January 7th, Experiences

Today I am going to write about my experience of the Pharmacy Museum tour. As I approached my destination of the museum my classmates were sitting outside the museum. The front of the building was green with glass windows.

As I wait outside, my mind begins to wonder of what I will be learning about. While our class was waiting for the tour to begin, my professor had our class meet behind the pharmacy in the courtyard. This courtyard consisted of an area of the original flagstone, but open to a big sky with a bright sun. When the tour started, our tour guide had all the people stand together in close quarters in the same room. While I was standing in this very over crowed room, I had observed many shelves that consisted of wood with array of bottles of all sizes in array of colors. Some of these bottles had unknown substances contained in each bottle that were colored like white, yellow, black, and brown contained in each bottle.

My tour guide consisted of a gentleman who has mastered the history of medicine. This gentleman was very outgoing through presentation that he delivered, but witty. He was witty because every time he explained a reason why, it was always followed up by a witty statement. This tour guide had hidden talent that could place a smile on my face unexpectedly. I found myself laughing out loud along with the people who standing around me.

There were times that the tour guide held up items to assist in providing care. At one point he talked about needles that looked like the needles being used in today's culture. This gentleman had so much energy, I was able to hear different ranges of sounds being produced through his speech. He also touched bases of different methods of treatments, for example leeches have been used in medicine to treat skin diseases and infections. Using leeches will secrete peptides and proteins that work to prevent blood clots. He held up a picture of a magnified size of a leech. This leech was white in appearance with a segmented worm like body. A leech has suction disks on each end of their bodies. The purpose if for the leech's saliva that contains substances that anesthetize the area of infection, dilate the vessels to increase blood flow, and prevent the blood from clotting.

After the tour was over, we were given extra time to continue walking around the pharmacy by observing the history of the past. I found a little of history located on the second floor of this pharmacy. A midwife could wrap the newborn babe in a cloth sling to weight the child by using a scale like this one. Modern versions of this scale are still used by home-birth midwives today.