Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition

garian National Museum. Gömöri then commissioned Mihály Po láçk (1773-1855) the eminent architect of the National Museum to design a pharmacy house for him in Király Street in 1812. The pharmacy was opened in 1813. The manufacture of the designs of this wonderful pharmacy interior, was fulfilled by the cabinet-maker Márton Rosznágel of Pest (1783-1857), while the decorative wood carving was made by Lőrinc Dunaiszky (1784-1835), a noted sculptor. The furniture is U-shaped with rectangular outline. Rows of drawers were placcđ at the bottom, and cabinets at its set-backs. The shelves arc opened and fitted with glass doors. The division refers to the style of an architect. The cornice crowning the shelves and mounting the whole furniture, projects with abrupt proportioning. Under the cornice there is a guildcd black bull's eye lath-work, which stresses the upper level of the fitting and synthesizing the whole interior. Above the wall cupbords the shelved cabinets are screened with mirror-doors of four joints. The straight line of the furniture is broken by a projection at the axis of the rear wall, with a richly decorated French clock standing between the two columns of its cornice. According to the inscriptions that were found on the drawers during conservation, some great Hungarian politicians and writers — Sándor Petőfi, Lajos Kossuth, Baron József Eötvös and András Wachott

— must have been regular customers of the pharmacy. We wished to emphasize the social meeting placc character of the pharmacy by placing a set of furniture with fan-shaped backs around the Empire round table. The most impressive part of the pharmacy arc the decoratcd wooden reliefs carvcd by Lőrinc Dunaiszky. The subject of the six high reliefs was probably given by Gömöry himself, their elaboration, however, docs credit to the exquisite artistic ingenuity of Dunaiszky. Above the entrance door there is the sccne 'Curing', then from left to the right: 'Hygicia', 'Chemistry', 'Pharmacy', 'Asclcpios' and 'Medicine' follows. The subject of those, decorating the two longitudinal walls, are related to each other, whereas the two partition walls in the opposite sides make up another theme. The classical restriction of the two mythological compositions (Hygicia and Asclcpios) could not give room for the adequate reflection of the artist's independent intellectual world, but the rest, provided him with iconographically less settled subjects, hcnce did allow to express freely his own artistic ideas. The artist threw away the formal academic pattern and gracefully represented the professional activity instead: the allegorical figures authentically reflect the bourgeois charm of the Bidcrmcyer. The furniture — after being taken into picccs in 1951 — was transferred to the Semmelweis Museum in 1965. The 600 wooden, glass, faience and porcelain vessels of the pharmacy come from different regions of the country, and range over the age between the early 19th ccntury and the first decades of the twentieth. The morc prominen s arc the wooden empire footed jars of Gönc and the Bidcrmcyer ones of Békéscsaba, the faience vessels of Miskolc, the Alt-Wicn porcelain vessels from the pharmacy of the Order of the Sisters of Mercy at Eger; and other porcelains from the Zsolnaÿ Works at Pécs. Among the glass vessels the opaline glasses of The Snake Pharmacy of Pest and the polished jars of the Sisters of Mercy decoratcd with pome-