BusterStronghart@Gmail.com




Dear Basil:

What verb did you and your father use when you mixed powders or liquids using a mortar and pestle? For instance, did you "mash" the ingredients together? I have recently read a book about old tyme pharmacy and I know the word that the author uses. I wonder if you and your father used the same word. It was an ordinary, common word, but I have never seen it used in this context. The word perfectly describes the action performed. Especially if done correctly. Though it would not be considered an elegant word, it is not off color in any way. Let me know your thoughts whether you have a word in mind or not

Dear Mike: Mike I can't remember any one particular word we used. We would mix powders for capsules. We would crush tablets. We also mixed powders for powders. Powders was the word we used for those little glassine packets we folded with powder inside. We would mash cocoa butter to soften and use to make suppositories. But I cannot remember if we a particular word that covered all of it. Maybe if you told me I would remember. In those days we used the mortar and pestle as an every day thing and never thought much about it. I remember using the spatula with it to scrape the stuff off the sides of the mortar to the bottom to thoroughly mix everything. Without the spatula the mortar and pestle would be useless.

Dear Basil: Yes, your description is right, and yes the spatula was very important. In fact, there were different sized spatulas (spatulae ?) for different purposes. Remember the pointed one used for taking the slightest amount of power from a jar? Say a doctor wanted a 1/4 gr. of opium mixed with 4 oz of sugar of milk, to make 20 powders: the pharmacist (or his qualified assistant) would take a tip of the powder on the almost pointed spatula to the special balance, the one that was enclosed in glass, to weigh the 1/4 gr. Don't tell me there was no such thing as a "qualified assistant." I know that, Sam. Then to thouroughly, completely mix the powders the diligent pharmacist would "rub" the powders together in the mortar for as much as a 1/4 hour. Pharmacists had good forearm, wrist, and finger strength. Danny, who was lamed, after falling off the rolling ladder in the store before he became a licensed pharmacist, earning forty dollars a week, for a sixty hour week, loved to tighten jar lids so that Moe or Izzy couldn't open them. On Sundays Dominic was alone, the only pharmacist on duty, and he would leave angry notes to Danny, often in Italian,--but who could say something to Danny? Would he laugh when the other guys couldn't get a jar opened. But the word used by the author was "rub" the mixture. I am not sure that I have heard that word before but it so fits the action, it is so "elegant" for the action, that I just had to talk to you about it. Mike

Dear Mike, we never used the word "rub" but I would consider it more sensuous than elegant, but not off color either and yes putting myself back in time the word works for me.. I knew you would understand the importance of the spatula. We had a draw full of all different kinds.
Bas