Permanent Exhibition

5. Pharmacy Room

Pharmacy Room 1

Exiting the Faculty of Medicine and crossing the campus, we arrive at the Library building. Most of the rooms of the museum are on the first floor.

We directly enter the Pharmacy Room. Its shelves contain more than a thousand bottles of natural, chemical, office and other specific products. These bottles were used to make medicines. Most of them come from the Civil Hospital of Basurto, while some come from private chemists such as Urrutia and Aristegui from Bilbao, Aramburu from Plentzia, and Gabilondo from Bermeo.

Certain products date from the end of the 19th century, but most of them are from the beginning of the 20th century and from the inter-war period. In any event, they belong to the time previous to the arrival of big multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Equipment and objects used to prepare medicines are also exhibited. Among them, we mention stills, a high precision balance, Beranger scales with a wooden base, bronze and stone mortars, a syruper, a hopper or drug grinder, and a compression machine to make tablets.

A collection of fifty ceramic jars and some forms and pharmacopeia from the 19th century complete the room.

On one side, next to the Museum's entrance hall, we can see the great mural of the history of Basque medicine, a work by Julián Lázaro, which goes from the old hospitals of the pilgrimage route to the hospitals and universities in which Basque doctors were educated.

Pharmacy Room 2