Itinerary edited by UNIVERSITY OF SIENA 
The Siena collection of pharmaceutical Chemistry consists of 325 pieces of laboratory tools, glass-works, furnishings to which 236 antique medicinal preparations have been added. The acquisition of these goods dating from the second half of the 19th century is documented by the Institute's registers and inventories, precious archives that provides some historical information.
The compilation in the most ancient register begins with over hundred inventory classification numbers that describe the endowment of the Laboratory of pharmaceutical Chemistry by the middle of the 19th century.
Such tools, along with more recent ones and an interesting collection of ancient medicinal preparations are introduced in this presentation to testify to the evolution of chemical knowledge and its applications for pharmaceutical needs framing the teaching history of pharmaceutical Chemistry in Siena Atheneum.
The most representative objects of the collectionThe most ancient tools of the Siena pharmaceutical Chemistry collection are referable to the years preceding 1860. Among these: a scale of Deleuil, the stove of Gay-Lussac, a Hartnack microscope, the Regnault gasometer, the nitrogen pursuit box also called " ammonimetro" (warning box) , the instrument for mercury search and that of Salleron for alcohol.
The collection has been retrieved and studied by the service center CUTVAP of Siena Atheneum, which since 1994 catalogs, safeguards and enhances the scientific cultural goods from Siena university buildings, hospitals,institutions and corporate bodies .
The CUTVAP has an important collection of medical tools (around 5.600 pieces dating from XVII to XX century), including surgery tools and instruments dating back to the 18th/and 19th century from the ex Spedale
Saint Maria della Scala as well as tools related to different disciplines mainly from other departments of the Siena Atheneum. http://www.cutvap.unisi.it/
In the collection of the pharmaceutical Chemistry Department, among the most ancient tools there is an instrument for the production of carbonated drinks, obtained with the use of carbonic acid in powder.
The sample for home use, is called in its original language "appareil gazogène Briet." Its particularity was that the powders had no contact with the drinkable water, an essential hygienic condition.
Physiology had determined the digestive action of carbonic acid, therefore science and industry took advantage of these different performances of the waters: artificial Soda water was created and still is nowadays ,one of the most famous among the natural mineral waters of the XIX century.
The Siena "Soda machine " was acquired and listed under n. 42 of the Inventory register in 1861.
The collection of medicines was built up over the years starting from a nucleus of a few samples dating back to 1930/1940 by professor Alberto Neri, teaching Professor of pharmaceutical Techniques at the Faculty of Pharmacy.
In the following years the collection has been enriched and used for didactic purposes to illustrate to the students, the type and variety of existing available pharmaceutical products.
This collection of medicines acquires a special historical-scientific interest within the historical patrimony project of safeguarding, as many of these consist of the first medicines obtained through a chemical synthesis thanks to a great industrial pharmacological development.
