Uncut sheets of medicine labels from a 19th-century Strasbourg pharmacy.

[Medicine] / [Pharmacy]. L. Hecht Pharmacien. Alcali Volatil Fluor. Sel de Vinaigre. Eau pour La grosse gorge, A prendre une cuillerée a bouche le matin à jeûn et le soir avant de se coucher. S.l. [Strasbourg]: s.n., s.a. [c.1800-50]. [Each approx. 17.5 x 8.7 cm]. [6] ff. etchings. Trimmed inside platemark at top edges, some mostly marginal staining and toning.

Group of 6 early 19th-century uncut sheets of etched medicine bottle labels from the Strasbourg pharmacy of Louis Hecht (1771-1857), a rare survival of this sort of ephemeral printing.

The labels are for aqueous ammonia, vinegar salt, and a tonic described as “Water for a sore throat: Take one spoonful in the morning on an empty stomach and in the evening before bed.”

“Louis Hecht (1771-1857) belonged to a dynasty of Strasbourg pharmacists; his grandfather, Benjamin Hecht (1697-1758), originally from Speyer, had settled in Strasbourg as a pharmacist around 1740, and his father, Louis Henri Hecht (1745-1817), had become the owner, in 1767, of the Pharmacie de la Vierge (established in 1669 [7 Rue des Arcades]), which had been purchased by his mother. After training as a chemist, L. Hecht became an assistant professor at the Strasbourg School of Chemistry in 1795, but he declined the vacant position of professor of medical chemistry and pharmacy at the School of Health. In 1800, he received his Master of Pharmacy degree. In 1804, he was appointed full professor of chemistry at the newly established École de Pharmacie, a position he held until his retirement in 1835, when the École was reorganized. He served as acting director from 1826 to 1835. Concurrently, he was the owner of the Pharmacie de la Vierge from 1800 to 1830 and a member of the City Council. In 1820, he was distinguished as a non-resident associate member of the Academy of Medicine. His son, Louis Émile Hecht (1802-1856), who qualified as a first-class pharmacist in Strasbourg in 1829, was an associate professor at the École de Pharmacie from 1842 to 1847; he died prematurely in 1856, a year before his father” (Pabst, pp. 384-5).

These labels are not located by OCLC or KVK, nor have I encountered them in the literature on the Hecht pharmacy.

*Jean-Yves Pabst, “La chaire de chimie médicale de la Faculté de médecine et la chaire de chimie de l’École de pharmacie de Strasbourg (1794-1871),” Histoire des sciences médicales, vol. XLV, no. 4 (2011), pp. 381-96.