Estácio Pharmacy

Carved and gilded wood

Oporto, Portugal

Founded in 1924

Inv. no. 13555

Pharmacy Museum Oporto

The Estácio Pharmacy, located at Rua Sá da Bandeira in Porto, owes its name to Emílio Faria Estácio (1854-1919), pharmacist at the University of Coimbra. It consists of six showcases and five counters with glass doors.

In 1883 he founded Estácio Pharmacy at Rossio, in Lisbon, and, in 1888, he founded the Fábrica Vapor de Produtos Químicos e Farmacêuticos (Steam Factory of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Products). He was also the founder of Companhia Portuguesa de Higiene (CPH), (Portuguese Hygiene Company), in 1891, from Estácio & C.ª, and remained director of this company until 1908. The Company invested heavily on Dosimetry and in 1893-94 also began the manufacture of pills (then so-called “compressed pills”).

In 1913, CPH became a limited liability company, owner of the Estácio Pharmacy at Rossio. His new partners were António de Matos Casaca, who was already technical director of the Estácio Pharmacy at the time of Emílio Estácio, João Augusto dos Santos, a pharmacist who became manager in 1918, and Silvério de Castro Abranches Melo Borges. Removed from the company he founded, Emilio Estácio established himself with a pharmacy at Rua de Santa Marta, named Estácio & Filhos.

In 1924, Companhia Portuguesa de Higiene opened a branch of the Estácio Pharmacy in Oporto with the same name, and one of its partners, João Augusto dos Santos, became its technical director. In 1926, the Estácio Pharmacy from Oporto stops being owned by CPH. The first registration of the Estácio Pharmacy in the Grémio Nacional das Farmácias (National Guild of Pharmacy) dates from 1943.

In 1935, the Laboratórios Estácio do Porto (Estácio Laboratories of Oporto), owned by the Estácio Pharmacy, were already producing “galenic and injectable products” under the technical direction of Manoel Rodrigues Ferro, assistant professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Oporto.

The pharmacy cabinets have representations of the busts of illustrious pharmacists and chemists who hold prominent positions in Oporto institutions at the beginning of the 20th century, namely Agostinho da Silva Vieira, António Joaquim Ferreira da Silva, Moraes Caldas, Flores Loureiro, Manoel Nepomuceno and Roberto Frias.

In the late 1940s, the talking scale of the Estácio Pharmacy was subject of advertisements and become a hallmark of the downtown of Oporto at that time, with queues of people at the door of the pharmacy just to see it. The client climbed up the scale and his weight was transmitted to him by an employee “hidden” on the lower floor. In the 1970s, queues were so big that it was necessary to post an employee exclusively for this service.

In 1975, an enormous fire at Rua Sá da Bandeira spread to Estácio Pharmacy and destroyed much of its interior, including the famous scale.