The invention discloses a device and a method for automatically detecting defects of a glass medicine bottle. The detection device comprises a rack provided with a table board, and a medicine bottle feeding mechanism, a detection station, a discharging mechanism, a broken bottle removal mechanism, a bottle-lifting rotating mechanism and a visual inspection mechanism, which are arranged on the rack, wherein medicine bottles are conveyed to the detection station through the feeding mechanism; then the medicine bottles are lifted and rotated for a circle under drive of the bottle-lifting rotating mechanism, so that repeated photographing is finished; photos are directly transmitted to the visual inspection mechanism for judging the defects; if the visual inspection judges that the bottles are defective products, the bottles are removed through the broken bottle removal mechanism, and the medicine bottles which pass the detection enter the discharging mechanism. By employing automatic feeding, detecting and discharging, compared with manual detection, the detection device has the advantages that non-contact non-stop detection can be realized through visual inspection, so that the detection quality is improved, the detection speed is increased, the economic benefits of customers are improved from three aspects such as the product quality, the production rate and the manual cost, and the enterprise cost is reduced.