Participants in the BSHP annual conference, which took place this year from March 31 to April 4, heard presentations on William Davison (pharmacist and printer), a wartime pharmaceutical childhood, the treatment of poisoning, women in pharmacy, and the life and work of an early Chinese pharmacist.
The life and work of William Davison was described by Professor Peter Isaac (of Alnwick, Northumberland). Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1780, William Davison had been apprenticed in pharmacy in 1795 and had set up in business in Alnwick in 1802.
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The bill-head of William Davison, pharmacist and printer of Alnwick (PROFESSOR P. C. G. ISAAC) |
In a lively and amusing talk, Mr Christopher Wragg (retired community pharmacist, of Baslow, Derbyshire) described his own upbringing, living over his father's pharmacy in Sheffield during the war years. Not wishing to be apprenticed to a butcher, the speaker's father had told his parents, untruthfully, that the butcher's vacancy had been filled, and instead was apprenticed to a local pharmacist. This had been followed by attendance at Leeds college of pharmacy.
After qualifying in pharmacy and optics and taking a couple of management jobs in Derbyshire he had established his own business in Sheffield. Trade was poor at first and in December, 1940, Sheffield had been badly bombed, but the pharmacy was well stocked and supplied many victims of bomb damage with essential supplies.
Supplies of films had been difficult to obtain and the speaker's father had reserved these for the wives of men serving overseas in order that they might send family photographs to their husbands. Cosmetics were produced in the dispensary. The National War Formulary 1941 had come into use, with embargos on materials like quinine, alcohol and glycerin. Trade had improved markedly during the war years and, following the opening of new branches, Mr Wragg recalled employment on Sunday mornings taking supplies to the branch shops by tram, there being no petrol for the purpose. Having been fully immersed in pharmacy throughout his childhood, Mr Wragg had no hesitation in following in his father's footsteps when his own time had come to choose a career.
Under this title, Dr Ellen Jordan (senior lecturer, University of Newcastle, Australia) reviewed the entry of women into the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 19th century England. In 1872, she said, the University of Edinburgh had closed its lectures to women, just as the Pharmaceutical Society was opening its examinations to them. By 1879 women were entitled to full membership of the Society, which was a leader in this respect in Britain.
The 1868 Pharmacy and Poisons Act permitted the registration as chemists and druggists, without examination, of those already in business at the time of the passing of the Act. Under this provision, 215 women had been registered and, in the following year, two more women had passed the examination and were registered, but refused membership of the Society.
A member of the Society, Robert Hampson, had led a crusade over women's rights and had been elected to the Society's Council in 1872, then arranging for the admission of women to lectures. In 1873, the Society's annual general meeting had voted to refuse membership to women. The following year, a request by Professor Attfield to admit women students to membership had been rejected by Council. Isabella Clarke, who had registered as a chemist and druggist, had established her own pharmacy in Spring Street, Paddington but was refused membership of the Society. In 1875, she passed the major examination and had been registered as a pharmaceutical chemist. In 1879, two more women, Rose Minshull and Louisa Stammwitz, sponsored by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, had passed the major examination and were also registered as pharmaceutical chemists.
Following much discussion and correspondence, the Council had finally agreed, in that year, to the admission of Isabella Clarke and Rose Minshull to membership. From that time on, concluded Dr Jordan, women had had the same rights and privileges of membership as men, and Isabella Clarke, in 1906, became the first president of the Association of Women Pharmacists.
Dr Melvin Earles (past president of the BSHP) noted that Chinese language and culture had great continuity and that the great pharmacopoeia of Li Shih-Chen, published in 1596 during the Ming Dynasty, was still in print.
Chinese pharmacopoeias were called Pen Ts'ao, said Dr Earles, and the greatest talent of a physician was regarded as the prevention of ill health. The first printed Pen Ts'ao had been published in 1061 and by the 12th century had achieved high standards.
Li Shih-Chen had been born in 1518 of a family of physicians. Hereditary occupations had been favoured during the Ming period and, having studied at the academy of medicine in Beijing, Li Shih-Chen had practised pharmacy and medicine and written 12 books. He was regarded as the greatest naturalist in Chinese history. Many new drugs had come to China by the silk route and by seagoing junks. Li Shih-Chen had travelled China collecting herbs and minerals and studied over 800 books during the 40 years it took him to write his greatest work, the Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu. This was finally sent to the printers in 1593 but had only been published in 1596 after the author's death. The book was not official, noted Dr Earles, but was regarded as a standard work of Chinese materia medica, the 1640 and 1885 editions being of importance. The latter edition included 11,096 prescriptions and a copy was held in the library of the University of Wisconsin.
This year, the conference programme included a visit to the Erasmus Darwin Centre in Lichfield, which has been opened last year in the former home of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The grandfather of Charles Darwin (1808-82), Erasmus, a physician, was active in many fields of science. A polymath, he was credited by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as having "a greater range of knowledge than any other man in Europe". His best known work of prose was Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life (1794-96), which influenced his grandson and foreshadowed The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Erasmus Darwin was a member of the Birmingham Lunar Society, which existed from 1766 to 1809 and was so named because the arrangement of meetings, so as to coincide with the full moon, aided members on their carriage journeys home. There, he met such luminaries as Josiah Wedgwood, to whom he acted as technical adviser as well as physician, engineers Matthew Boulton (to whom he suggested an early form of steam-propelled car) and James Watt, and also William Withering, who first described the medicinal use of digitalis. Before the conference visit, local speaker Canon Tony Barnard (a member of the Erasmus Darwin Trust) described the life of Darwin and the development of the Erasmus Darwin Centre.(photo: Erasmus Darwin Trust)