Arany Sas Pharmacy. Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. By Kotomi.
A steep climb to Buda – the older half of Budapest – leads to the medieval Castle district and to the beautiful building of 18 Tárnok utca where the Arany Sas (‘The Golden Eagle’s’) Pharmacy Museum is located. Once a 15th-century merchant house, it was also home to the very first pharmacy in Buda which operated until 1745; the building itself was used as a pharmacy until World War One. The Anna street side of the building serves as an example for the 18th-century ‘Serbian shop-door’-style of dispensing medicines to customers in the street. Inside, the pharmacy’s 18th-century furnishings are on display, together with artistically shaped glass or wooden jars once containing powdered or liquid drugs, instruments and a reconstruction of an alchemist’s laboratory. Showcasing the history of medicine and chemistry, along with Renaissance and Baroque pharmaceutics and pottery, the Museum is a hub, albeit a tiny one, that reveals a changing understanding of medicine and long-gone alchemical splendour.
An 18th-century pharmacy counter. Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. By Kotomi.
The captions accompanying the objects are in Hungarian and do not reveal substantial or detailed background information. It is possible to book a tour in English in advance, though if a translator is at hand, visitors might prefer to opt for a tour in Hungarian on the day of visiting. The tour guides are staff of the Semmelweis Medical History Museum to which the Pharmacy museum is attached and are not necessarily experts on the history of drugs. For a detailed presentation on the history of Hungarian pharmacies, it might be worth contacting the museum’s expert Ildikó Horány. In any event, visitors with little background in the history of medicine and pharmaceutical drugs can still marvel at the variety of beautiful vessels that once contained curious remedies, the grinders, scales and glass utensils, as well as the lovingly displayed 18th-century pharmacy counter and the alchemist’s laboratory. Historians of medicine, pharmacology and chemistry will definitely enjoy taking it all in.
Objects on display at Arany Sas. Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. By Kotomi.
Literature: Ágnes Romhányi , ‘ Pharmacists in Hungary during the 18th Century. Their Education, Stores and Practice through the Visitation Reports of the Year 1786’, in G. Barth Scalmani et al. (eds), Research Workshop: The Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th Century (Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunders 26, Winkler Verlag, 2011), 209-224.
Mária Vida, Pharmacy Museums of Hungary (Hungarian Society for the History of Medicine, Semmelweis Institute, Budapest: Révai Printing House, 1984)
Opened in 1934 the National Science Museum, located at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, holds one of the largest collections of historic scientific instruments in the Ireland. St. Patrick’s College was founded in 1795 as a catholic seminary in an attempt to stop Irish clerics travelling to revolutionary France for ecclesiastical studies and, it was fear, radicalisation. The campus contains many stunning nineteenth-century buildings, some of which were designed by the famous architect Augustus Pugin. Also located at the entrance to the College is Maynooth Castle which was built in the thirteenth century by the Kildare branch of the Geraldines, who for centuries were one of the most powerful families in Ireland.
Large electro-magnetic used by Nicholas Callan
The museum has multiple displays of various scientific and technological instruments but its central focus is the work of Nicholas Joseph Callan. Born on the 22 December 1799, Callan entered Maynooth College in 1816 and spent most of his life in that institution. It was here that Callan studied natural and experimental philosophy under Dr Cornelius Denvir. Following his ordination in 1823 Callan briefly studied aboard, before returning to Maynooth in 1826 to assume the chair of natural philosophy. Callan performed many experiments and to help in conducting these he was to produce his own, relatively cheap, cast-iron battery, later marketed as the ‘Maynooth Battery’. However, Callan is best known as the inventor of the induction coil. The coils built by Callan were of considerable power producing sixteen-inch sparks. As there was no equipment available to test the current produced, Callan instead used that most abundant of natural testing apparatus: his students. According to long established tradition, this was stopped when he managed to render a future arch-bishop of Dublin unconscious and Callan was forced to rely on chickens for testing current from thereon. Callan was for many years a largely forgotten figure however he was recently awarded the Blue Plaque by Institute of Physics and Bronze Plaque by Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers. The museum displays several of Callan’s induction coils and electro-magnets. The largest of the electro-magnets on display is 1705cm high and 775 cm in width and was made by the local blacksmith. Alongside these are other instruments used by Callan for his experiments, in addition to a variety of electrical instruments that the museum has accumulated. There is a complementary collection of scientific writings as well in the college archive in the Russell Library, much of which has been catalogued electronically. While the Callan display is the central feature of the museum there is also much more for those with an interest in the history of science and technology.
Callan Medium Coil, capable of producing 200,000 volts
The museum has a collection of historic instruments used for experimentation on light, many of which are of French origin. In addition are displays of instruments for the study of meteorology, pneumatics, hydrostatics, heat and a collection of early telegraphic and telephonic apparatus. Worth a special mention is the fine display of cartographic instruments including circumferentors, clinometers, compasses, land chains, levels and other such instruments. These are of particular importance due to the value of estate and ordnance survey mapping records to Irish historians. The display demonstrates the broad range of instruments used in these important endeavours, allowing historians of technology and cartography as well as the general public a rare chance to view such instruments. The fact that a large proportion of the instruments on display were produced in Dublin gives an insight into the thriving scientific instrument industry in the city in the nineteenth century. The collection would be a good starting point for an investigation of this much understudied area and the insight that it could provide into wider scientific and commercial networks.
Electrostatic Generator, c.1877
Due to the nature of the founding institute –a Roman Catholic seminary- the museum was originally opened as a museum of ecclesiology, it was due to the appointment of numerous curators from the Departments of Physics and Chemistry and the legacy of Nicholas Callan that the National Science Museum developed alongside the Museum of Ecclesiology. It is for this reason that both museums are contained within the one building. While the National Museum of Science is a relatively small affair when compared to its British counterparts, it is important in an Irish context containing as it does a significant repository of historical scientific instruments that are rarely accessible in Ireland. As 2014 is the sesquicentenary of Nicholas Callan’s death the museum presents a great opportunity to view the work of this important Irish scientist.
The museum has limited opening times which can be viewed at the museum website. Group visits and visits outside of the set opening times can be accommodated by contacting the curator Dr Niall McKeith. Further information is available at http://www.nuim.ie/museum/
In the wake of Enlightenment medical reforms initiated by Habsburg’s Empress Maria Theresa, Hungary’s first Faculty of Medicine at the University of Trnava also received a Department of Anatomy in 1769. Although the department frequently changed names and location (it is now the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology at the Semmelweis Medical University in Budapest), it has maintained its legal continuity ever since its foundation. The building that now houses the department’s historical anatomical-pathological collection was constructed between 1897 and 1898 and was then renowned as the most modern Anatomy hub of its day.
As with all historical collections, the one on display in the Anatomy Museum tells several stories: of old ways of doing anatomy and new reforms, of passionate physicians and victims of gruesome diseases, of quests for knowledge and an obsession with the weird and wonderful among nature’s creations.
József Lenhossék, head of the Anatomy department in 1859, modernised the department’s teaching and research and laid down the foundation of today’s Museum of Anatomy. Like Florence and Vienna, it once owned a series of beautifully made anatomical and surgical wax models, which had been donated to the university by Joseph II in the late eighteenth century. Unfortunately, the majority of these were destroyed during the siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944-45; but a few have survived and are now on display in Semmelweis’ birth house, the Museum of the History of Medicine. The Anatomy Museum still holds Lenhossék’s preparations, in particular those showing the vascular and central nervous system, as well as a number of objects from the private collection of an eccentric dentist named József Iszlai who fell victim to the late-nineteenth-century craze for ‘Dental Anthropology’, becoming the most ardent and passionate collector of skulls and teeth. He donated his dental preparations and skull collection (deemed ‘world famous’ by the Hungarian founder of paleostomatology György Huszár) to the university in 1902.
Today, the museum’s overall collection further benefits from an annual competition amongst medical students preparing new objects, which adds an average of 4-5 items to the collection each year. This, and the fact that the collection is still used to teach medical students the art of anatomy, is rather unique: old objects and new ones are not strictly separated as the past and the present usually is, but live side by side, serving the same educational purpose as the very first anatomical-pathological objects collected for the museum. The wooden shelves holding row upon row of pathological objects in formaldehyde-filled glass jars still convey the former grandeur and the excitement pertaining to the growing field of anatomy and pathology in the nineteenth century, and modern-day students continue to handle these objects with the same fascination as their forebears.
Brains, Guts and Bones: objects from the annual student competition at the Museum for Anatomy. All images courtesy of the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Semmelweis University, Budapest.
On our visit, we got an exclusive tour of the collection, together with the history of Anatomy buildings before and after WWII, from László Molnár, head of the Archives of the Semmelweis Medical University. As the museum serves primarily educational purposes, only students of the medical faculty can use the museum throughout the year (they can even borrow plastinated preparations). The public can visit only by appointment (to be booked via email: vidravera@freemail.hu) from mid-October to the end of November and from the beginning of February until the end of April. The Anatomy museum is certainly worth a visit, not only for historians of medicine!
– Stephanie Eichberg, UCL Science and Technology Studies, London – Katalin Pataki, History of Medicine, Central European University, Budapest
Address: Anatomy Museum, Semmelweis Medical University Budapest, Tűzoltó utca 58
Further information
Regarding the history of the Anatomical Institution and of the University, Miklós Réthelyi (rethelyi@ana.sote.hu) and Géza Tótpál (totpal@ana.sote.hu) can be contacted (also in foreign languguages).
Historians of medicine and science are most likely aware of Vienna’s Josephinum, the Fool’s Tower, the Sigmund Freud Museum and potentially even the history of medicine-themed sightseeing tours that are offered in the city – all of which are testimony to the fact that Vienna knows how to capitalise its rich medical legacy. There is one museum, however, which is seldom openly advertised, despite or potentially because of its eye-opening and contentious subject matter: the Museum for Contraception and Abortion.
Figure 1: The Frog Test, a biological indicator for pregnancy used until the 1970s.
Figure 2: A domestic scene from the museum with tell-tale kitchen table.
Being probably the only one of its kind worldwide, it is unique in tackling a topic heads on that at best divides opinions, at worst sparks violence, but in any case forces the visitor to place related arguments into a much larger context. Since debates on abortion and contraception tend to focus mostly on the life and death of the unborn, the museum extends this focal point by looking at the historical, political, international, cultural, and domestic contexts in which contraception and abortion have taken place until the present day. It shows unflinchingly what women throughout history have done to their bodies to end unwanted pregnancies, and what happens in societies in which abortion is made legal or illegal (a whole map, for example, features the development of so-called ‘abortion tourism’). The museum also provides an interesting historical overview on the use of contraception, from the earliest recorded in ancient Egypt to the introduction of the pill in the 1960s, and modern ‘vasectomy lotteries’ in third-world countries. One can browse through abstracts of hundreds of novels that dramatise contraception or abortion since the 18th century, and short films from the 1920s to the present day are used to illustrate the development of attitudes towards sexuality and procreation (interestingly, the 1920s appear more progressive in this respect than our modern attitudes).
Figure 3: An advertisement for the ‘Schallwäscher’, a precursor of washing machines invented by Bosch; it was taken off the market when it was found out that women applied the electrical device to their pregnant bellies in order to abort. The caption reads ‘Useful in every household’…Figure 4: Another Advertisement with the caption ‘This will make her happy’.
The most harrowing part of the museum is a corner set up as a domestic kitchen scene, containing the tell-tale kitchen table on which many illegal abortions took (or still take) place. Next to this table a visitor will find a strange-looking electrical device which turns out to be the latest invention by the household company Bosch in the 1950s. A precursor of the modern washing machine, called ‘Schallwäscher’, its electrical vibrations were meant to help housewives do the laundry more easily. Bosch, however, was eventually forced to take this device off the market when it turned out that desperate pregnant women would apply, what was lovingly called the ‘Waschbär’, to their bellies, causing internal bleeding. What sent an additional chill down our spines was an original 1950’s advertising brochure for the Schallwäscher, casually placed on the kitchen table, which depicted a husband carrying the device and other wrapped-up Christmas presents – the caption stating that “This will make her happy”…
Visiting this museum was certainly a highlight, albeit a chilling one, because it made us aware of the vast political and social implications of attitudes towards birth control. That contraception and abortion can be politically instrumentalised with devastating consequences is, for example, shown in the recent book by Mara Hvistendahl (Unnatural selection, 2011) on population control programmes in the developing world, including forced abortion and gender selection. In any way, in this museum, contraception and abortion are elevated to topics that infuse the historical and cultural matrix of countries worldwide, which makes the visitor see more than one side of concurrent debates.
Figure 5: The pill that changed the world. (All images in this article courtesy of MUVS, Vienna)
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