The History of Apothecary Tools

Apothecaries have been around since early civilization. The term became better known in the 1600s as people became more trained in making drugs and treating medical conditions. The tools they used often look somewhat barbaric to people today. However, many herbs and some methods used back then have influenced medicine today.

Herbs

• The use of herbs goes back to early history, and knowledge of how plants help with ailments was passed down from generation to generation. As apothecaries began to become a business, a shop would hold these ancient chemicals in hand-blown glass jars. The jars would often be colored to keep the sun from harming the plants or concoction inside. The customer was still able to see the ingredients such as foxglove, opium poppy, feverfew, calamine for skin irritations and cinchona bark for fevers. Many of the herbal discoveries are still in use in today's medicine.

Bloodletting and Lancets

• Bloodletting, or phlebotomy, originated in the early civilizations of Egypt and Greece. Doctors bled patients to rid them of "bad humors" using a small knife or lancet, to prick the skin and cut into a blood vessel. The blood would be collected in a bowl. The practice was used on practically every ailment. Finally, in the 19th century, people begin to question the effectiveness of this medical method and found it did not help cure anything at all.

Medical Instruments

• Apothecary instruments included saws for amputations, scales for measuring ingredients, and some other rather scary-looking tools. One such tool was the so-called "tonsil guillotine" used in the removal of tonsils. Popular in the late 1800s for quickly removing tonsils with one quick snip, it lost favor in the early 1900s because many patients experienced excessive bleeding and continued sore throats.

Dental Tools

• From the 1600s, dental forceps, often designed to look like animals, yet resembling pliers, were used to extract teeth. It wasn't until the mid-1800s that anesthesia was used and teeth were removed with less pain. Dental forceps were replaced with a tool called a "pelican" because it was shaped like the bird's beak and gave the operator better leverage when extracting teeth.