Yes, we know that, to the purists, both the 20th century and the second millennium run until the end of the year 2000. And, yes, we know that The Pharmaceutical Journal noted the end of the 19th century in its January 5, 1901, issue. But the top half of the Millennium Wheel is visible from our editorial offices, and (at the time of writing) the nearby Thames was to become a river of fire at midnight on December 31, while the skies around Lambeth were to be filled with the biggest fireworks display ever, and the world, for the most part, was en fête. It would have taken rather more idiosyncrasy than we can muster to swim against this particular tide. So, here is our issue to mark the start of the new millennium.
And, as is customary on such occasions we (or rather our contributors) look back as well as forwards. Sydney Holloway, in a typically masterly account of the formation and development of the Pharmaceutical Society, captures the early tension between the commercialism of the chemists and druggists and the plans of the founders of the Society, led by Jacob Bell, to develop pharmacy as a profession firmly grounded in a proper system of pharmaceutical education. Pharmaceutical education was, of course, developed but the tensions remained. The leading article in the January 5, 1901, issue of The Journal referred to the conflicting tendencies of commercialism and professionalism.
And the tensions continue to this day. They arise from the arena in which pharmacy is, for the most part, practised, namely, the shop. But Holloway makes it clear that it was meeting the needs of the consumer through "the shop" that was the key to the prosperity of the chemists and druggists who founded the Society, and it was abandoning the shop that led to the decline of the apothecaries. There are lessons in this. Nevertheless, as Holloway notes, the Society has achieved the transformation of the business of chemist and druggist into the profession of pharmacy. Not only that, it has done so without any financial assistance from the state. This is a commendable record and one of which the Society can be proud. It is fashionable to denigrate and take for granted institutions with which one is familiar. It is as well that we have social historians of Holloway's stature to show us what we have got and remind us of its value.
By way of a postscript, we point out, with all due modesty, the importance that Holloway ascribes to The Pharmaceutical Journal in the Society's early days. It provided aspiring pharmacists with the intellectual framework to enable them to interpret and make sense of their roles in society. From it, members derived their sense of identity. But its message was for external use as well as internal. Since Bell's time, The Journal has been a continuous thread running through the profession. It still performs the central role that Bell conceived for it and it will continue to do so in the new millennium, whenever it starts.