Flower to Pharmacy

This new exhibition showcases botanical text and images used by physicians to treat patients during colonial times, when plants were a prime source of medication. The texts were used to guide early physicians on the use and the appropriately dosages to properly medicate patients. Works by naturalists such as Linnaeus, Catesby, Bartram, and Barton are on display on 2 Pine by the historic library, each pulled from the Pennsylvania Hospital archives and made available to the public. Stop in and learn about medicine from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, see an inventory of the Pennsylvania Hospital Apothecary, and view original recipes written by medical students.

Among the volumes on display will be Benjamin Smith Barton’s Elements of Botany, or Outlines of the natural history of vegetables, the first American textbook on botany (1803) which includes William Bartram’s illustrations, The herball or Generall historie of plantes by John Gerarde (1633), Notebooks of Benjamin Horner Coates and Benjamin Morris with recipes for various ailments and more.