The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7367 p351
17 September 2005

Society summary

Promotion of museum continues

Promotion of the museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society continues this month with staff taking objects out to local events and lending items for special exhibitions elsewhere.

On 3 September the museum took part in the second summer festival held by St Mary’s NHS Trust in Paddington, London. Visitors to the event were able to investigate historical pharmacy equipment, including a 19th century poison bottle, inhaler and cork press. They were able to try their hand at pill-rolling, using a pestle and mortar, and wrapping powders.

The museum has also made two loans of items from its collections. A 19th century microscope from the collections is now on long-term loan to the museum of the British Dental Association in its newly redisplayed entrance.

The museum has also lent a large number of items to Islington Museum for a major exhibition about health and medicine in the borough, “From leeches to the NHS: medicine and health in Islington 1850 to 1960”. Objects from the Society’s museum on show include shop rounds, proprietary medicines, a carboy, a counter balance, and various items that would have been seen in a 19th century sickroom including an inhaler and a bedpan. Islington Museum has also borrowed the museum’s “flying box” display cases to enhance its exhibition, which opens at the end of September and runs till Christmas.

Another museum activity has been to work with a local school through the Young Cultural Creators programme. This has culminated in a display in a Lambeth library of the children’s “potions” — recipes for medicines to cure real and imaginary diseases.

The museum also continues to make its collections available to film-makers. Footage of Tuinal capsules from the museum will be included in a forthcoming BBC Arena documentary about the artist Francis Bacon, who died from an overdose of the sedative.

The museum’s policy of loaning items to other museums and exhibitions has evolved as a way of developing the potential of the collections as a resource for learning despite the limitations on display space, and access, at the Society’s headquarters. Displays of items from the collections at headquarters are currently more restricted than usual because of refurbishment of the reception area, where the museum’s large “greenhouse” display case has been dismantled. It will eventually be replaced by modern display cases that meet current museum standards.

Briony Hudson, keeper of the Society’s museum collections, said: “The St Mary’s NHS Trust event was a good opportunity to raise awareness of the Society’s museum, its collections and services with hospital patients and staff, and also people from the local community.

“We’re always pleased to take the opportunity to reach new audiences and introduce new people to the Society’s museum and its collections by loaning objects from the collections to other organisations. As access to our displays at the Society’s London headquarters is limited, making parts of the Society’s museum collections available at other sites is an important means of outreach.”

In a further move the museum has forged links with other specialist museums under a national scheme funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. This brings together diverse museums based on similar collection areas in groups called subject specialist networks. The Society’s museum has become involved in three of these networks: medicine and health; cartoons and caricatures; and ceramics. Future activities are likely to include the sharing of collections information, collaborative training and research, and the possibility of exhibition and education projects.