Farmacia storica degli incurabili

This guide to the Farmacia storica degli incurabili in Naples opens inside its gilded eighteenth-century apothecary, built to treat a disease patients were too ashamed to name. You'll hear how Maria Lorenza Longo, a Catalan noblewoman who believed herself miraculously healed, founded the hospital in the fifteen-twenties for people other institutions refused. The guide follows the mercury and arsenic treatments dosed at the long walnut counter, the bezoar stones and viper's-flesh remedies shelved nearby, and the grim saying Neapolitans coined about the cure. Stand at the counter and look up at the painted jars that once held it all.