The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7432 p789-790
23/30 December 2006

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The Lithuanian museum of pharmacy: tales from behind the iron curtain

It is not only the artefacts in museums that have interesting histories. Museums themselves — especially those that have survived wars and major regime changes — have tales to tell. In this article, Anatolijus Kostiukevicius and Tauras Mekas describe events that have affected the Museum of the History of Lithuanian Medicine and Pharmacy in Kaunas, Lithuania

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Many westerners are likely to be unfamiliar with the problems of former Soviet countries and the mentality of their residents might appear strange to them. Occupation and the failed social experiment of communism in Lithuania changed the lives of many people but they also affected the history and direction of its museum of pharmacy…

The beginning

The Lithuanian pharmacy museum began in 1936, when the Association of Lithuanian Pharmacists launched its idea and requested pharmacists to contribute to its creation. In 1937, premises were rented in Kaunas, at that time the capital city and where the association was based, and used to receive and chronicle objects. However, although the premises were established and the artefacts gathered, the museum never officially opened because there was no one available to look after it.

In 1940 when Lithuania was occupied by the Soviets, the Association of Lithuanian Pharmacists, together with many other organisations, was dissolved. Its premises, including the “museum” were nationalised and the collection was transported to a warehouse.When Lithuania was occupied by the Nazis (1941), this warehouse was closed and the collection was moved to the premises of the Pharmacy Directorate (the body responsible for the administration of pharmacy during Nazi occupation).

At the beginning of the second Soviet occupation, in 1944, the Pharmacy Directorate was moved to Vilnius but the museum collection was transferred to the pharmacy unit at the Faculty of Medicine of Kaunas University. Minor objects, such as pharmacy pottery, books and scales, were stored in the office of Benediktas Siaulys, professor of pharmacy, while the bigger objects were stored in the faculty’s cellar. However, in 1946, Kaunas suffered one of the biggest floods in its history; all the objects in the cellar were destroyed and only the objects in Professor Siaulys’s office remained.

Starting again

When Professor Siaulys died, in 1957, the artefacts in his office were passed to Alfonsas Kaikaris, lecturer in pharmacy history. As well as having a deep interest in pharmacy history, Mr Kaikaris, like many of his pharmacy colleagues, was nostalgic for the pre-war period (and independent Lithuania) and started collecting things from old Lithuanian pharmacies. This could have been described as a form of resistance to the occupying government but the task was easy because all the pharmacies in Soviet Lithuania were the property of the State and the pharmacy leadership supported the idea of establishing a pharmacy museum. Mr Kaikaris was given permission to gather objects from pharmacies for the museum and many pharmacists were willing to donate items.

How some exhibits were obtained reveals the spirit of that time. For example, the Swan Pharmacy in Kaunas had an allegorical painting in which the Greek god of medicine and healing, Asclepius, is portrayed (see right). One day, a child standing in the queue shouted loudly: “Grandma, look, a god standing”. Atheism was the official policy of the Soviet Union and one of the customers in the pharmacy informed the city’s communist party leadership. As a result, a functionary went to the Swan Pharmacy and ordered that the painting be taken down. The manager of the pharmacy, unthinkingly moved the painting to the wall of her office. A few days later, the same official returned to ensure that his order had been carried out. When he saw the painting in the office, he was furious. He started shouting, asking if the manager had been praying at work, and ordered the painting to be destroyed. However, the manager of the Swan Pharmacy kept the painting in the pharmacy’s coal cellar and was more than happy to give it to Mr Kaikaris.

As more and more objects of pharmacy history were gathered, those in authority at the Kaunas Institute of Medicine (Kaunas University had been reorganised in 1950) designated a place to house the pharmacy museum in 1973: the loft of the institute’s central building. There, an exhibition entitled “The Lithuanian city pharmacy, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century” was installed with the support of several pharmaceutical factories. It consisted of the pharmacy officine (prescription room), coctoria (a room in a pharmacy where infusions and decoctions were made and water was distilled), a store room (eg, for raw materials) and a laboratory.

KGB

Under Soviet rule, museums were seen as tools to portray the ideology of the state and their exhibitions were controlled by the government. Before the launch of the museum of pharmacy, a session was called at which influential functionaries of the institute’s communist party criticised the exhibition, pointing out where the achievements of Soviet government (in the sphere of health care) were not reflected. However, the museum was saved from destruction before it opened to the public by the tolerant position of Zigmas Januskevicius, professor of medicine and principal of the institute. Another supporting factor was the fact that guests of the institute and managers were officially able to take advantage of treatment with various elixirs, made up in the museum by Mr Kaikaris according to formulae in old pharmacopoeias. This raised the prestige of the museum in the eyes of the institute’s leadership. In addition, the institute had received extra funding from the government to cover shortages during periods of central distribution (a Soviet model in which finances and goods were distributed only by the central Soviet government) so there were few financial barriers.

The visits of functionaries could, however, sometimes have negative outcomes. For example, on one occasion, before a group of guests from the highest leadership of communist party arrived, a supporter of the communist party at the institute, suspected by his colleagues to be covertly linked to the Committee for State Security (KGB), made Mr Kaikaris remove all drugs, labels and books bearing the coat of arms of the Republic of Lithuania (Vytis) from the exhibition. This was because the Vytis (a knight on a charging white horse), was viewed by the Soviet Union as a symbol of hostility to the authorities.

As curious as it may sound, the KGB had, however, a positive influence on the history of the museum. In 1975, Louis Ravin, one of the managers of Smith Kline, visited the institute to give a lecture on the training of pharmacists in the US. At that time, Kaunas was one of the leading cities in the Soviet defence industry and, for this reason, it had been given the status of a “secretive” city — every foreigner visiting Kaunas was accompanied by a big group of KGB agents. After the lecture, Mr Ravin visited the museum. He was delighted to see a mill for vegetal stock which had been produced in the US. Laughingly, Ravin asked Antanas Praskevicius, dean of the faculty of pharmacy, if he could buy the mill. In similar jest, Professor Praskevicius answered: “Why buy one exhibit, when you may buy the whole museum?”, which led Ravin to offer US$1m as a starting price. Unlike the two participants of the conversation, the KGB agents did not have any humour. They informed their superiors that the Americans want to buy the museum for $1m and two days later, the most senior leaders of the Kaunas administration and communist party (eight people in total) descended on the museum. They examined the exhibits and decided the collection deserved its own premises, separate from the institute. Thus the museum was given two buildings (16th and 19th century) in Kaunas town hall square.

Collapse of the Soviet regime

In the 1970s, the Kaunas Institute of Medicine belonged to the Soviet Lithuania Ministry of Health Care. The administrators of the institute (mainly medics) proposed the creation of an exhibition of Lithuanian medicine history as well and, eventually, the pharmacy exhibition was combined with the medicine exhibition and the Museum of the History of Lithuanian Medicine and Pharmacy was ceremonially opened in 1987.

The exhibition of pharmacy retained the style of the old museum (it displayed pharmacy at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century), with the addition of a pharmacy cellar display, which had been impossible when the museum had occupied the institute’s loft.

When the new museum was created, it was obligatory for every museum to promote atheism and the administrators of the city were promised that the museum would include such a display. However, either because of the idleness on behalf of the museum administration or other reasons (it might have been difficult to promote atheism using pharmaceutical and medical artefacts), this display was never created.

In 1990, when the Soviet regime collapsed and Lithuania regained independence, unlike other museums which featured exhibitions that praised the Soviet system, it was decided that there was no need for any immediate changes in the exhibition.

The new period of history resulted in the staff of the museum being liberated from the fear of the KGB. In 1993, the property rights to the land and buildings were restored to the former owners. One of the museum’s buildings had to be returned to the heirs of the original owners as a result. However, through the endeavours of museum staff and the managers of Kaunas University of Medicine (formerly the institute), this building was purchased from the owners by funds provided by the Republic of Lithuania Ministry of Health in 1996. At that time it was the only cultural building that was redeemed from the owners using state funds.

Today, the Museum of the History of Lithuanian Medicine and Pharmacy is highly rated by other museums around the world. It is a member of European Association of the Museums of History of Medical Sciences and, recently, two international workshops for the association were held here.

This article has described only a few of episodes from the history of Lithuanian museum of pharmacy and medicine, but we hope that it will give readers an insight to the history of their new neighbours in the EU and, perhaps, even stimulate them to come and see the museum for themselves.