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14ymedio: the historic herbal pharmacy in Sancti Spíritus now sells shampoo instead of remedies
The newspaper found this week that the herbal medicine shop on Máximo Gómez street in Sancti Spíritus no longer stocks passionflower or linden, but shampoo, hair dye, peroxide and detergent, while a nearby parish hands out free medicines every Saturday.
The ceramic jars still sit behind the wooden display cabinets, but the counters of the historic herbal pharmacy in Sancti Spíritus are now lined with small plastic bottles of shampoo, hair dye, peroxide and detergent, as 14ymedio found. The shop, at Máximo Gómez street No. 38 Sur, opposite the main parish church, occupies an eighteenth-century building with stone floors, dark wooden cabinets and porcelain containers.
"This pharmacy has always been here, as long as I can remember, with natural products the public wanted," a neighbour who used to buy passionflower and linden for her mother tells the newspaper, in remarks translated by Yamacoa. After finding the shop closed several times, she got in this week and found none of the remedies. "Now they sell what look like homemade products, like shampoo, dyes, peroxide, detergents and mosquito lotion," she explains. "I have nothing against them selling those things, but losing access to natural medicines I really do not like," she adds.
Photographs taken by the newspaper itself show rows of blue, yellow and white containers on the old furniture, the ceramic jars inscribed with the names of plants and preparations behind glass cabinets, and some shelves almost bare.
The building was restored in 1986 and fitted out as a herbal pharmacy, with furniture modelled on the town's old apothecaries, and the stated aims of that work included reviving traditional medicines, recalls a local heritage guide cited by the outlet.
The case is not unique. In September 2026, the Peralta pharmacy in Holguín had turned into a variety store with privately supplied goods sold on consignment and barely a few bottles of eye drops; in July 2025 a pharmacy in Matanzas had empty shelves; and in September 2024 pharmaceutical authorities in Camagüey acknowledged difficulties obtaining garlic, onion, oregano, aloe, sugar and alcohol, as well as imported raw materials for making syrups, extracts and creams.
A few steps from the shop, the Catholic Church hands out medicines free to patients who cannot find them in state outlets: every Saturday, chronically ill people and their relatives come to the parish with their prescriptions looking for treatments for hypertension, diabetes and other conditions, according to the newspaper.
Sources: 14ymedio
Data updated: 2026-11-01T16:15:00.000Z