacent to the Bratislava Water Moat. In the mid-18th century the front façade of the house was re-constructed in the Classicist style and extended with a stone entrance in the Rococo style. The front façade is adorned with an original cast-iron pharmacy sign with forged canthus ornamentation and a crayfish from the end of the 19th century, manufactured by the known Bratislava blacksmith company Márton. The pharmacy and the apartment above the pharmacy were owned by the Feldesh family, a Jewish family that was deported by the Nazis during Holocaust to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The descendants of the family live today in Israel.

A barbican is a fortified outpost or gateway, such as an outer defence to a city or castle, or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defensive purposes.

In Bratislava, Slovakia, Michael's Gate is the only city gate that has been preserved of the medieval fortifications and ranks among the oldest town buildings. Built about the year 1300, its present shape is the result of baroque reconstructions in 1758, when the statue of St. Michael and the Dragon was placed on its top. The tower houses the Exhibition of Weapons of Bratislava City Museum.

The Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of more than 40 Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) and administrative headquarters in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a combined concentration and extermination camp three kilometers away in Brzezinka; Auschwitz III–Monowitz, a labor camp seven kilometers from Auschwitz I set up to staff an IG Farben synthetic-rubber factory; and dozens of other subcamps.

Today

The current exhibition displays the history of pharmacy in Bratislava in the first three rooms. The entrance room is furnished with the original Red Crayfish Pharmacy fittings. The furniture set constructed from stained beech in the Empire style standing along three walls of the room is supplemented with a tare balance and a stand for a hand-balance. This equipment is supplemented with faience, stoneware, wooden, china and glass containers for storing medicines dating from a period extending from the end of the 18th century up to the 1950s. The room contains paintings in the Baroque – Classicist style from the end of the 18th century with a theme of healing, with a balustrade and three figurative compositions on the vaulted ceiling.

The Empire style is an early-nineteenth-century design movement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts, representing the second phase of Neoclassicism. It flourished between 1800 and 1815 during the Consulate and the First French Empire periods, although its life span lasted until the late-1820s. From France it spread into much of Europe and the United States.

The pharmaceutical collection contains 8,500 items and 2,880 volumes of ancient pharmaceutical literature and it one of the largest of its kind in Slovakia. It contains original items of pharmaceutical equipment, the oldest originating from the 16th century. The Baroque and Classicist furniture and most of the faience, stoneware, glass, wooden and tin vessels for preserving medicines were made in Slovakia. The oldest dispensing containers, simple tools for the preparation of medicines, laboratory ware and metallic sign-boards were also manufactured within the territory of Slovakia, up to the time of the unification of pharmacies in the second half of the 19th century.

Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi) and is mostly mountainous. The population is over 5.4 million and consists mostly of Slovaks. The capital and largest city is Bratislava, and the second largest city is Košice. The official language is Slovak.

The literature from the 16th century includes an original edition of works by Paracelsus from 1574. The first quadri-lingual tariff of medicines entitled “Taxa pharmaceutica posoniensis”, published in 1745 in Bratislava, which was valid throughout the Kingdom of Hungary is prized locally as an example of the earliest known Slovak pharmaceutical terminology.

Paracelsus, born Theophrastus von Hohenheim, was a Swiss physician, alchemist, and astrologer of the German Renaissance.

The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen I at Esztergom around the year 1000; his family led the monarchy for 300 years. By the 12th century, the kingdom became a European middle power within the Western world.

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References

↑ "V apríli otvoria Farmaceutické múzeum v historickej Lekárni U červeného raka (Museum of Pharmacy inside the historic Red Crayfish Pharmacy will be opened in April)". Bratislavské Noviny. 20 April 2006. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
↑ "Museum of Pharmacy - Red Crayfish Pharmacy". Bratislava City Museum. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
↑ Danihelová, Jana (23 July 2011). "Letná Čitáreň U červeného raka neláka len čitateľov (Summer reading place at the Red Crayfish does not lure just the readers)". Pravda. Retrieved 25 April 2012.

External links

Salomon Kleiner's album of watercolour interiors of the Red Crayfish Pharmacy

Coordinates: 48°08′43″N17°06′24″E / 48.14528°N 17.10667°E / 48.14528; 17.10667

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[BN-1] "V apríli otvoria Farmaceutické múzeum v historickej Lekárni U červeného raka (Museum of Pharmacy inside the historic Red Crayfish Pharmacy will be opened in April)". Bratislavské Noviny. 20 April 2006. Retrieved 25 April 2012.

[BCM-2] "Museum of Pharmacy - Red Crayfish Pharmacy". Bratislava City Museum. Retrieved 25 April 2012.

[Pravda-3] Danihelová, Jana (23 July 2011). "Letná Čitáreň U červeného raka neláka len čitateľov (Summer reading place at the Red Crayfish does not lure just the readers)". Pravda. Retrieved 25 April 2012.