The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7272 p596
25 October 2003

Society summary

Museum helps show what industrial revolution did for medicine

Caricatures from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's museum collection are to form part of the BBC2 documentary series, What The Industrial Revolution Did For Us. The caricatures will feature in “Modern medicine”, the fourth programme in the current series, which will be shown on Tuesday 28 October at 8pm.

The keeper of the Society’s museum collections, Briony Hudson, said: “The Society’s museum supplied a number of caricatures from its collection of medical images to illustrate some of the points made in the programme. In covering an era before photography, the cartoon images give both an insight into the visual appearance of the age but also take a satirical look at some of the medical practices in the 18th and early 19th centuries.”

The illustration is of “Universal Pills No 4”, a caricature satirising Morison’s Vegetable Pills.

The caption reads: “Here’s a precious go them hinfernal vegatable pills have taken root in my nose. It was reddish before but now it’s carotty!”

The caricature was published by W. Spooner in the 1830s.