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This is a French painting, one of a pair of paintings thought to be dated around 1700. This one shows the interior of a pharmacy. The walls are piled high with shelves of jars containing prepared medicines and raw materials to be made up into medicines (called materia medica). At this time the causes of most diseases were thought to be non-specific: the same causes might produce different illnesses in different people, and different causes might produce the same diseases in different people. Hence most diseases were named after their symptoms (e.g. plague, or to take a modern example schizophrenia), not after their causes (e.g. filariasis, thought to be caused by a worm called filaria). Therefore most medicines were also designed to treat the symptoms.
Title
A Pharmacy
Date
c.1700 (?)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 90 x W 48.5 cm
Accession number
44595i
Acquisition method
purchased by Henry S. Wellcome, c.1900–1936
Work type
Painting