House of Apothecary Pharmacy in Historical Ethnographic and Architectural Museum-Reserve Old Sarepta

The House of the Pharmacist (House of the Pharmacist) is an example of a residential building of the Classicism era, typical for ordinary buildings in Western European settlements of the 18th - 19th centuries. In creating community pharmacies, the Hernguters undoubtedly used the experience of creating the first private pharmacy in Gerngut in 1727. The pharmacy in Sarepta was built to “supply the poor with good medicines at low prices.“ At first, the pharmacy was maintained by Dr. H. Gutbier, communal judge Klein and the builder Duerr. Since 1746, it has become the property of the fraternal community. The pharmacy had a laboratory for the manufacture of medicines. In 1761 - 1762. a new pharmacy building was built. On the lower floor there is a pharmacy itself, a laboratory, several storerooms. And on the top floor is the pharmacist’s apartment. In 1793, a pharmacy garden was laid out on a separate plot, and later the house of the doctor Johann Wier (later the Langerfeld house) was built. Dr. I. Vir, a community doctor and pharmacist, practiced already in 1766-1768. He treated the Kalmyks. P.S. Pallas mentions that the “industrious and prudent Dr. Veer“ received Glauber’s salt in the laboratory of the pharmacy. In 1775, Vir investigated the general mineralization of the water of the Ergeninsky springs. Mineral water was bottled and also sold in a pharmacy. By 1781, the pharmacy with laboratories was transferred to the possession of Melchior Nichmann, who managed it from 1776 to 1797. In 1803, the pharmacy building became two-story, a vaulted three-chamber basement appeared with an entrance from the yard. On the first floor there was a trading room and a pharmacist’s room, on the second floor, and possibly in the basement, there was a laboratory, in the wing - the doctor’s apartment. A water supply system was soon connected to the building, and a garden of ornamental herbs was planted on the site. Russian writer A.F. Voeikov, who lived in Sarepta in 1813, wrote that the Sarepta “pharmacy surpasses many Russian provincial pharmacies in the abundance and freshness of medicinal potions.” By 1825, the pharmacy building was restored, instead of the burned-out outbuilding, an extension of stone of the same size was made. In 1831, in a pharmacy under the direction of K.F. Yana started working as a pharmacist Franz Heinrich Langerfeld - a chemist, doctor, pharmacist, who graduated from the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy. About the doctor and pharmacist F.G. Langerfelde is mentioned by the professor of Dorpat University F. Goebel, who had a fever for a month in 1835 and was treated by him in Sarepta. On the basis of the pharmacy, Langerfeld created a balsam-vodka factory and a sugar factory with a chemical-distillation laboratory that produced essential oils and steam chocolate. The Sarepta historian A. Glich wrote in 1865: “The Sarepta pharmacy rightfully enjoys a good reputation, it is considered equal to the best pharmacies in terms of filling and quality of medicines, if not even superior to them. Associated with it are small factory devices where various essential oils are made: castor, peppermint, spearmint, cypress, steam chocolate, lipsticks, etc.” In 1890 - 1896. The head of the pharmacy was Dr. Heinrich Leopold Hamberg. In 1904, Orientalists A.D. Rudnev and G.I. Ramstedt to compile a list of medical terms in the Kalmyk language and study the collection of Tibetan medicines. In the XVIII - early XX centuries. Sarepta pharmacy was considered one of the best in the Saratov province, its services were used not only by residents of the region, but also by travelers from different cities and regions of Russia and Europe. The pharmacy had a wide range of drugs, medicines supplied taking into account the development of European and domestic pharmacology, as well as a large selection of medical equipment and surgical instruments. Sarepta apothecaries widely practiced homeopathic remedies. Almost everyone had knowledge of botany, collected local medicinal herbs, roots, fruits for processing and making medicines. In 1912, a branch of a licorice processing plant was opened in Sarepta. Manager Rosenfeld bought the roots, the workers cleaned them, cut them into pieces. They tied them in bundles on the machines and sent them abroad. The pharmacy had a prescription room where medicines were dispensed, in addition to medicines, there was a cabinet for poisons with scales, mortars, scoops, a cabinet for patent medicines. There was also a coctorium - a pharmaceutical room for hot infusion and decoction work, a laboratory for pharmaceutical and chemical work, a material pantry where materials and supplies were stored raw, a dryer (herbal room) for drying herbs, roots and flowers, as well as dry cellar and glacier. In 1918, the pharmacy was nationalized and continued to function until November 1921.