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Address:
ul. Florianska 25, 31 - 019 Krakow
Opening Hours:
Tuesday 3 p.m. - 7 p.m. Wednesday - Sunday 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.
The Museum is closed on Mondays and 1st and 5th Saturday of the month
Contact:
Prof. Zbigniew Bela, PhD (Director)
Muzeum.Farmacji.UJ@mp.pl
Phone: (+48 12) 421 92 79
Fax: (+48 12) 422 42 84
Additional information:
Group ticket booking: please call (+48 12) 421-92-79
Links:
Muzeum Farmacij
Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego
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Description:
The Jagiellonian University Museum of Pharmacy founded in Krakow in 1946 is the largest institution of its kind in Poland.
In 1881, the first suggestions and appeals to set up a pharmacy museum in Poland started to appear in the press for apothecaries, to be repeated more and more often. Two well-known historians of pharmacy, Ernest Sulimczyk Sniezawski and Kazimierz Wenda were the original supporters of the idea. Their appeal was echoed by Boleslaw Gladych in 1903 and again in 1913 by Teofil Tugendhold, then anew by Kazimierz Wenda and Jan Poratynski (1920), Waclaw Filipowicz (1935) as well as Robert Rembielonski and Boleslaw Michnikowski (1936). Those appeals, voiced by the most eminent pharmaceutical chemists of the time, did not go unanswered: in the period 1918 - 1939 first modest museum collections of pharmaceutical instruments were gathered in Warsaw, Lvov, Vilnius, Poznan and Czestochowa, the Second World War, however, took its toll on them as well. The idea of founding a pharmacy museum was taken up again in Cracow's professional circles in 1946, when it was supported by the local Chamber of Apothecaries. It was Dr Stanislaw Pron, the office head and legal adviser of the Chamber, who most actively propagated the idea. In the period 1946 - 1951 he was actively gathering exhibits of pharmaceutical use for the Regional Pharmaceutical Museum of Cracow. Although the name of this institution suggested merely local importance, the Museum's significance was in fact on a national scale.
Following the 1951 nationalisation of pharmacies and the disbanding of pharmaceutical chambers, the Ministry of Health was the patron and financial supporter of the institution from January to July of 1952, which was known by the name of the Historical Museum of Polish Pharmaceutics. It was then that Dr Pron obtained permission to extend his collecting activities onto the whole of Poland. During his trips across the country, he did research at about 1,200 chemists' shops, the results of which can be seen in the main part of the present collection at the Museum. As a consequence of further organisational changes, the collection was renamed the Centre for Pharmaceutical Records of the Warsaw's Central Medical Library, with its headquarters at ul. Basztowa 3 in Cracow. Eventually, in 1961 the collection was incorporated into the Faculty of Pharmacy of the then Medical Academy, later the Collegium Medicum of the Jagiellonian University, under the name of the Museum of Pharmacy. One of the most important events in the institution's history was the acquisition from the city authorities of a historical building at ul. Florianska 25, which could be set solely as an exhibition place. Since 1991, the Museum has been accessible not only to specialists in the field but also to tourists. The current status of the Museum of Pharmacy is also that of an autonomous research and education unit, and as such it operates directly under the Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy.
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