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Museums 401: Medicines (photo diary) [1]
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Date: 2025-03-30
Cultures throughout the world have used medicines—substances which are believed to have curative powers—as one way of dealing with illnesses. In many cultures, specialists, such as pharmacists, prepare and administer these medicines.
The word pharmacy, by the way, first came into English in the late fourteenth century as farmacie and mean “a medicine that rids the body of an excess of humors.” Farmacie is from the Old French farmacie meaning “a purgative” which is from the Medieval Latin pharmacia which is from the Greek pharmakeia.
Farmacie became pharmacy sometime in the sixteenth century. About 1650, pharmacy acquired the meaning of “art or practice of preparing, preserving, and compounding medicines and dispensing them according to prescriptions.” The use of pharmacy as "a place where drugs are prepared and dispensed” is recorded by 1833.
The era of modern pharmacology is generally thought to begin in the sixteenth century in conjunction with major discoveries in chemistry. In 1546 the first modern pharmacopoeia, a listing of drugs, medicinal chemicals, and directions for preparing them, was published in Germany. While this was a milestone in scientifically based use of drugs, drugs and supposed cures based upon religion, fantasy, politics, oral traditions, and the profit motive have continued to be a major factor in dealing with illness.
One of the indicators of illness is pain, and thus many medicines contain ingredients to mask or reduce this pain. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for examples, many of the “patent” medicines sold in traveling shows were largely based on ingredients such as alcohol and opium which reduced the pain. One example is Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a medicine used in the early 1900s to quiet infants and teething children, in which the primary ingredient was morphine. Another example was brewed by Lydia Pinkham and marketed for women: it was a concoction of roots and seeds in a solution of about 18% alcohol which was effective for backaches and “female maladies.” One of the popular nineteenth-century medicines was Doyle’s Hop Bitters—marketed as “The Invalid’s Friend and Hope—which contained a heavy dose of alcohol.
In North American, Native American healers used many different medicinal plants and some of these diffused into the Euro-American healing traditions. In his book A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and “Low Mechanicks”, Clifford Conner reports:
“Whereas elite doctors initially resisted indigenous medicines, lay healers used them and demonstrated their therapeutic value, which led to their eventual acceptance. The popularity of traveling ‘Indian’ medicine shows testified to early American popular culture’s high regard for native remedies.”
The traveling Indian medicine shows of the nineteenth century yielded to modern communications technology in the twentieth century with radio and television promoters, often Christian preachers, hawking miracle cures, and in the twenty-first century to the many miracle cures promoted on the social media of the internet.
Shown below are some museum exhibits of various medicines.
Carillon Historical Park, Dayton, Ohio
According to the museum:
“Proprietary or patent medicines, made popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, claimed to cure or prevent nearly every ailment known to man. While many of these remedies were simple vegetable extracts laced with addictive drugs like cocaine, alcohol and opium, others contained more harmful ingredients, these medicines not only failed to deliver the promised cure but many of them proved fatal. Without the requirement of a physician’s prescription, these ‘remedies’ could be easily obtained from salesmen, postmasters, goldsmiths, grocers, druggists, and even tailors.”
According to the museum:
“There were many reasons patent medicines became popular. Limited medical knowledge of the time, fear of disease, shortage of trained medical staff, and expensive treatments were just some of the reasons people handed over their hard-earned wages for these bottles of false hope.”
Ohio Village, Columbus, Ohio
Shoshone County Mining and Smelting Museum, Kellogg, Idaho
Lake Chelan Historical Society Museum, Chelan, Washington
The Athmador Cigarettes shown above contained stramonium and belladonna as active ingredients. According to one user: “They smelled horrible and tasted real bad.”
Methodist Parsonage, Willamette Heritage Center, Salem, Oregon
The Methodist Parsonage, constructed in 1841, was originally the living quarters for the missionaries involved with the Oregon Mission Manual Labor School that would be built on the present-day campus of Willamette University in Salem. In 1844, the mission was disbanded, and the building became the parsonage for the Methodist Church. Today the Parsonage is at the Willamette Heritage Center.
Fort Steele Heritage Village, British Columbia
The museum in the Fort Steele Heritage Village includes a display of Victorian era medicines.
During the Victorian Era, many electric devices were promoted for healing.
Surgeon’s Quarters, Fort Vancouver, Vancouver, Washington
In 1825, HBC established Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River as the administrative center and principal supply depot of the Columbia Department, an area of about 700,000 square miles. The display describes the surgeon’s duties:
“He prepared, packaged and dispensed medicines for this fort and the two dozen other forts in the Columbia Department, and operated the two hospitals at the post. In addition to expected levels of sickness and accident, the post surgeon contended with large-scale seasonal outbreaks of ‘fever and argue’—likely malaria—that killed many American Indians and debilitated the fort’s workforce.”
World Museum of Mining, Butte, Montana
Shown above are Chinese herbs used in curing.
East Benton County Historical Society and Museum, Kennewick, Washington
Deschutes Historical Museum, Bend, Oregon
Nevada City Living History Museum, Nevada City, Montana
Presby House Museum, Goldendale, Washington
White River Valley Museum, Auburn, Washington
Cowlitz County Historical Museum, Kelso, Washington
More museums
Museums 501: Kitchens (photo diary)
Museums 501: Schools (photo diary)
Museums 401: The Caboose (photo diary)
Museums 401: Gas stations and garages (photo diary)
Museums 301: Forest fire lookouts (photo diary)
Museums 301: Dentists (photo diary)
Museums 201: Player pianos (photo diary)
Museums 201: Swords, knives, and other sharp things (photo diary)
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