Town Hall Pharmacy

This guide to the Town Hall Pharmacy in Tallinn starts with a 1422 sale record that already calls the shop's owner its third, meaning the pharmacy was old business before anyone wrote its name down. You'll hear about the Burchart family, Hungarian immigrants who ran it for over three centuries and always named an eldest son Johann, including one summoned to Saint Petersburg in 1725 to treat the dying Peter the Great. The guide also lists what Johann's customers actually bought at that counter, from powdered mummy to ground rhino horn. It follows the shop through Soviet nationalization and out the other side, still filling prescriptions today.