Apotheken-Museum Dortmund

Description

The Pharmacy Museum in Dortmund houses an extensive private collection of historical medical-technical and pharmaceutical objects, considered one of the most important of its kind worldwide. It is located at Wißstraße 11 and displays its holdings on roughly 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; at first, equipment and display vessels were loaned to pharmacies for exhibition purposes. Over the decades the owners systematically expanded the holdings, integrated historical furnishings from decommissioned apothecary interiors and enlarged the collection with an extensive specialist library. Until 2017 more than 6,000 exhibits were shown in just under 130 m² of basement rooms; since the move the collection has presented itself much more spaciously and brightly. 

The exhibitions combine originally preserved pharmacy fittings with thematically arranged displays. The reconstructed shop unites dark Gründerzeit-era shelves and built-in cabinets with the light-green partition of an herbal chamber from 1650 and shows wooden tea caddies about 200 years old. The herbal chamber contains numerous wooden jars from the 18th and 19th centuries, 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. 

Other themed rooms display French faience and German pharmacy glass, historical heating applications with hot-water bottles and bed warmers, mineral water 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 examples. Laboratories document the production of tablets, ointments and dragees; a cast-iron distillation oven and historic processing machines are on view. A phosphorus cabinet set into the wall points to early safety regulations for handling highly toxic substances.