A Scandalously Short Introduction to the History of Pharmacy

Chapter 4 - Formation Of A Pharmaceutical Society In Great Britain

In 1841, one of the leading London chemists, Jacob Bell, organised a meeting of some of his colleagues which lead to them forming the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. The new Society was involved in lobbying for legislation to control the registration of chemists and also the control of the sale of poisons.

The first Pharmacy Act of 1852 amongst other things, made provision for a register of chemists and druggists to be set up and maintained. It also confirmed the Pharmaceutical Society's charter as well as the bye laws governing its proceedings.

Another Act in 1868 recognised those who were already practising as chemists and allowed them to be registered, provided they could show that they were competent to continue practising. It also required that future applicants for a licence to dispense and to sell scheduled poisons must pass a qualifying examination, and that titles such as "Pharmaceutical Chemist", "Chemist & Druggist" were restricted to registered persons. The law now gave the power of examination to the Society and also set up a schedule of poisons to be administered by the Society.

The importance of this Act was that it defined clearly that Pharmacy was to be controlled by pharmacists through their Society, and denied the Medical council the power they had desired to examine and register all those in any way concerned with the practice of medicine or pharmacy.

The nineteenth century saw Britain the dominant world power and Queen Victoria reigned for such a large part of the century that the word 'Victorian" is used to describe the spirit of the time. Manifest growth in wealth and the improved standards of education and day-to-day living for most people engendered self-satisfaction and optimism based on the power of technology to achieve "progress".

Nineteenth century technology which developed steam power for railways and shipping, the telephone and phonograph, photography and electric lighting relied heavily on the theories in the physical sciences developed during the Age of Enlightenment- but the new science of biology threatened the tenets of established religion.

These new ideas had their main impact on medicine in the twentieth century, but the many technological improvements ranging from the stethoscope to X-rays and especially the identification of many of the bacteria responsible for infectious diseases put clinical observation and treatment on a much firmer empirical basis. Were we to be transported in some time machine into nineteenth century, Europe we would know pretty well how to manage day to day life, and we would even be able to read and understand the pharmacopoeias in general use. If we were practicing Pharmacy in England we would require formal qualifications and the drugs we dispensed would have to conform to the standards laid down in the British pharmacopoeia. Despite this the killer diseases of pneumonia, tuberculosis and even appendicitis, were still rampant and 3 out of every 10 children died before the age of five.