European apothecary, 1400s-1800s In 1945 the Smithsonian acquired its European Apothecary Collection, a loan from E. R. Squibb and Sons, which had displayed it at the 1933 Century of Progress world's fair in Chicago and then in its corporate museum in New York City. The "Ancient Apothecary," as its label referred to it, included among its 1,100 artifacts pharmaceutical containers, mortars and pestles, scales, and other equipment from throughout Europe, dating from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. The company later donated the collection to the Smithsonian. See also: Medical History

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