Pharmacy

The disgrace of medicine has been that colossal system of self-deception, in obedience to which mines have been emptied of their cankering minerals, the vegetable kingdom robbed of all its noxious growths, the entrails of animals taxed for their impurities, the poison-bags of reptiles drained of their venom, and all the inconceivable abominations thus obtained thrust down the throats of human beings suffering from some fault of organization, nourishment, or vital stimulation.

                                                  Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD (1861)

two Paris porcelain portrait vases a devanture (ca. 1850) with portraits of Hippocrates and Galen

These exhibition pieces would have been displayed by pharmacists in storefronts to attract customers.