Tin-glazed earthenware drug jar

Tin-glazed earthenware drug jar, barrel-shaped, labelled "esto", painted with monastic arms, Spanish, probably 17th or 18th century

Drug jars like this served a dual purpose in historic apothecaries - they were both storage and decoration. These jars held the medicinal ingredients that were used to create remedies in the apothecary and at home. This example is decorated with a coat of arms and the name of the medication it contains.

This jar was one of many bought from an historic pharmacy in Granada, Spain in the late 1920s for Sir Henry Wellcome’s Historical Medical Museum. One of Wellcome’s agents, Captain Peter Johnston-Saint, bought the entire contents of the pharmacy and it was later used to recreate a sixteenth century Spanish pharmacy in the Historical Medical Museum. The historic contents of the pharmacy dated back to when it had been part of the Jesuit monastery, before the Jesuits were expelled from Spain in the late 1700s. Monasteries were an important site of medicine in the early modern period.