 Device for distillation |
In the eighteenth century the pharmaceutical sciences underwent a stage of great progress and definitive emancipation from medicine and surgery. The latter half of the century was to see the birth of experimental pharmacology, based on the fundamental methodological principle of the need for systematic experimentation, both in vitro and on living organisms. This direct approach resulted in a rapid increase in knowledge in this field, allowing pharmacologists to prepare remedies with greater precision and efficacy. The objects displayed in this room reproduce the atmosphere of a pharmacological laboratory of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The equipment was very similar to that used in chemical laboratories. Retorts, stills, cucurbits, flasks, baths, ovens and weighing scales were the essential instruments for the analysis and preparation of remedies. |