Glaxo Wellcome Plc has presented an historical archive related to the Scottish company Macfarlan Smith to Edinburgh's city council.
The records relate the role played by the company, and other Edinburgh-based companies, in developing anaesthetics and providing more than 7.5 tons of bandages to Allied troops during the Great War. The archive records that Duncan and Flockhart's factory at Edinburgh's Canongate was producing medicines equivalent to 750,0000 doses every week by 1895.
Also included are medals won at exhibitions in London and Paris, tubes of sterile catgut sutures, a poison bottle in its leather case, photographs of pharmaceutical workers and recipe books dating from the 1850s which include formulae for syrups, cordials and coffee essence. There is also a letter from Lord Lister giving advice on cyanide levels in gauze bandages.
Macfarlan Smith was an amalgamation of several Edinburgh businesses, including J.F. Macfarlan, T. & H. Smith, Duncan and Flockhart, and W. & R. Hatrick. Together, they comprised a conglomerate called Edinburgh Pharmaceutical Industries, which was taken over by Glaxo in the mid-1960s.
Macfarlan Smith is now independent, having been subject to a management buy-out from Glaxo in 1990.

Sir Richard (centre) presents a collection of mounted medals to (left to right) Stefanie Davidson (archivist), Marion Morton (deputy Lord Provost), Pam McNicol (archivist) and Richard Hunter (city archivist)