IAO Board Member Rubia Chaudri and director Saskia Wilson-Brown recently visited Alexandria, Virginia, and went on a tour of a beautiful (and definitely haunted) historic apothecary. In this post, Saskia shares what they learned during their tour of the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum.
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Twenty minutes outside the marble corridors of diplomacy and power in Washington D.C. is a small leafy town called Alexandria, Virginia. As no less than three tourists exclaimed within earshot, Alexandria is “super quaint”. If such a hackneyed term must be used, then this would be the place to use it.
Like many other towns on the east coast of the United States, American history feels prominent here. With narrowly-built 18th century brick houses, ankle-breaking cobblestones, and more pumpkin varieties on display than I even knew existed, the town also hosts a historic apothecary, presented in the form of a sweet and lovingly-tended museum.
The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, owned and operated by the city of Alexandria, preserves an apothecary that opened in 1792 and shut in 1933. Over those 150 years, the Stabler and the Leadbeater families provided Alexandrians with products ranging from house paint (they sell the pigment, you provide the oil) to medicine, with plenty of products in between.
It’s no mystery that medicinal materials and perfume materials have often overlapped, and the druggists were no doubt very aware of this aromatic cross-over. In fact, the apothecary also produced perfume.
PERFUMES
Mount Vernon Triple Extract was a perfume that was produced by the apothecary. It was inspired by the nearby estate – Mount Vernon – that was owned by George and Martha Washington. Martha Washington had been a frequent client of the apothecary, and the museum preserved a letter from her asking for divers medicines, written just a few weeks before she died.
While the formula for Mount Vernon Triple Extract wasn’t shared during our visit, we like to imagine that it was perhaps related to another that was.
Cologne, from 1898
This formula was transcribed from the ‘Apothecary Recipe Book ca. 1898’, published by the City of Alexandria in 2016.
Oil Bergamot – 5 oz.
Oil Lemon – 5 oz.
Oil Lavender Flower – 5 oz.
Oil Cinnamon – 1/4 oz.
Oil Cloves – 1/4 oz.
Oil Rose – 1/8 oz.
Oil Orange – 1 1/4 oz.
Ext. Jockey Club – 4 oz.
Ext. White Rose – 4 oz.
Ext. Ylang Ylang – 4 oz.
Note that the Jockey Club line possibly represents an accord that was inspired by a perfume of the same name that was launched in the 1840s and later made popular by Caswell-Massey.
POISONS
Another exhibit that caught our eye was a small collection of blue bottles, most of them covered with glass bumps.
Our museum guide explained that these bottles were used for poisons: the bumps allowed people to recognize them when the lighting was low. Pre-electricity, this would have been very useful, indeed.
On an interesting and related note, our guide explained how the cure for poisoning, often, was more poison. If for instance a person were to consume too much digitalis, they might notice that their heart was slowing down to an alarming degree. The solution might be another poison, one that sped the heart up. Perhaps a small dose of strychnine might do? But watch out: take too much, and it’s more digitalis for you – a ping-pong of poisons that, as you can imagine, didn’t often end well.
MATERIALS
Upstairs in the compounding lab, the group were led into a long room lined with wooden drawers – allegedly a source of inspiration for the production design in Harry Potter movies. Some of the labels showed familiar friends like saffron, cassia buds, and camphor. We also saw materials like guaiacwood, aloeswood, myrrh, cinnamon, balm of gilead, spikenard and some fun super-smellers like Asafoetida
Some of the labels contained utter mysteries: poke berries? Jobs tears? Pickle spice? Who knows what treasures these containers held: I, for one, would be willing to give them a sniff.
Learn more about the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum at ApothecaryMuseum.org.
SOME PHOTOS!
Written by Saskia Wilson-Brown
in Alexandria, Virginia
on October 22, 2023
