Society’s library staff help BBC to solve a “medical mystery”
Librarian Roddy Morrison (second from right) faces the cameras with
Martin
Warren, professor of biochemistry at Queen Mary, University of London |
BBC cameras visited the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s library on 19 April to film for a programme investigating the reasons for unusually high levels of arsenic found in a strand of King George III’s
hair.
A BBC research team believes that the king may have regularly taken or
been administered remedies containing antimony, including the famous
18th century patent medicine James’s Fever Powder.
The Society’s library provided the BBC with information that arsenic
might exist naturally in the antimony and that chemical changes during
the manufacture of the powder may increase the arsenic levels further.
Roddy Morrison, the Society’s librarian, said: “By helping
the BBC with its filming we are able to raise awareness of the Society
and its library collections. Much of the research was carried out by
library and museum staff and it is great to have on-screen recognition
of this work.”
The programme is part of a series called Medical Mysteries, due to be
screened on BBC 1 during the summer.
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal