Unloved Medicine Chests: Understanding Incomplete Objects in Museum Storage Cabinets

Antonia Belli, M.Sc.

From the cassette d’olij made in the Medici fonderie in Florence to the Prunkapotheke made in the woodworking guilds of Augsburg, early modern medicine chests have been collected and displayed in museums as valued art objects. While my thesis case studies have focused on the life of medicine chests before they entered the museum, my research project at the Bibliotheca Hertziana will focus on the life of the objects as they currently exist inside museums. What can we know about forgotten and broken medicine chests, not in spite of but because of their missing pieces? Even “broken” or “incomplete” medicine chests are invaluable sources of knowledge about the relationship early modern people had towards pharmacy and to their own bodies. Many of these chests present direct evidence that they and their contents had been used extensively; the bottles refilled with new medicaments (as shown by paper labels on glass bottles being swapped or modified) and substituted when they broke. Missing bottle lids were replaced with discarded letter cut-outs secured with string. They were not simply designed to maintain medical substances (and the human body) but were themselves objects that were cared for, repaired, and maintained by their owners. My research aims to explore how this maintenance was undertaken.