The Time Capsule of the Parisian Pharmacy
A Parisian pharmacist called me one day to explain that she needed to carry out work in her cellar, but that it was filled with old equipment and antique pharmacy bottles, and she wanted to know if I could come and see if any items might interest me.
I thus had the chance to visit a place where time had partly stood still, exploring these ancient cellars of an old Parisian pharmacy which, from 1900 to 1950 or 1960, served as a medical analysis laboratory and a site for the pharmacist's magistral preparations.
With the evolution of medicine and the gradual arrival of industrially packaged medicines, the pharmacy little by little abandoned on-site preparations to sell products already made elsewhere. The in-situ laboratory thus faded away, but its shelves curiously remained frozen in time. Afterward, successive pharmacists simply used the center of these cellars to store various objects, leaving the walls and original shelves intact!
The entire history of early 20th-century pharmacopoeia thus revealed itself to us, intact and silent.
On the Shelves, Memory in Bottles
On the weathered wooden shelves, the bottles and apothecary jars had remained exactly where they were placed several decades ago. Nothing had moved, aside from the thick layer of black dust that sometimes hid the color of the glass. Powders, salts, ointments, and mother tinctures seemed to await the return of the preparer.
They stood alongside more singular flasks, such as this period bottle of coca powder slipped amid old poison bottles or other toxic and dangerous products. For yes, cocaine was part of the composition of several remedies in the early 20th century! Of course, the pharmacist was with us to handle the collection and subsequent disposal of these hazardous products.
These shelves still overlooked the period laboratory benches, faithful workstations where pharmacists of yesteryear went about their craft; one of them is even still surmounted by its gas lamp!
Three Connecting Cellars and Drawers of Secrets
At the bend of a shelf, one discovers an old enameled sink bearing the stigmata of bygone chemical manipulations, as well as compartmentalized wooden drawers still overflowing with blank pharmaceutical labels, small tools, and yellowed notices.
For yes, the fine old wooden storage furniture had been dismantled at some point, but the pharmacist had kept a large part of the drawers from those pieces! With their contents... just in case, I imagine.
Rescuing these objects means giving them a second life in our cabinet of curiosities in Montmartre. It is allowing these witnesses of a vanished healing art to continue telling their story, resting on your own shelves, charged with decades of mystery and craftsmanship.