The Pharmacy Museum in New Orleans is a fascinating look back at medicine when people’s ideas about it were, I don’t know, a little funny. For example, if you were a normal person, the pharmacist would compound your pills for you at his compounding station; but if you were on the wealthier and more ostentatious side, when it was time to take your medicine, you’d grandly produce the gold- and silver-coated pills you’d had the pharmacist make for you in front of your friends—because precious metals make everything better. And then eventually you’d poop out the gold and silver pills with their contents still in them, one-hundred percent, because our stomachs don’t digest precious metals.

Here we have a portrait of Louis Dufilho, Jr., the first licensed pharmacist in Louisiana, along with his certificate (“0001”), and the city’s first soda fountain. Pharmacists used to pour liquid medicines into soda drinks to make them more palatable. Everyone knows that Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine, but did you know that 7-Up used to contain lithium?

Heroin and opium were popular medicinal ingredients to treat aches and pains. Bayer advertised heroin alongside aspirin; Pond’s infused tampons with opium to manage cramps. Doctors also prescribed lead nipple shields for breastfeeding mothers; “the lead shields were advertised as soothing to the mother’s breast through the creation of lead lactate.” This may explain a lot. Plus, other things to put up inside oneself if one has “piles, constipation, nervousness, dyspepsia, sick headache, neuralgia, rheumatism, insomnia, asthma, indigestion, eczema, all diseases caused by sluggish circulation, mal-nutrition, defective elimination, and the abuse of cathartic drugs.”

As I mentioned in the last post, many people consulted voodoo practitioners as well as doctors, and the practitioners had their own pharmaceutical products. I can’t tell from the photo whether the 71st potion in the collection is a love potion, or whether the pharmacist got up to Love Potion No. 71. These probably would not have been for sale at the original pharmacy, but they’re in the museum.

Finally, at the museum, I learned, first, that untreated syphilis can lead to nasal deterioration, including inflammation, ulcers, and the collapse of the nasal bridge (also known as “saddle nose”). I also learned that one can replace the nose by surgically attaching the finger to it and stretching skin over the attachment: reportedly, the surgeon then detached the finger from the hand and left it where the nose was. (A Pinterest post says that the patient lost his nose from being struck in the face, not from syphilis. (a) I don’t know, and (b) either way, wow.)