Our trip to Trastevere continued to the oldest pharmacy in the Western world. It was started in the year 1597 when Carmelites who served as doctors and nurses would invent treatments for various maladies such as hypertension, hysteria and other maladies. The pharmacy officially closed in 1954 but served as the Pharmacy of the Popes for many years. People would come here to get medical advice, find cures for what ailed them and to make appointments to see doctors in the area. As a part of the Carmelite rule for this monastery, they grew herbs for medicines. They culitivated plants, researched and taught in a school for both the religious and the laity. The sales room hasn't changed since 1700. A portrait of St. Theresa of Avila, foundress of the order, is hung in the sales room. One of their most famous medicines was a snake venom antidote. It was made up of 57 different things including the flesh of a male viper. Don't ask me how they obtained it!!!
There is a crank telephone there as well as glass jars, mortars, pestles, scales and drawers with doctors names on them. Also, a second room had wooden cabinets with painted portraits of families who were wealthy enough to have their own medicine cabinets in the pharmacy. One drawer even had some marijuana still in it. A large marble pot still held a mixture of medicine that was created in the 1950's and was made to last for 60 years!!!!
The lab had cauldrons, presses, centrifuges, bottlers and all kinds of strange instruments - including one for forming pills. Lots of contraptions back then to create medicines that would be responsible for healing and giving comfort to people. Not surprising that the church had a hand in it! When the cost of keeping the pharmacy up and running became too much, the pharmacy closed. But the role the church continues to play in the healing of the sick remains.
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