A late morning rain was predicted to all but disappear by early afternoon, so to avoid getting wet we decided to drop into the Pharmacy Museum during that time. The museum is at the top of a hill located above a tiny veranda-like plaza that looks out over the steep neighborhood streets leading to the Tagus River.
A block east of the museum there is an uphill avenue with a familiar name.
Paying heed to a pharmacy museum in Lisbon wasn’t entirely random. According to my brother, the Portuguese are leaders in CBD research. It is also a well-known fact that since 2001, drug use in Portugal is “treated a medical issue, not a crime,” and that drug-induced death is five times lower than the rest of the EU.
The museum explains that there’s a history behind this scientific approach. When Portugal seized Goa in the early 16th century, the botanists along for the boat ride wrote about the uses of marijuana. Colonization exposed the Portuguese to a wide variety of concoctions that different cultures claimed were effective, so sampling and comparing results was all part of the pharmaceutical process of discovery. And look at this medieval hazmat suit meant to ward off the plague.
Tell me if that wouldn’t lessen your chances of getting Covid. And check out this dandy little instrument meant, after too much self-medicating, to be shoved down one’s throat to induce vomiting. Works every time!
A quick glance at a medieval surgeon’s medical tools and what comes to mind? A demented monk’s need to perform miracles on a bishop suffering from carbuncles? Absolutely not; for some reason I have a craving for pastry.
Delicious! Now it’s time to work up an appetite for lunch. We wend our way through the Chiado district towards the doll hospital. (Ella will explain.) The doll hospital was closed for lunch, so we took off towards a rundown hillside neighborhood that was not on the route of the double-decker tourist buses. And do we find? The fountain park!
And on the other side of the park, on an avenue of Indian restaurants, a lot men wearing djellabas. The aroma was enough for me to hurry up lunch, but Ella pointed out that there weren’t any women hanging around. So an olfactory hit that hinted I might get a negative result on my Covid test tomorrow, and then on to the doll hospital.
The doll hospital had a narrow entrance with tiny dolls in glass cases making it a squeeze to get in and buy tickets. Unlike yesterday’s shiny tchotchke stores, this dimly lighted shop with ancient dolls was more Dickensian. When the woman who took my money for the tickets took an inordinate amount of time behind a hidden counter to get me change, I started to feel like I was in a Chucky movie. But I was wrong! Like I said, Ella will explain.
On our way back to our Airbnb, we bid farewell to Lisbon’s river birds.
