PANO – Built in 2003 on an area of nearly 600sq.m in Hoang Du Khuong street in district 10, Ho Chi Minh City, and put into operation in 2007, the first Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine (FITO) is home to 3,000 items relating to traditional Vietnamese medicine dating back to the Stone Age.

On display are items used to prepare traditional medicine, such as knives, grinders, mortars and pestles, pots and jars dating back 2,500 years ago. Some of the knives were brought from the hometowns of great physicians, known as the founders of Vietnam’s traditional medicine such as Tue Tinh (14th century) and Hai Thuong Lang Ong Le Huu Trac (18th century) 

The exhibits are carefully preserved in 18 exhibition rooms in the six-storey wooden building with the typical features of traditional architecture. They include a collection of medicine cookers and cups collected from different localities across the country, such as Hanoi’s Ha Dong district, Quang Nam province’s Hoi An city, and Binh Duong province’s Lai Thieu, precision scales, mortars, wooden blanks, and wooden seals.

Another treasure of the museum is a collection of Han-Nom books with more than 100,000 pages on traditional Vietnamese medicine, including Hai Thuong Lan Ong’s valuable ones which are considered to be the encyclopedia of traditional Vietnamese medicine.

Coming to the museum, visitors also have a chance to see carved wooden pictures of 100 famous physicians and those who contributed to the Vietnam’s traditional medicine from the 12th to the 20th centuries. The most special one is the nacre picture detailing the role of traditional medicine in daily life of the Vietnamese people, with such famous locations as Thuoc Bac street, Ben Thanh market, Hue, and Sword Lake.

Here are some items displayed at the museum:

An exhibition room in the museum
A collection of ceramic jars to preserve medicine
A medicine cooker dating back to the 16th century
A collection of traditional medicine
A collection of precision scales

Translated by Tran Hoai