Carefully labelled jars containing medicinal powders, metal weighing scales and old pill boxes line the shelves of a traditional pharmacists’ bench filled with historic clues about the age-old profession.

The double-sided bench, dating to the early 1900s, was bought by the University of Malta’s Department of Pharmacy and is displayed in the student foyer.

One side of the bench was used as a display area and to the side it had a door with the sign “no admittance” that led to the other side of the bench. There, the pharmacist met clients and mixed and dispensed medicines, explained pharmacy student Rebecca Tonna.

The design of the bench, she said, showed there was an element of privacy in visiting a pharmacist that has been lost.

Ms Tonna, a third-year student, said that the bench had been part of the furniture at Portelli Pharmacy in Paola and was purchased and restored by the University in collaboration with several sponsors. It now forms part of the department’s history collection.

Former University Chancellor John Rizzo Naudi said it was important that pharmacists kept in mind where their profession came from. “This (bench) is a part of our history, when pharmacists were real pharmacists and used to make their own preparations,” he said as he recalled a time when pills and medicines were not prepared by pharmaceutical companies that mushroomed over the years.

Prof. Rizzo Naudi, a former pharmacy student who moved on to become a physician, said that nowadays pharmacists had the added pressure of knowing the side effects of the multitude of drugs that were on the market.

Thinking back to his days as a pharmacist, he recalled how, one day, his boss left him alone in a pharmacy for a while and he got a prescription wrong because he could not read the doctor’s handwriting. That doctor was President Emeritus Ċensu Tabone.

Prof. Rizzo Naudi, Ms Tonna’s grandfather, presented the department with a book dating back to 1813 written by his ancestor, Agostino Naudi.