Pharmaceutical collections
The Hospital has been very fortunate to have retained its pharmaceutical furniture (19th century) and its pots, bottles and other mortars and pestles (18th, 19th centuries), probably because the pharmacy of the hospital remained in operation very long, even in the 40s.
In the new staging, pharmaceutical collections have found a place of choice with no less than three rooms devoted to them.
Helkiase
The Helkiase was a very effective drug to treat skin diseases and ulcers. Il s’agissait vraisemblablement d’un puissant antiseptique composé notamment de bichlorure de mercure. It was probably a powerful antiseptic composed more particularly of mercury bichloride. It is produced in various forms: as a pink powder which mixed with water, gave an ointment, liquid or sublimated. This remedy was a great success not only in Belgium but also abroad. Many testimonials (letters from doctors or cured patients, news articles, …) are stored in the archives of the hospital, confirming the miraculous effects of Helkiase. The nuns marketed it as far as India and the United States until 1930. Sales stopped shortly before the Second World War, for unknown reasons. But it is highly probable that the dangerous side effects of mercury in the Helkiase have caused serious damage, if not fatal. The hospital pharmacy has maintained a range of memorabilia from the epic of Helkiase, such as advertising signs, a beautifull handwritten book recording many cases of healing, different packaging and containers.
Pharmacy
As you discover it today, the pharmacy appears as it looked at the end of the 19th century. From the very beginning, the hospital had a dispensary, which went through many changes as a result of progress in medicine and science. The furniture dating from the first half of the 19th century consists of two large cupboard pieces surmounted by shelves. The door at the end of the right-hand cupboard piece was used to lock poisons; the drawers preserved herbs and dried herbs such as Iceland moss used against cough. Remedies and potions were made from extracts, decoctions and infusions of medicinal plants. Lessen was in the 19th century and until 1960, a major center of culture of medicinal plants: angelic, marigolds, chamomile blooming all around the city. In the middle, a marble covered table was used as a worktable by the apothecary Sister.
Pharmacopoeia
Universal pharmacopoeias contained every known remedy for the countless cases of illness, injury or pain that could be relieved if not cured … True encyclopedia of the pharmaceutical art in its time, this pharmacopoeia printed in Paris in 1698 – with the privilege of the King – seems sometimes to lean towards witchcraft, in our eyes at least. But the author himself expressed reservations on certain formulas: “it is argued that …”
The pill maker
The pill maker facilitated the slicing of small sausages of medicinal paste.
These pieces were then rolled and coated with liquorice powder to make the pill less bitter. The expression “gilding the pill” came from the use of real gold or silver powder to coat certain pills.
This operation was reserved for more wealthy patients, was carried out with the help of this small recipient in the form of an egg-cup.
Theriac
The pharmacy has a large pot of theriac.
In ancient medicine, theriac was a pharmaceutical preparation of soft consistency and was made from three essential ingredients: the flesh of vipers, opium and honey. In the early days, this remedy was devised as an anti-poison. Later, its composition refined and complexified – with more than 70 ingredients.
Theriac then became a universal panacea for all illnesses. It was prescribed for fevers, animal bites, colic, asthma, the plague, etc. This remedy, though doubtful, continued in use for almost 2000 years. It was only withdrawn from sale in 1908.
Mortars and pestles
The hospital has many mortars and pestles made of bronze, brass, porphyry, marble or porcelain. These different materials play an important role in the preparation of remedies, if one believes the “income” set forth in the pharmacopoeias. En effet, Nicolas Lemery recommande pour telle préparation un mortier en porphyre, pour une autre, le marbre et une autre, la faïence. Indeed, Nicolas Lemery recommends preparing for some remedies a porphyre mortar, and for others marble or earthenware. Roots, leaves, stems, flowers or even eyes of crayfish were crushed in these mortars to make a paste that could be required to pass through a sieve in order to obtain a fine powder.
Balances
The pharmacy always has some interesting balances, trebuchets, placed under glass to avoid any inadvertent changes due to air currents or dust. It is interesting to note that scales have replaced the late 18th century hand scales, more difficult and less faithfull in handling. The weight used to weigh ingredients and preparations are also present in our collections. The dosages mentioned in the pharmacopoeia of Lemery consists of old measures of weight. The trebuchet is a term used since the 14th century to describe the small balance scale for weighing gold coins and silver. This term has also designated, by extension, precision scales Pharmacy (or laboratory) for sensitive weighing. The term “pay hard cash” means so much to pay with cash, coins previously weighed and having the required weight.
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