The Apothecary Beyond the Shop: Chemistry, Medicine and Laboratories from the 17th to the 19th Centuries
Contributors to Ambix have long been interested in examining the relationship between the apothecaries of London and their Society. Founded in 1617, the Society of Apothecaries had responsibility for examining apprentices and regulating apothecaries’ activities in the City of London and within a seven mile radius. This collection from Ambix and Annals of Science marks the 350th anniversary of the opening of a laboratory for manufacturing chemical medicines at Apothecaries’ Hall in 1672 and one hundred years since the Hall pharmaceutical trade’s closure in 1922. It places pieces specifically about the Society alongside articles which explore the broader social, economic and intellectual contexts of chemistry, medicine and laboratories from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. With its creation rooted in the burgeoning popularity of chemical medicines and the ongoing disputes with the College of Physicians, the Society’s laboratory expanded during the eighteenth century to become a major supplier of medicines to the Navy and East India Company. In the nineteenth century, under the direction of William Brande (1788-1866), Henry Hennell (1797-1842) and Robert Warington (1807-1867), new directions of research and consultancy developed, whilst the Society of Apothecaries struggled to reconcile its new role as a medical licensing corporation with that of a wholesale drug manufacturer. Selected articles explore the wider contributions of Brande and Warington to nineteenth-century chemistry and focus on the site of chemistry at Apothecaries’ Hall which served multiple functions over its lifetime and played a pivotal role in the development of British pharmaceutical manufacturing. The geographic perspective is broadened with studies of apothecaries in Nancy, Metz and Bologna and a discussion of the influence of Boerhaave’s Mineral Chemistry on eighteenth-century pharmacy in the Netherlands and England, including its reception among apothecaries.
Edited by
Dr Anna Simmons(Science and Technology Studies, UCL)