Room for Herbs and Storage

Reached by a little flight of stairs, we enter another typical area of pharmacy work. It’s the room where herbs, spices and other solid materials were crushed and ground. Large quantities of raw drugs were finished and then stored in here.

This room, filled with a delightful fragrant smell of fresh and dried herbs, is equipped with the furnishings originating from the “Town Pharmacy” of Mosbach, which were mostly made in the 18th century.

A big variety of tools was at hand for the processing of the ingredients stored in here. Knives and boards used for the chopping up of roots and bark als well as mortars and bowls for crushing were important parts of the equipment, too.

Enormous amounts of herbs were weighed with the big scale in the middle of the room. The big drug grinder from the “Lion Pharmacy” at Oppenheim is very interesting, too. With its help, the pharmacist Friedrich Koch for the first time industrially produced quinine in 1821.