Register of all the medicines kept at the pharmacies. Photos: Paul Spiteri LucasRegister of all the medicines kept at the pharmacies. Photos: Paul Spiteri Lucas

Viagra was introduced 15 years ago, but it had been a long time coming, as medicine memorabilia at the National Archives in Rabat show.

Little yellow boxes of ‘Juvenin’ can be seen on the shelves of what used to be the oldest pharmacy in Malta – dating back to the 16th century knights era – when it was part of the Santo Spirito Hospital, now the National Archives, in Rabat.

These so called ‘Juvenin’ pills were available in Maltese pharmacies as far back as the 1950s promising “favourable restorative effect on the genital organs”.

However, the pills cannot have been very effective because it took scientists until 1985 to find the proper formula for the best-selling prescription of all time.

“You can trace the history of medicine over the last decades from these little boxes and bottles here,” former pharmacy technician Michael Bonnici, from Żebbuġ, said.

Mr Bonnici, who restored the old pharmacy and now supervises it, is compiling old prescriptions which doctors used to prescribe on an individual basis to patients depending on their ailments.

His father ran a pharmacy in Żebbuġ and he managed to salvage a good number of old medicines in glass bottles – some of which still sealed with lead seal.

Among them is a bottle of Phenazone, which was used as a painkiller before aspirin was invented. Another is a dark blue glass bottle of 80-year-old rose water which was used to disguise the bad taste of powders compounded into pills.

When Mr Bonnici unscrewed the cap, the rose water smelt fresher than one bought off the shelf this year. The reason being, he explained, that old medicines used to be “organically made” – as opposed to today’s “synthetically made”.

Mr Bonnici said his grandmother at the age of 70 was prescribed a spoonful a day of a tincture digitalis to strengthen her heart. “She lived to the grand old age of 102 and today the same ingredient is mixed with chemicals and is found in pills for people suffering from heart problems,” he said.

Watch: President of the Malta Chamber of Pharmacists Mary Ann Sant Fournier and pharmacy technician Michael Bonnici, reproduce an age old cough mixture and mix powder in sachets (qratas) to treat strokes.

 

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