Abstract:
The oldest urban pharmacy in Cluj/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg/Claudiopolis probably started functioning in the end of the sixteenth century and there are mentions of exotic cures, barber-surgeons and Saxon pharmacists active in town at that time. Significant changes can be noted in the middle of the eighteenth century when the urban pharmacy became private and a new pharmacy was opened by the Jesuits. The paper analyzes this early period of apothecary history in Cluj and in Transylvania during the long seventeenth century (the envisaged period actually extends from the end of the sixteenth century until the middle of the eighteenth). The focus is on the competition between the private and the different types of pharmacies and on the strategies they adopted, becoming sites of innovation in design and display and illustrating the early development of retail strategies.
