Alchemy of Zagreb
When I walk around Zagreb, I sometimes feel like there’s a special chemistry between Zagreb... and chemistry. As if the smell of herbs collected by medieval alchemists and 18th-century witches blends with 19th-century science. Together, they’ve left a wonderous scent that you can still capture on a quiet walk. Let’s remember all the strange potions that have been boiled in Zagreb since its early days.
A detail from the old chemical institute - I like to call it the dragon lace
The best place to start this walk down chem-memory-lane is the Nobel Laureates Room where you can learn about two Croatian Nobel-winning-chemists: Lavoslav Ružička and Vladimir Prelog. The room is placed inside of the former chemistry institute. People used to say that men in white kidnapped children, used them for frightening experiments inside, and finally turned them into soap!
Apart from the chemists’ memorial room, the building is now used as a library and it often exhibits some of its rare books. The entrance is free. When they renovated it, they had to literally peel off the walls to get rid of the smell of the chemicals.
Names of the early chemists decorate the top of the former chemical institute
Speaking about exhibitions, I can’t wait to see the collection of the Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy in person. The museum still doesn’t have a permanent exhibition and a true home, but the good news is that they share their content online.
For instance, they have a collection of items that belonged to the family of Feller. This brings us to the greatest pharmapreneur in Croatian history: Eugen Feller. Eugen earned a fortune by exporting his miraculous remedy Elsa Fluid all over the world: 400 packages a day, 27 million bottles sold! It was especially popular in the United States. Probably because of the high amount of alcohol - as it was the times of prohibition. Even though Eugen had 8 sons, he took his secret recipe to his grave.
We might never know the ingredients of Elsa Fluid, but we do know what it takes to make a perfect hailstorm that will destroy your neigbor’s vineyard. You need to beat the ashes with a hazel stick. We also have the recipe for the smoothest broom ride: take some human fat boiled on a crescent moon night. These are just some of the witchcraft recipes found in local records of the notorious 18th-century witch trials.
Did the Black Queen have an alchemy lab in the Medvedgrad fortress?
Superstitions aside... I already wrote about the greatest sorceress of all, the Black Queen. Historians believe that the legendary creature is based on an actual personality, a 15th-century queen Barbara Celjska. That woman is remembered as one of the first alchemists on Croatian soil. She used to have at least one alchemy lab and a testimonial exists that she turned copper to silver!
Sounds crazy and completely unbelievable. Well, so is the 19th-century development of chemistry and pharmaceutics. The stuff they use to sell in local pharmacies is scarier than plain old alchemy! The newspapers of the time are full of remedies such as Green Nun, Dragon Blood Creme, Iron with Arsenic, Fairy Fat, Cocaine, Radium Vinovica. The latter actually contained radium and was invented by the chemist Slavoljub Penkala. Another success story with exports all over Europe that cured all the diseases. For a while.
Slavoljub Penkala could be the most famous Zagreb inventor. This mural is a tribute to him and his best-known invention: solid-ink fountain pen
If you wanted to get any of those remedies, you had to stop by St Peter’s, Holy Trinity, Red Cross or Black Eagle’s. Those are all names of local pharmacies. The Black Eagle pharmacy is the oldest one in Zagreb that still works, and it has been operating at least since 1355.
Even if all of this sounds a bit surreal, you should know that our ancestors were quite lucky that they were getting their dose of radium or arsenic. Before that, instead of going to a pharmacist, they would have to visit a barber. An old barber’s price list from Zagreb offers haircuts or limbcuts - the choice is yours!
The windows of the Black Eagle pharmacy show an exhibition of the long and peculiar history of the place
Witches, folk doctors, barbers, chemists, pharmacists... Generations and generations of people prone to mixing strange ingredients have lived and worked in this city. Aren’t they all part of the same story? Didn’t they all pour their otherwordly knowledge into a giant cauldron with etheric steam that’s gently filling up each and every pore of the city?
If you capture that wonderous scent when you walk the streets of Zagreb, you will know that you’re being surrounded by the alchemy of Zagreb.
The first university lessons in chemistry took place in this building in Kaptol area. The first known alchemy lab was just a few houses away several centuries before
Image credit: Iva Silla
Author: Iva Silla