About

In the 1820s, Łódź experienced rapid industrialisation through the development of the textile industry. Over the course of a hundred years, from 1800 to 1900, the city’s population increased from a mere 400 people to 300,000 inhabitants. At the beginning of the industrialisation process, the city had no developed infrastructure or pharmacy, and for pharmacological assistance, the inhabitants of Łódź were forced to travel to neighbouring towns or use the services of local and itinerant vendors, whose competence was not supervised by any authority. This situation changed with the opening of the city’s first pharmacy in 1830.

In 1828, the Government Commission for Internal Affairs and Police in Warsaw issued a licence to run the first pharmacy in Łódź, which was to be located at 2 New Town Square (now 7 Liberty Square). Karol Ketschen became the owner. However, the pharmacy had to wait until 1830 to open. The new owner died at an early age, six months after the pharmacy had opened.

In 1840, the pharmacy was purchased by Bogumił Zimmermann, who invested in the construction of a new building designed to accommodate the needs of the pharmacy located there: the ground floor provided space for a pharmacy chamber and the upper floor provided accommodation for the pharmacist and his family. The building was erected at 7 New Town Square (now 2 Liberty Square) and the first pharmacy in Łódź was relocated there. It is interesting to note that for the first 2 years the establishment operated illegally, as Zimmermann was not granted his licence until 1842, but the accounts confirm it was in business from 1840.

The period during which Leinweber ran the pharmacy, i.e. between 1850 and 1885, was a period of stability and prosperity for the establishment – it was among the leading pharmacies in Łódź. This was probably due to the owner’s good university education, which was preceded by student internships in German pharmacies. He completed his studies at two universities: in Berlin and St Petersburg. Leinweber shared his knowledge with young people – in the 1850s, in his laboratory located next to the pharmacy, he held practical classes for students of a secondary school. 

In 1893 Maximilian Leinweber’s son, Kazimierz Leinweber, carried out a project to reconstruct the pharmacy building: the second floor and attic were added, two two-storey brick outbuildings and one-storey brick outbuildings were erected. This gave the property its present shape. 

After the death of Kazimierz Leinweber, due to the lack of pharmaceutical training among his heirs, the pharmacy passed into the hands of various tenants and owners. Among the latter was a couple, Wanda and Stanisław Koprowski, who bought the pharmacy in the 1930s. In 1939, however, it was taken away from the Koprowski’s by the Third Reich, and the pharmacy’s manager became a German pharmaceutical inspector, Silberhorn, who ran it until 1944, when he lost his post over a drug related scandal. As the number of people affected by the war increased, the demand for narcotic drugs grew. Easy access to drugs resulted in numerous cases of addiction among doctors and pharmacists. Sliberhorn’s addiction was detected during an inspection, the man was stripped of his post, put into forced rehab and sent to the Eastern Front. His successor, Willingshofer, ran the pharmacy until early 1945. We do not know what exactly happened to him, but he probably fled before the Red Army entered the city. In 1945 the Koprowski family regained their pharmacy.

In 1950, the Koprowski family voluntarily and free of charge handed over the pharmacy to the state and it passed into the hands of the Pharmaceutical and Sanitary Trade Centre ‘Centrosan’. This decision was probably dictated by the emergence of interpretations of legislation unfavourable to pharmacies and problems with the supply of private pharmacies, so that the profitability of running the pharmacy declined.

The Polish Pharmaceutical Group (PGF) has become the new strategic investor in Cefarm Łódź. At the time of privatisation, Cefarm owned 93  pharmacies and 3 herbal and medical shops. 32 pharmacies and 2 shops were located in Lodz. All of them became part of the PGF Group. One of them was a pharmacy located in Liberty Square. This pharmacy was included in the pioneering, for those times, partnership programme Dbam o Zdrowie (I Care for Health). Its aim was to promote pharmacies as a place not only to buy medicines, but also to obtain professional advice from a pharmacist.

The Museum was established thanks to the initiative and efforts of Łódź pharmacist Teresa Górska, M.Sc. Jan Muszyński, one of the founders of the Łódź Faculty of Pharmacy and the first dean and head of the Department of Pharmacognosy, was appointed its patron.