German Apothecary Museum
/Within the walls of the Heidelberg Castle is an Apothecary Museum. So, obviously, being the lover of museums that I am (and really cool doors, but that's another story for another day), I insisted that we go in. We breezed through it pretty quickly. There were quite a few people and I didn't spend a lot of time reading the little information signs, which is highly unusual for me, but there were quite a few cool artifacts, like this fully-stocked replica of a couple-hundred year old apothecary.
Beautifully ornate pharmacy!
Being science-y, and having a love of organization (even though I don't always follow it), I decided that our next house needs a room like this, minus the medicine and herbs.
One of the cool/interesting thing about Germany is that you can spot an apothecary (which is really just a fancy word for pharmacy) from a mile away. Want to know why? All of them have the apothecary symbol prominently displayed outside of the shop. They started standardizing this over a 100 years ago and the sign has evolved over the years. The three below show a part of this evolution. The one on the right is the present-day symbol. And no joke, you can't walk more than a block or two before you see one of these. They are, quite literally, everywhere.
Throughout the museum were displays of bottle, tinctures, herbal remedies and equipment that were common in apothecary shops over the years. It was pretty cool to see how the science evolved from using whole herbs to being able to isolate the individual, active, compounds. Not a huge surprise, but BASF even made an appearance! Check out the pictures below for some more highlights from the museum.
- Meghan -
