Blists Hill Victorian Town in Shropshire revives the sights, sounds and smells
of the 19th century.
At its heart stands the pharmacy, a treasure house of potions
and remedies from a century and a half ago.
Now, in a unique experiment, historian Ruth Goodman,
Professor of Pharmacy Nick Barber
and PhD student Tom Quick have opened the doors to the Victorian pharmacy,
recreating a high street institution we take for granted,
but which was once a novel idea.
They're bringing the pharmacy to life, sourcing ingredients,
mixing potions and dispensing cures. But in an age when skin creams contained arsenic
and cold medicines were based on opium, the team need to be highly selective.
They're only trying out safe versions of traditional remedies on carefully selected customers.
The start was like the Wild West. People didn't know what was good and bad.
Try and get a bit of speed up. There we go, yeah..
The pharmacy was something that affected everybody's lives in one way or another.
They're discovering an age of social change, that brought healthcare within the reach of ordinary people
for the very first time, heralding a consumer revolution that reached far beyond medicine
to create the model for the modern high street chemist as we know it today.
The team are about to face up to their biggest challenge yet -
adapting to new laws which regulated their trade for the very first time.
Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven...
But it's also an age when pharmacists put themselves at the cutting edge of innovation.
In the first half of Queen Victoria's reign,
no professional qualifications were required to run a pharmacy.
Actually, it was the most dangerous shop in a town or village, absolutely by far,
because of the range of materials which were in there.
Realising the dangers, a few select pharmacists set up the Pharmaceutical Society
as a pressure group calling for regulation of the trade.
Look at - this rat poison, in a chemists!
"Contains the most powerful arsenic poison!"
I hate to think what's on this fly paper.
Oh, probably arsenic.
The most immediate impact the Society had was in raising awareness amongst pharmacists themselves.
They needed to be more responsible and safety conscious about the hazards on their shelves.
We have poison in the window.
We'd better take that out.
Oh, look at this - double cyanide gauze.
There's so many things that are dodgy.
And all these powders in all the drawers as well.
There's so many different things that might explode at any moment.
What I find most disturbing though is all these things aimed at babies and children, you know?
All these poisons and opiates - particularly the opiates.
Awful. By the end of the period we're looking at we've got heroin coming along.
That was supposed to be an improvement on morphine because
it's just a chemical manipulation of morphine to make heroin. That's sort of our stock in trade.
You come to a pharmacist because they've got the weird, wonderful, strange, odd, the hard to get...
Yeah, and they're powerful. Everything. Completely unregulated.
Anyone could sell these things, really.
I think some legislation is long overdue in this area. Yeah.
But there's something to be gained from free access to such a vast range of chemicals.
Without the health and safety restrictions of today, pharmacists had free rein to innovate.
It must've been a marvellous thing being a Victorian chemist and druggist in those days.
They were just able to play around.
The lack of controls and regulations also led to the inventiveness and freedom to experiment
and come up with new ways of improving the life of people.
Their experiments enabled pharmacists to invent products
like soap powder, table salt and matches.
Tom has drafted in Phil Dunford, a member of the UK Pyrotechnic Society,
to show him how to make his own matches for the pharmacy.
I don't suppose you could recommend a few techniques that we could use?
Well, the matches used earlier, maybe from 1800,
were called Promethean matches.
The way they work is by mixing potassium chlorate and sugar.
The method of lighting the match was to dip it into sulphuric acid.
So, if you dip it quickly in, just so that you cover the tip. That's it.
And leave it out there, yeah?
That's it. And you should see it will start to fizz.
Oh, yeah. Look! Here we go!
Oh, wow!
So rather more messy and harder to light than a modern match.
Other advances in matchmaking had disastrous side effects.
The precursor of today's red phosphorous matches were made of white phosphorous,
which poisoned match workers and caused a disease known as phossy jaw.
The phosphorous was a waxy substance, which has to be melted and it gave off a vapour,
which at first gave you headaches and sallow skin,
and then gave you toothache and then you lost your teeth.
And then your jaw and your bones started to go spongy and, um,
for a long time people worked under these conditions until they finally banded together
and refused to do it any more and went on strike, in the famous match-girls' strike.
Oh, I see. So at the same time as these people are agitating
for better working conditions in the factories, there's the same thing going on in the pharmacy.
You know, you've got this movement to regulate poisons and explosives
and so on and make things safe.
Tom's made about 20 matches, enough for a box full.
The downside to carrying these matches around
was that in order to light them, you needed sulphuric acid.
As Phil demonstrates, an accidental spillage of acid would have had nasty results.
That's the mixture that's in these promethean match heads. Right.
This is some sulphuric acid,
and this is what happens when they get together. Oh, wow!
So you really don't want that happening in your pocket, do you? No, not at all.
Tom will need to explore safer, more reliable alternatives to these early matches.
As the century progressed, pharmacists kept expanding their product range beyond medicines.
With Britain's population more than doubling during Victoria's reign,
products for babies and toddlers offered great potential to become big sellers.
They appealed to parents' concerns for their children's health.
Ruth is setting up a free weighing service for babies,
a common ploy used to entice mothers into the pharmacy.
We're looking to extend our range.
All of life, from cradle to grave.
Jenny Flegg, a local mum and prominent member
of the National Childbirth Trust, has arrived to test out the scales.
Hello, Billy. And how old is he now?
He's...he'll be 12 weeks tomorrow.
You're a nice big lad, aren't you?
Looking all bright and cheery.
We'll put you on. Here we go.
One, two, three...whee!
With poorer nutrition, Victorian babies tended to weigh less than a modern healthy baby like Billy.
14 pounds, two ounces. Oh.
Once a baby was weighed, the pharmacist had the opportunity to promote their products.
So it's a sort of community service, but with a bit of an ulterior motive.
We all know how big you are. You're nice and healthy, aren't you?
Yeah. Nice, big, healthy baby.
Is he bottle fed? No.
I'm feeding him myself.
Which is really nice. Even for someone who is feeding themselves,
a pharmacist would offer a whole range of feeding products.
So, a breast pump. Have you ever...? Yes, yes.
I've got the most...
Oh, my word! ..amazing...
Isn't it so Victorian?!
I mean, it is basically just a, you know, a cup on a pump, isn't it?
Mind you, they weren't all quite as nice as this. There's also a range of nipple shields. Oh, my word!
If you're feeding, you know? Yes.
Some of them are all right, you see.
Like that one. And there was a little rubber teat that went on it
and you could feed directly. That's fine. But some of them were made of lead.
Right... It's such a soft material, they felt that it was
easier for the baby to get in the mouth and you'd get a better seal.
But You were poisoning the child. People just weren't anywhere near
as aware of the dangers of lead poisoning, you know?
And you weren't safe if you had bottles, you know?
Despite a pharmacist's best intentions,
many of the baby products they sold caused more harm than good.
What a brave baby you are.
This stuff, Mrs Wilmslow's Soothing Syrup. Oh, yes.
This is utterly horrifying.
"For a child under one-month-old." They've got opium in them!
You've got four or five children, you're on the edge of starvation,
if you don't work, your children die. The only thing you could do was dope up your babies
so that you could carry on working so that you could feed your other children.
Babies who are fed opiates, they lose their appetite.
They have no hunger, so they won't suck.
Right. So they waste away. They do. They basically die of starvation.
When Victoria came to the thrown, at the very beginning of her reign,
the infant mortality rate, so that's babies under five... Yes. ..25%
Oh. Right. Just horrendous, isn't that? A quarter of babies.
That doesn't bear thinking about. It doesn't, does it? Imagine.
I've got three, so I may well have lost one of them.
Yeah. Exactly.
Don't fancy buying any of these products, do you?
I don't think I'll bother.
Bit too young for alcohol. All right. I shall get you home.
Narcotics were freely available across the counter.
Thank you very much.
Before the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920, anybody could buy them
from a pharmacy without even needing a prescription.
Medical practitioners often advised opium addicts to take cannabis or cocaine to cure their addiction.
The dangers of the explosive Promethean matches had been clear for all to see.
One pharmacist, John Walker, used his knowledge of science
to create a safer, more marketable alternative - the friction match.
OK. Do you want me to have a go? So if you just scrape the tip along.
So straight like that, yeah?
Just like a normal match? Yep.
Walker was making percussion caps for guns
when he discovered that antimony sulphide and potassium chlorate
caught fire when they were rubbed together.
We need to add
a couple of drops of water.
This will make up a blacky brown sort of mixture
which is a bit more the colour we're familiar with matches.
It's quite surprising to me that pharmacists were making matches
and, not only that, but coming up with new processes of making them.
Well I suppose the pharmacists had the materials on hand
and they were educated men.
And very many of them, particularly this John Walker,
who invented this friction match, was very much a polymath.
The locals called him Stockton's Encyclopaedia.
You can really imagine someone sort of working in their back workshop,
trying to come up with the latest or a new technique
that's going to really propel their business.
These are definitely safer than the first ones we made, aren't they?
Absolutely. But I mean, they're not safety matches?
No. The definition of safety matches is where there are two separate parts,
each of which on their own can't do any harm at all.
So in a modern safety match that you strike on a box,
the head, in itself, can't actually catch fire on its own.
When you scrap it down, what in fact you're doing is the side of the box is covered with red phosphorus.
So when you scrape, you take a little tiny bit of the red phosphorus
off of the match and create a more dangerous mixture on the end of the match, but only a tiny amount.
But the match itself can never catch fire unless it's touching the red phosphorus,
and that's what makes it truly a safety match as opposed to just a friction match.
So, if you're ready, then?
Yes, that looks about right. Just...
..dip the tips in. Make sure it's only the very tip,
otherwise obviously it can burn further down...
which could be dangerous. That looks good.
And that looks rather more like you would think a modern match looks, with the dark colour.
John Walker, already comfortably well off, passed up the option of making himself a fortune.
Instead of patenting his match, he made it freely available for anyone to make.
Walker produced the matches for just three years and the credit
for his invention was attributed only after his death in 1859.
Experimentation with new synthesised chemicals often provided problems as well as solutions.
New toxic products were in high demand thanks to their powerful cleaning properties.
Many of the stain removal products, extremely dangerous things.
Things like oxalic acid, borasic acid, sulphuric acid
were all recommended in household manuals
as methods of dealing with dirt.
Metals like antimony and lead were used in manufacturing,
while mercury was used in the making of felt hats, turning people "mad as a hatter."
Arsenic, a cheap by-product from the mining industry, was the most common poison.
Crop sprays, candles, skin creams and rat poisons all contained arsenic,
and it provided the most effective way to colour a product green.
Green wallpaper - such a fashionable colour for wallpaper -
Paris Green, made of arsenic. The dyes in peoples' dresses could be poisonous,
so you could be absorbing arsenic through your skin
as you were wearing your best dress, in its lovely fashionable greenness.
Deaths from accidental arsenic poisoning were so common that an Arsenic Act was introduced in 1851,
allowing only a select few to sell the poison.
Among them were pharmacists,
but there was still no law requiring them to be qualified.
Nick is exploring the few measures that were in place in the pharmacy to prevent accidental poisonings.
He's joined by Ian Burney, senior lecturer in the history of medicine at Manchester University.
You can see a couple out here.
These are ribbed bottles, aren't they?
Why is the bottle ridged?
As you see, there are so many bottles here.
One of the ways in which a pharmacist, in reaching for a bottle,
might be able to know, just by touch, whether it's poison or not is to make them distinctly ribbed.
The place to go for an antidote was the pharmacy.
Poisonings must have been an issue in those cases? Absolutely.
There are two categories of poisoning.
One is accidental poisoning, of which there were many more.
But the things that captured headlines, the newspaper reading public,
were cases of criminal poisoning.
Over the course of the 19th century there were roughly 500 poisoning cases that were tried.
Arsenic was used in 45% of criminal poisonings in the 19th century.
Often purchased from the pharmacy as fly papers or rat poison.
Among the more disturbing cases were those of infanticide
by parents reaping the benefits of insurance policies known as "burial clubs".
There are a number of cases, especially in the 1840s,
in which a working class mother
is charged with having signed her infants up,
not to just one burial club, but two, three, four.
This is again, like poisons, unregulated, or under regulated.
Then delivering the child
on to death, with arsenic in particular, right?
So killing them. And then killing them.
Then claiming the money, right?
And, um, you can make a tidy sum on this.
New laws like the Arsenic Act had only a limited effect in reducing the number of poisoning cases.
The Pharmaceutical Society continued to pressure the government for stronger legislation.
They achieved success in 1868 with the Pharmacy Act,
when the government handed them control of the profession and made qualifications compulsory.
The Pharmacy Act was symptomatic of what was happening in late Victorian times.
They were obsessed with measurements, standardisation and regulations.
So we have lots of other acts as well.
We have the Gauge Act in 1845, which set the standard gauge for railways.
How far apart the rails are.
And then the Football Association was created in 1863
to set the rules for the game, because there was chaos on the pitch sometimes.
People from one town would play another town and they would be working to different sets of rules.
And the pharmacists and others must have felt really beset by this.
In many ways their freedoms were being taken away.
And in some ways things don't change that much. I'm one of the officers
of the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society who regulates pharmacists today
and we're still constantly in this debate.
What's the best way to regulate? What's the limits you put on it
so that you ensure safety, so that you improve quality?
But also that you don't stifle freedom and stifle innovation.
When the regulations were introduced,
unqualified pharmacists were made to take exams in order to keep trading.
Hello, Briony. Hi. Hiya! Hello.
The team are meeting Briony Hudson, curator of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum,
to find out more about the exams.
So how would they actually have gone about examining people?
What would they have done in the exam?
A written paper on chemistry, and physics.
Practical stuff on dispensing.
OK. You'd have to answer quite academic questions about the make up of plants
and the technical terms, but you'd also have to identify substances.
A whole range of techniques that they're using to examine people.
And also, you have to do a Latin paper.
So I wonder whether you'd like to have a bit of a go?
Just to do an element of the exam just to see...
I hope you don't expect too much of us.
I don't think we're going to... I think we should.
What I'd like to do is use the Materia Medica chest, which the pharmacy students
would've learnt from, and get you to try and identify some of these unlabelled specimens.
And just to test your practical skills, I'd like you to go away and make some suppositories...
..cos then we can judge how good your practical skills are. Uh-oh!
Administered through the rectum, suppositories were popular with Victorians
and favoured by examiners.
A well made suppository was easy to distinguish from one that was badly made.
Of the three of them, Ruth feels she has the most to prove.
I'd always assumed that this sort of, you know, the exams and the
registering, only really applied to men. Only men were allowed to do it.
And the Act just forgot to mention that women weren't allowed to do it.
So, by default, they could.
Yes, absolutely! And a lot of these women were coming out top, and winning prizes.
The arrival of an official examination heralded a new era in the Victorian pharmacy.
Gone was the old name, "chemist and druggist", with its druggist origins in herbalism.
From now on, they would be referred to as "pharmaceutical chemists,"
embracing the new science of chemistry.
But to pass the exam, they needed a thorough knowledge of both disciplines.
As Ruth is the only one with no pharmaceutical qualifications,
she'll use the help of both herbalist Eleanor Gallia and scientist Mike Bullivant
to give her a chance of succeeding in the exam.
Come on, then!
They'll have to identify any one of the hundreds of chemicals or herbs a pharmacy stocked on its shelves,
as well as completing their practical experiment - making genuine Victorian suppositories.
That's all the pulmonaria, isn't it, the lungwort? Absolutely. Useful for tuberculosis.
Ruth is particularly interested in the women
who qualified as pharmacists for the first time in 1868.
They were mostly widows, or daughters of male pharmacists,
who, one way or another, had ended up with the business.
215 of them, I believe, at that point in history.
Which is only a tiny number, it's only 2% of all the practising pharmacists, but they were there,
quietly, not being taken much notice of.
There's oxalic acid in the sorrel, you have the line of sorrel there.
And when that Act came in, and the exam came with it,
forgetting to rule women out, it allowed women in.
It allowed women to have a professional qualification.
And this gave them a footing, it gave people a toe-hold,
and it helped the argument for other women who were trying to enter all of the medical professions.
"Look, women can do this, we can be measured alongside men, look, we can prove our ability."
Inspired by her predecessors, Ruth is developing some new products.
You're making up my zinc oxide for me, Mike?
I'm just about to start.
Scientist Mike Bullivant, who runs the lab, will help her to extract
zinc oxide from zinc metal for a new line of skin creams.
She already has a customer lined up who suffers from acne,
and has medical approval to test out the cream.
Oh, I remember that stuff from school! It starts fizzing.
Zinc oxide is one of many chemicals that were new to the pharmacist,
expanding their scope for commercial gain.
It's an antibacterial agent still used on the skin today in sun creams and make-up.
Now, be careful about that, because it's hot acid.
It's an interesting compound. Such a simple compound.
Is it? Simple to make.
Is it? I just keep heating it like that, and stirring it, until all the zinc's disappeared,
and then I know what's left is zinc sulphate.
Making skin cream from zinc is a process that requires three chemical stages.
Each of those stages in turn produces a useful by-product.
One of them is calamine, used for treating chicken pox and measles.
Another is a sulphate used to make eye lotion.
That white solid is zinc sulphate.
So that's the next bit?
Can I do water? Am I allowed water? Yeah, go on, then! Tip the lot in.
Tip the lot in, OK.
All right, now,
to help that dissolve, that zinc sulphate dissolve in that water, you transfer it...
Back on the heat. Do you want to do that?
I can put things on the heat. Taking my job!
I know. Well, this bit's only like cooking. I can do that.
It is. Chemistry is like cooking, it really is.
The calamine will be created by the next chemical transformation,
which requires Ruth to apply a series of basic chemistry skills.
See the unreacted zinc at the bottom?
Yeah, I can see all the little bits. That's hot.
I'm glad to say, it's not actually hard to do physically, is it?
Just... Oh, I remember pipettes, this is another thing I vaguely remember from my school days.
Just add it, drop-wise.
Yep. Just a drop?
Ooh, fizzy! You see?
Yeah, I did see that. And I just keep dropping until...?
The bicarbonate has neutralised the remaining acid.
OK, so until it stops fizzing, when it drops in? Yep.
Bicarbonate of soda, or baking powder, reacts with the zinc sulphate
to create the calamine, which chemists know as zinc carbonate.
We'll get to a point when the bicarb has neutralised all the acid.
Then it will start reacting with the zinc sulphate.
Once it's filtered, the final stage will be to heat the calamine,
and that will give Ruth the zinc oxide she needs to make her skin cream.
So, the stuff we want is going to get left in the filter paper?
That's right. And the liquid that passes through is...
Is the discard? What we don't want.
That's largely water. Is it?
The particles tend to clog up the filter paper a little bit.
With a little time on his hands, Tom is taking the opportunity to brush up on his botany before the exam.
Pharmacists needed to identify all of the plants used in medicine.
It's kind of really basic knowledge that I have to know what's going to hurt people
and what effects all these different plants are going to have.
And how to tell them apart in the first place!
As fresh plants were used more widely then,
a Victorian pharmacist needed a more in-depth botanical knowledge than his modern-day counterpart.
I probably shouldn't have just touched that.
As far as I understand it, it's foxglove, or Digitalis, which is poisonous.
It's really difficult to identify.
I know what a foxglove looks like, it's this tall thing with flowers on it.
But I don't know when you make Digitalis out of foxglove,
are you meant to pick it when it's young, like this,
and hasn't grown to its full size?
Is that a better thing than waiting till it's completely flowered, and that sort of thing?
I've absolutely no idea.
Botany formed only one of six parts of the pharmacists' exam.
Extensive knowledge was also required of all the animal and chemical products used in medicines.
MUSIC PLAYS
For the practical part of the exam, Briony has set each of the team a challenge - to make suppositories.
So, these bigger suppositories...
Nick is the first to attempt the task.
Cocoa butter, beeswax, liquorice, olive oil, and hopefully a book which tells me what to do.
For reference, he turns to the Art Of Dispensing, an instruction manual
used by pharmaceutical chemists in the late 1800s.
Oh, lovely. Everything's in grains,
which I can't remember how many grains there are in an ounce.
The first thing Nick has to do is get the right proportions of cocoa butter and beeswax.
Together, these form the basic compound for the suppository.
What I'm trying to find is something to give me some sense of the quantities.
Think I should just sign my letter of resignation now, actually.
I think the chances of making this work are looking slim.
"Method: weigh the base, using at least 16 grains for a 15 grain suppository."
There we are. Bigger than that.
So, if we put a 1,000 of cocoa butter in the pan.
Maybe 20% of that for beeswax.
That's a bit too much.
Last time I made a suppository, it was probably about 1973.
Nick adds the liquorice powder to the mix.
This is the active ingredient, or the laxative part of the suppository.
We're talking bucket chemistry here.
There would be no agreement in Victorian times as to the right concentration.
Probably one pharmacy would have one formulation, another pharmacy would have another.
There are pharmacists who specialise in these physical skills.
It's not my area of specialisation.
But I still have that sense of pride about wanting to be able to make
a good product, or a reasonable product, at any rate.
Oh, dear!
What a way to end your career.
The moment is nigh.
There we have some. One, two...
..three, four.
Nick's previous experience has paid off. Et voila!
Ruth? Yeah? Do you want to come and have a look at the fruits of our labour? We're done, are we?
Look at that.
Back in the lab, all the zinc carbonate has been extracted,
and Mike is now showing Ruth the next stage in the process of getting the zinc oxide.
The zinc carbonate has to be dried out so it forms into a powder.
I'm just transferring it to a boiling tube.
Before being heated over a Bunsen burner.
Be cruel to that! Be cruel to that. OK.
All we're doing with this zinc carbonate, this calamine,
is to drive off the carbon dioxide.
And that leaves us with the zinc oxide.
The brilliant white powder will turn yellow.
Zinc oxide, when it's hot, turns yellow.
I suppose if you're a working pharmacist, if you've got notes on how to do these processes,
that's it, that's your stock in trade, isn't it? Mmm.
Definitely going yellow. It is. No doubt.
Give it a shake.
I think we're ready. Looks pretty yellow to me.
Just tip it out onto that.
Look at that. Yay, look at that! Lemon!
And to think that we've produced it from... From that.
From that to that in a series of remarkably simple procedures.
Yes! Right, come on then, let's go and make this cream.
It will go white as it cools down.
I'm pleased with that, thank you.
Oh, it grinds down really quick, doesn't it? That's ever so easy.
Ruth grinds the zinc oxide down to a fine powder.
I've got rose and lemon and bergamot.
And then adds a herbal infusion... Sourced from nature.
..of essential oils, glycerine, and a red dye.
And look at the colour. Just look at the colour!
You can see I hardly need any.
Ruth will be trying it on a customer who's looking for an acne cure.
As a professor of the practice of pharmacy, Nick is all too aware
of the depth of chemical knowledge required to become a pharmacist.
You never know what's going to be asked. You're going to have to know the dose of things.
know what they're used for, all those sorts of issues.
And sometimes the little stories help you remember things.
"Boracic acid comes from Tuscany."
The whole world was in here.
Pharmacists no longer extract their own chemicals from raw materials.
In his 30 year career, Nick has rarely had to put his knowledge of chemical formulae into practice.
These are past exam questions.
Quite frankly, I'm having difficulty reading some of the questions, never mind answering them.
"Describe the pharmacopoeia process for the preparation of acidum nitro-hyrdoc...
"..oricum dilutum."
Luckily, Ruth and Tom are only going to be tested on a small part of the examination.
Ruth's customer has arrived.
Hello, Bridie. Thank you so much for coming in.
Bridie Lloyd has suffered from acne for five years.
I've got this lovely zinc ointment here, which you can see, there's a sort of white, waxy substance.
That would be purely a therapeutic thing, designed to help with skin problems.
And then we've got this one.
With the glycerine in it too, you should get a slight sheen on the skin. You need the tiniest bit.
It is a bit chalky. Chalky and...
The natural look was really in, in the Victorian period, and they liked them to be as light as possible.
I see. I think you should have a go, go on. Just on your cheek, yeah?
At the moment it's looking very, very purple.
Yeah?
I don't think you want to stay looking purple, do you? No.
That's something you ought to rub in.
You see, that has given you quite a bit of colour, oddly.
And this side looks both paler and pinker. Yeah.
Which is what they would have been looking for.
The paler the complexion the better, but they did like a little bit of colour in the cheeks.
So you get these stories of Victorian ladies that would pinch
their cheeks before somebody comes, to try to get a bit of colour.
A young man coming in the door, "I'll quickly pinch my cheeks,"
make yourself look a little bit more red and natural and glowing.
How do you feel about taking it away with you and using it for a few days?
Yeah, as long as I really don't look purple!
Well, try it. See how it goes for a few days, whether it makes any difference to the acne.
And, you know, how you feel about wearing it.
Because it's two things, really, in one pot.
It's both a medicine and a make-up.
Right. OK.
Thank you ever so much.
Even after the new exams came in, fully-qualified pharmacists were still at liberty to experiment
with the hazardous products on their shelves.
There were no restrictions, even on the manufacturing of fireworks,
which many enterprising pharmacists made and sold.
It wasn't until 1875 that the government introduced
further regulations, following a number of serious accidents.
Today, only qualified explosives experts, like Steve Miller, can make fireworks.
Steve, I've just been looking at this Chemist And Druggist
from April 15th 1868. There's a large article on a fatal explosion of chemicals at Nottingham,
saying that, "A frightful explosion occurred in the shop
"of Messrs Fletcher, Chemists and Druggists of Nottingham, by which the errand boy was instantly killed.
"And several persons more or less injured."
And he seemed to be doing what you're doing, really - making an explosive.
Yes, an awful lot of factories did blow up, and chemist shops and things.
So that ended up with the 1875 Explosives Act being brought into force.
And that stipulated that you had to make your explosives in particular factories,
at specific distances away from storage facilities.
It took it away from the chemists, it made the whole process safer.
It could be done in facilities where everything was controlled.
I'm using things like a brass mortar and pestle here, so it's non-sparking...
Despite the Explosives Act, modern legislation does allow Steve to make a small quantity
of gunpowder in Nick's lab using the Victorian method.
So, I've now ground up the potassium nitrate.
Steve will make fireworks out of his gunpowder for a display
that Nick is organising to attract customers to his shop.
And then I'm going to add some water to it, and then give it a proper grinding.
Make it into a nice paste so I can grind it
with less chance of it going off in my face. Hmm.
Always an advantage, I think!
You see that's sort of clumped together? Yes. Shall I pour it out?
Yes, if you could pour it out onto the paper there. Then we can dry it.
Well, let's lay this out in the sun.
The gunpowder will take the rest of the day to dry before it's ready
to be compressed into fireworks, but it's still explosive, even when wet.
This should give us just a little fizz. Right. So if I light this, like that,
leave it there, it should hopefully go "fizz" and produce a bit of smoke.
Here we go.
There you go. Wow!
That's even when it's wet, so it's still quite violent.
Armed with the tools and ingredients to experiment, and a solid understanding of science,
innovative pharmacists were well-placed to become successful entrepreneurs.
James Crossley Eno was a pharmacist in Newcastle.
He was worried about sailors on ships and their health, and so he developed Eno's Fruit Salts.
Here it comes, look at that go!
Robert Hudson was working an everyday task with a mortar and pestle - pounding soap,
and he realised he could market it as Hudson's Dry Soap.
Joseph Swan, who developed the light bulb at exactly the same time as Edison.
He's never got the fame for it, but invented the light bulb.
The key thing is, they were businessmen.
They knew what the public wanted, they knew what would sell, and some of them made a fortune.
Some real rags to riches fortunes made in pharmacies.
Among the most successful of the great entrepreneurial chemists was Alfred Bird.
This Birmingham pharmacist, whose wife had a yeast allergy,
invented a yeast-free raising agent - baking powder.
She was also allergic to eggs, inspiring Bird to develop his recipe
for custard powder - still a brand leader today.
Ruth is adding custard powder to the Barber and Goodman line.
This is thickened, not with eggs, but with corn flour.
Really, really cheap - which of course helps.
And to be honest, that's pretty much all custard powder is - corn flour.
Cornflower that's slightly coloured and slightly flavoured.
I'm not sure that Mr Bird would have been too keen on people knowing
that that's all it was and that they could make their own quite simply!
So for the colour, the cheapest and easiest ingredient to use,
because it's already a food ingredient, is turmeric.
The turmeric gives the pale corn flour an egg-like yellow colour.
Don't want too much turmeric flavour, just enough to give it a bit of yellow. And now, flavour.
Then almond essence is added, to disguise the spicy flavour of the turmeric.
Alfred Bird really prided himself on his experiments. He actually had
the words "experimental chemist" over the shop door.
And it's not difficult chemistry, this. It's a really simple thing.
It's like so many inventions - in hindsight, they seem simple
and basic and obvious, but it's wanting to do it in the first place.
It's coming up with that concept.
I found this in the pharmacy.
It's another of his products.
"Bird's medicinal olive oil."
Look at the size of that bottle,
I wonder how much he was charging for that?
Right, make myself a basic funnel.
Bird gave up being a chemist to manufacture his custard powder
on an industrial scale, supplying British troops in the Crimean War.
When his son, Alfred Frederick Bird, took over the business in 1878, he added further products
to his father's range, including jelly powders and tablets.
Pharmacists marketed jelly as an invalid or baby food.
Baby food as such didn't really exist in this period.
You'd get infant and invalid food all in one.
And it's all to do with digestibility.
The 19th century is the first time that people begin to look scientifically
into how the body breaks up the food that we put into it.
This is one of those foods that was considered to be particularly easy to digest.
Gelatine. Jelly.
So I've got a load of trotters here, these are leftovers from the chop house.
So somebody's already had these for dinner.
And eaten all the meat off them, leaving all the skinny, cartilagey bits, which is brilliant.
So I've got several batches -
there we go, up there - on the go all at once here.
Each batch of trotters needs to boil for several hours,
so that the connective tissues congeal and reduce.
Although he won't be tested on this in the exam,
Tom is trying to master a basic skill that an apprentice carried out regularly.
I'm practising folding
powder papers.
People would have put powders into these sorts of things
and when they needed to put them...
..in a drink or take them straight,
you just undo it, straight in there.
Take your medicine. So, yeah.
Still not quite mastered it yet. I mean this thing, for example, tells me that the powder folder -
which is this - "is a valuable implement to most dispensers.
"It is well to learn powder folding with it, rather than without, for powders of unequal length
"are as irritating to the equanimity of a practice pharmacist as pills of unequal size."
This is the one I reduced down...
In the pharmacy kitchen, Ruth has finished her first batch of jelly.
Come on out of there, you.
Aha! That's a saleable product as it is, just chopped up into little squares.
I could sell that as a fresh product.
She'll promote her products tomorrow at the pharmacy's firework display.
Mmm, that's really nice.
Nick is still in the lab.
Legally, although Steve Miller could make the gunpowder here, he can only make fireworks on licensed premises.
If you take just iron filings...
But he can show Nick the colours and effects he's going to put into them.
We should be able to get some nice sparks.
See? Yeah!
You can do the same thing by mixing iron filings with gunpowder.
Steve will use the iron filings to create jet-like fountains.
And different chemical elements will create different colours when they burn.
Step back.
Barium for green...
Whoa!
Sodium for yellow...
And strontium for red.
Materials still used in fireworks to this day.
Whoa!
Poke that down...
Steve demonstrates with a dummy firework
how these chemicals are mixed with gunpowder to create the colour effects in a Roman candle.
As the fuse burns down the cardboard tube, it lights each separate
coloured star and propels it into the air, creating bursts of colour.
So, because of the 1875 act,
I certainly can't do this in the modern-day pharmacy.
No, you certainly can't. The 1875 act was in place until 2005, so it lasted quite a long time.
Really? Good grief. Well over a century, it was valid.
For the pharmacy's display, Steve will make the fireworks
to Victorian specifications, using real gunpowder.
As they test the power of the gunpowder they made earlier, it becomes clear
that Victorian regulations were much needed to bring this dangerous enterprise under control.
Ooh!
Thank goodness we didn't do that in the laboratory!
After a long day, Nick and Tom can't resist the opportunity to try Ruth's custard.
Ruth's custard. This looks good.
One of the key things you must learn as an apprentice
is always to test the quality of the pharmaceuticals which you're involved in making.
Right, shall we try it? Yeah.
Mmm. It's not bad, is it? It's very good.
That is good. I think we've got another good product on our hand here!
Mmm. I think you're right.
It's the day of the examination.
That's obviously olive oil.
Ruth and Tom still have the practical part of the exam to do - making suppositories.
Suppositories...
Unlike Nick, a professor of pharmacy, neither of them have ever done anything like this before.
What is this powder?
What's the basis? That must be the wax.
Put it on the weights...
They're both using the same equipment as Nick, including a set of scales with weights.
I don't have any weights here, so I can't exactly work out proportions.
Tom makes a bad start, failing to find his weights.
I'm kind of guessing that if I chuck all this together,
then we'll eventually get something I can bind with this stuff.
I'm pretty sure I've done something drastically wrong.
With too much beeswax, Tom will have trouble melting his mixture.
Just how much oil should I put in?
Ruth shouldn't be adding the olive oil to the mix.
It's supposed to be used to lubricate the mould.
Damn stuff won't melt.
Strain it.
There's bound to be all sorts of stuff in there.
Oh, yeah!
Tom's finally discovered his weights.
That is kind of the basic sort of knowledge that everybody would assume you to know.
Messed it up.
So...
Ensuring the right medicinal content of the suppositories is only half the job.
I'm a terrible one for improvising.
I'm kind of working from a complete amateur position of ignorance.
The other crucial thing is making sure they're the right shape.
All we can do now is hope.
It's the moment of absolute, horrific truth.
Ooh...
Oh no!
Oh!
Well, shame me fingers were dirty.
Half a suppository.
It's back to the school house and time for Briony Hudson
to judge their suppositories for shape, size and firmness.
So, test one, suppositories.
That's a nice one!
Can I just direct you to the nice ones? What about this one?
That one's poorly.
But you have got one, two, three
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve...
And yes, not badly formed. OK.
Mine come in a multitude of forms!
Oh, they do!
They're not bad, are they? Which one's that? That's my good one.
That's the one you've identified, is it, as the best one?!
Yeah, that one's less successful, we might say. And next, Tom?
Um, yes. Not that successful, I don't think.
I managed to get one and a half.
Interesting colour difference, considering the idea is to spread them... They were bespoke!
Oh, OK! So this is for a person that's more sick?
Exactly. OK.
I know he's had some practice, but Nick's do win.
More produced, and a higher quality.
So very well done, Nick.
With plants and chemical substances to identify,
Ruth is joined for the next test by herbalist, Eleanor Gallia, and scientist, Mike Bullivant.
Having stronger medical backgrounds, Tom and Nick are taking up the challenge on their own.
So I've selected a drawer from the Materia Medica teaching cabinet,
and I'm going to ask each of you, in turn, to identify a few items.
The drawers of the Materia Medica cabinet contain hundreds of samples of the plants and chemicals
that a Victorian pharmacist would have had to identify.
So, could you, for me, identify
this specimen here?
You should be able to recognise that, I think.
What part of the plant is it?
No idea what that is. No?
Not at all? It's orange peel.
Well, it's not orange! Clearly, it can't be orange peel, because it's not orange!
It is used dried, particularly as a flavouring. What about this one?
What's that one?
Is that black pepper? Absolutely right. Spot on! Well done.
Tom is hoping his botany revision is going to pay off.
Let's give you some different ones. What about starting with that one there, 67A?
It's like resin of some sort. Yes.
I'd say it's some sort of tree gum. Yeah.
No, I can't get much closer than that.
I'd say...oh, what's a gummy sort of tree?
A gum tree! A gum tree. It's frankincense.
Oh! That's quite good, though.
Not bad. OK, what about this little section here?
Oh, I know this one. This is cardamom pods.
Very good. Straight to it. Known today for cooking.
And finally...
Ruth, Eleanor and Mike should be able to identify all of the substances between them.
Let's start off with this little vial which you can pick out.
Oh no! Just be careful of the cork. Oh no, this does look hard.
Oh, I know these. That's cochineal beetles. Absolutely it is, yeah!
Let's have a go at this one.
Barberry. Barberry? Like Berberis.
I'm going to go with what she says, barberry. Is that your final answer?
That's my final answer. You're right!
Briony has an extra test for the budding Victorian chemists.
So, number one, give the symbolic formulae
of ammonice carbonas,
chloroformum, and acidum tartaricum.
OK, so who's got the answer to question number one?
Oh yeah, Ruth there in the back row.
(NH4) 2 CO3.
Very good. And the next one.
Oh really? Ruth again, OK. Chloroformum.
CHCIL.
I think you're there. And the third one, tartaric acid. Oh, Ruth again.
This is hard.
CH(OH)(COOH)2.
Quite remarkable!
So overall in the exam,
the back row came first, with Nick coming first in the suppository first round.
With the exams over, there's still a business to run.
The team are using the firework display to bring in a crowd and promote Ruth's new products.
I've got my flare, I've got my matches. So we're all set.
Well, just be careful.
That stuff was pretty dangerous when we were playing with it before. See you later!
Do you think this stuff's going to sell? I hope so.
Here we are, everyone. Jelly and custard.
Can we interest you, at all, in a little taste of Barber & Goodman's jelly and custard?
Our very own home-made custard powder.
Even if you don't like it, you can go "bleugh!"
Only the best quality, natural ingredients in this. We can guarantee.
You're trying corn flour. Slightly flavoured, slightly coloured corn flour!
Armed with his new matches, Tom has one last task to perform.
OK, light the fuse. Crouch right down.
Once it's lit, step away, walk back away from it, and let it do it's thing, OK? OK.
Amongst the crowd of spectators is Bridie, Ruth's skin cream customer.
How was our first product we gave you? It was really good.
Yeah? Yeah, I'm still using it.
Wow. Really? You really still use it? Yes, yeah.
It's a lot better.
Definitely. Jolly good.
Hang on, I think the fireworks are about to start now.
Like the matches, the fireworks have been made to Victorian specifications.
Right then, on with the fireworks!
They became extremely popular.
Queen Victoria herself often celebrated her birthday with extravagant displays.
Yay!
Whey! Watch out, watch out!
Oh, yes!
Playing with poisons and explosives, this is every schoolboy's dream, in many ways!
This is one of the reasons I went into chemistry,
was to enjoy these sorts of things and to find out about them.
They weren't just somebody tinkering in a shed
and forgetting about it, they were people who were
primed and ready to take these ideas and move them into the mass market.
Wow!
I think there would probably have been quite a high mortality rate amongst apprentice pharmacists.
And in some ways, I'm actually pretty glad that I don't have to use
all these substances without being told about them in the first place.
WHOOPING AND CHEERING
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you for coming and remember, we're open for business again at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning.
Next time on Victorian Pharmacy, the end of the 19th century draws near.
With a massive expansion of new products and medicines...
I am very chuffed about that.
..the team will take a giant step into the 20th century...
Watch the birdie. Keep still.
..and towards the high-street pharmacy we know today.
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