Apotheken-Museum Dortmund

Description

The Apotheken-Museum zu Dortmund houses an extensive private collection of historic medical-technical and pharmaceutical objects and is one of the most significant of its kind in Germany. It is located at Wißstraße 11 and displays its holdings on approximately 300 m² of exhibition space, spread across 13 rooms.

The collection originated in the 1950s through the private initiative of a manufacturer of medical dressings; initially, equipment and display vessels were lent to pharmacies for exhibition purposes. Over the decades the owners systematically expanded the holdings, integrated historic furnishings from closed pharmacies and supplemented the collection with an extensive specialist library. Until 2017 more than 6,000 exhibits were shown on just under 130 m² in cellar rooms; since the relocation the collection has been presented in a noticeably more spacious and brighter setting.

The displays combine original preserved pharmacy fittings with thematically arranged holdings. The reconstructed dispensary brings together dark Gründerzeit-era shelving and fitted cabinets with a light-green herb chamber and displays porcelain vessels dated around 1900. The herb chamber contains numerous wooden boxes from the 18th and 19th centuries, scales, mills, herbaria and a rare series of South American pepper measures. The library comprises over 1,000 specialist volumes, including a translation from the early 17th century and a print from 1550.

Further themed rooms display French faience and German pharmacy glass, historical heating applications with hot-water bottles and bed warmers, mineral water bottling technology including containers, as well as collections on infant care, labels and trademarks. Among the highlights are a four-part Chinese pocket pharmacy, extensive equipment collections for inhalation, bloodletting and cupping, and an outstanding mortar collection ranging from a late-antique marble mortar to heavy bronze and granite specimens. Workshop and laboratory areas document the production of tablets, ointments and dragees; a cast-iron distillation furnace and historic processing machines can be seen here. A phosphorus cabinet built into the wall refers to early safety regulations for the handling of highly toxic substances.