Treasure.final 6/12/06 3:21 PM Page 92 TREASURE Hope in Jars Packaging the pharmacopoeia erbs, roots, spices, ointments, oval cartouche enclosing an armorial teria medica to lohochs, electuaries, syrups, aro- crest with lions and an eagle. Wounded? be not merely matic waters, et cetera, et The little ovoid-shaped jar (top left), dec- practical, but cetera—the European apothe- orated with a unicorn eating from a bowl pretty, and potters cary from the Middle Ages on- of fruit and dating from circa 1650, con- met his wants. Hward gathered or prepared them and put tains agaric, a fungus, used as a styptic. The Italian examples them into numerous jars that sat side by Ulcers or other difficulties ranging from shown here are from a collection of side on his shelves. Many of his jars were syphilis to snakebite? Take “S.D. Pi- about 350 apothecary jars formed by Ros- of albarello or modified-albarello shape: antagine” (second from right, below), alind and Elbert McLaury and Suzanne cylindrical, wide-mouthed, flanged, cov- seeds of the Plantago major plant, in a and Harold Spear, M.D. ’47, and given to ered with parchment membranes or flowery jar from Florence, circa 1520. Harvard in 1998. About 250 of them are on leather, and narrow-waisted so that he So great was the apothecary’s need for permanent display in the Aesculapian could readily slip his fingers into a line of jars that he caused the foundation of pot- Room of the Countway Library. jars to grasp one. Each promised a cure, teries, creating robust economic health “[A] splendid decorative array of drug- or at least a measure of relief. among makers of tin-glazed earthenware jars,” Drey writes, “was the ambition of Irritated skin? Try basilicon ointment (variously called maiolica, faience, or delft any pharmacist who disposed of the nec- (far left, below), in a jar from Venice, ware), as Rudolf E.A. Drey writes in essary means.” And perhaps even the circa 1575. Constipated? “Ell Poter,” next Apothecary Jars: Pharmaceutical Pottery and a±icted patient buying “Semi di Petros” in line, is a potion that Jack Eckert, ref- Porcelain in Europe and the East, 1150-1850. The from a jar made in Faenza circa 1625 (cen- erence librarian at the Center for the apothecary wanted his containers for ma- ter, below)—a dose, that is to say, of the History of Medicine in the root and seed of parsley, used as a Countway Library of Med- carminative, aperient, diuretic, icine, thinks might be of and emmenagogue—might smile hellebore, used as a cathar- bravely to see the gay jar, with tic. The jar is from Faenza, its bird, a star flower, and circa 1550, what might be taken for a and bears an hippocamp. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM HARRISON.