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Title Advertisement for Carpenter's Chemical Wharehouse, 301 Market Street, Philadelphia
Reference 1989-69-26
Library Philadelphia Museum of Art
Collection The William H. Helfand Collection, 1989
Date 1834
Description Frontispiece from George Washington Carpenter, 'Essays on Some of the Most Important Articles of the Materia Medica', 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: G. W. Carpenter, 1834).
Document Type Advertisement
Theme(s) Production and Trade
Keywords pharmacist, store, chemist, medical supplies, apparatus, surgical instruments, Aesclepius, quinine, iodine, morphine, wares
Additional Information The advertisement showing the façade of Carpenter's Chemical Warehouse at Eighth and Market streets in Philadelphia appeared as the frontispiece to the second edition of a collection of essays by George Washington Carpenter, a druggist who also sold chemical and scientific apparatus. Not only are the names of many popular products listed on this print, but, rather surprisingly in an age of secret remedies, the contents of some of them are also revealed. The head of Aesculapius over the bow window represents a continuation of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British custom of using the busts of such famous figures from the history of medicine on apothecary shops, a useful device when homes and stores were not yet given street numbers and illiteracy was widespread. William H. Helfand, from 'The Picture of Health: Images of Medicine and Pharmacy from the William H. Helfand Collection' (1991), p. 123.
Note Please note that some of the metadata for this document has been drawn from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's catalogue.
Visual Content
Copyright Philadelphia Museum of Art