Blists Hill Victorian Town in Shropshire
revives the sights, sounds and smells of the 1 9th century.
Good morning.
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.
Woah!
The start was like the Wild West. People didn't know what was good and bad.
Get a bit of speed up. Oh, 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 health care 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.
So far, after a grand opening,
the pharmacy team have made the transition
from the traditional remedies of the early 1 9th century
to the birth of new scientific advances.
Now they're taking on the medical and commercial challenges of the 1 850s and 1 860s.
- Hello, there. - As promised.
Professor Barber's Miracletts.
ln the mid 1 9th century,
overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions had reached their peak,
leading to unprecedented outbreaks of diseases like cholera and tuberculosis.
Desperate for cures, people turned to the pharmacies as never before.
l mean, this is the point when public health is at its worst.
Perhaps of all the time in Britain,
the 1 850s is the very, very worst, the most scary time of all.
There are a whole series of infectious diseases - cholera, scarlet fever,
typhus, typhoid, influenza -
all of them killing people right left and centre.
Measles.
What you get as well is sort of a new fear.
lt must have been a really scary time, actually.
And you would just reach out for anything, wouldn't you?
Anything that offered any sort of hope.
With medical science struggling to provide viable treatments,
and people looking for miracles,
new commercial opportunities beckoned.
People were really worried about these diseases
and they were prepared to spend money.
The pharmacy's a business so there need to be medicines
which either cure, or are believed to cure, the diseases which are there.
ln the spirit of experimentation,
they developed creative new remedies for the health crisis,
one of which aimed to solve everybody's problems in one go - cure-all medicines.
Do l need to have separate medicines for each thing?
No, we can come up with a cure-all,
which will make you better whatever's wrong with you, almost.
They addressed the public's fears and brought people clamouring to the pharmacy.
lt's got to solve people's problems, really.
They were seen as a viable means of treatment.
The team are going to make their very own Victorian-style cure-all.
Ruth and Tom are setting out to determine the level of customer demand for their product.
- Morning! - Morning.
Hi, there. My name's Tom. This is Ruth.
- My name's Tom. - Nice to meet you.
We're from the pharmacy just up the road.
We're sort of on a bit of a market research sort of...
Thought so.
We're looking for people who might have something wrong with them, of any sort, really.
l've got quite a few.
l do have a small sty here on my eyelid.
- Oh, yeah, l see. - lt doesn't seem to go away.
Working with sewerage as well, l tend to get septicaemia quite a lot, cos l burn myself.
My back is absolutely killing me.
l've got a burn there, which is in an open joint, moveable joint, which takes some healing up.
- And then quite a nasty one on my elbow. RUTH: Oh, that's really horrid, that is.
l've had a sore throat for a couple of months. Had quite bad tonsillitis.
And the other thing, my knees.
Knees. They swell up.
And then, of course,
there's anything you can do with baldness would be appreciated.
With potential customers lined up,
Nick needs to decide on the ingredients for their medicine.
Briony Hudson, curator of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum,
has brought him some examples of genuine cure-alls for inspiration.
Some of the really big sellers are things like... Let's have a look at them.
l guess Beecham's pills here.
Thomas Beecham went round the markets in Lancashire,
selling pills that gradually got more and more popular, hit the national market.
So he was a really big name.
We've got Holloway's pills.
Thomas Holloway, who styled himself as a professor, no medical background,
but absolutely hit the big time,
was making so much money, he died a millionaire.
Did people know what was in them?
Could they say what was in it, like you can now, and, ''l don't like that,'' or...
No, not at all. Part of the mystery, and perhaps part of the appeal,
was that they were what were called secret remedies.
So there was absolutely nothing in law that meant you had to reveal what was in them.
They didn't have to reveal any scientific basis
to a claim that they could cure this massive list of diseases.
How many would people take?
Were they a sort of a one-a-day or a one-a-week sort of minimalist thing?
Some you would want to say just when you were ill,
but a lot of these, no, you really did want to encourage people to take a regime of many.
Morison's is a really good example.
People were taking up to 1 ,000 of the pills a week.
And in the 1 830s, the first case of someone dying.
Clearly a very serious issue.
You had to trust your pharmacist, or trust the advertising,
or trust the person that recommended it to you,
that they wouldn't do you harm and they would do you good.
Ruth and Tom are making headway, gaining trust from their potential customers.
We're coming up with a kind of concoction that would have been considered a cure-all.
They're a sort of medicine that, that would cure a whole range of things.
l certainly think that these pills should... Well, they're designed to help you.
- Everything? - Yeah, a general tonic for your body, so yeah.
- Would you be happy taking them? - Yeah.
- Yes. - That'll be great.
l'm willing to try everything.
lf you can stop it growing out my ears and up me nose and put a bit on my head,
that'd be lovely.
With a growing number of ailments to treat, Nick wants to find an authentic formula.
Fortunately, although these remedies were secret at the time,
a book was later published by the British Medical Association
revealing the hidden contents of popular cure-all brands.
So this is Secret Remedies.
''What They Cost And What They Contain.''
So what they were aiming to do is spelt out on the cover.
A lot of them have things like senna, aloes, liquorice, rhubarb, that sort of thing.
Most of them were laxatives. And so they did have an effect.
People would think, ''lt's working in me, cos l can feel there's an effect.''
One example, the wonderful titled ''Pink Pills For Pale People'', which is great.
They were claiming, as with all of these things, they could treat a really wide range of diseases.
l really like the advert that says,
''..the dark days of dyspepsia...Doctor Williams' pink pills go to the very cause of the mischief.''
lf you look at the ingredients...
nothing particularly worrying.
Certainly got liquorice in there, got sugar in there.
Along with sulphate of iron and potassium carbonate,
but l don't think anything that would have done anyone great harm.
Or great good, either, for that matter.
Today, it's hard not to be sceptical about the ingredients of cure-alls,
but in the mid 1 9th century, many people genuinely didn't know any better.
There was little scientific understanding of the cause of disease.
Nobody knew - in our everyday terms now - what really worked and what didn't.
Through into the middle Victorian times,
people believed that infections and disease often came from decaying matter,
and that this raised up an invisible gas which they would call a miasma.
The miasma theory of disease
believed that the disease was spread by evil clouds of bad-smelling air.
People said, ''Well, obviously these new diseases,
they are caused by the evil miasmas. Wherever there is stink, there is illness.''
And they believed it was the same miasma for everything -
the same one for cholera as influenza -
but your body, your constitution, would react to that miasma in a different way.
And that's what would give you the disease state.
lf they had flatulence, or diarrhoea,
they didn't know whether it was the start of cholera or not.
So that's when they'd take their cure-alls.
They'd take it to nip the disease in the bud and stop it progressing.
With their thinking rooted in false scientific theory,
pharmacists were inadvertently misleading the public.
Pharmacists in the 1 850s are somewhere between
the quacks on the one hand who are just out there selling things
which they knew were pointless,
and the scientists who were researching things.
And they'd be selling things which people believed would work,
but they had to make a living out of it as well.
The pressure to make money was very real.
Records show that in the middle of the 1 9th century
about 1 00 pharmacies went bankrupt every year.
Shops opened six days a week, often from 8am to 1 1 pm.
The staff worked even longer hours - preparing the shop in the morning for business,
and catching up with the day's prescriptions and accounts at night.
Organising their expensive stock was another time-consuming priority.
Poor storage or overstocking could put their whole business at risk.
Supplies come in quite regularly in batches.
And the things have to be stored properly.
lt's no good putting herbs down in the cellar, for example. They'd get damp.
They're better off being decanted into the drawers here
where the atmosphere is dry, and people are opening the doors regularly.
So you're getting plenty of air supply through them.
Looking after the things is, in some ways,
as important a part of a pharmacist's stock in trade -
knowing how to care for things so that they don't lose their potency.
l don't like having the senna pods in a glass jar
because the light fades them and starts to break down their properties.
So they're better off being stored in the drawers.
Really useful stuff, senna pods.
One of the most effective of the herbal laxatives.
l'll make sure l put these back in the right places.
l really love this, having loads of stuff all stashed up.
lt's really sort of... l don't know. The magpie in me.
And, of course, should l get ill, everything l might possibly need is here.
As a 21 st-century pharmacist,
Nick is struggling to select the ingredients for his 1 9th-century cure-all.
We know that one set of ingredients is not going to cure all ailments.
So what l've got to do is put my modern knowledge behind me
and try and find something which is authentic, which will have an effect on the body,
but also we need to make sure it's really safe.
He turns to his pharmacy's prescription book -
a log of preparations doctors had requested for their patients,
which were administered by the pharmacy.
A lot of people couldn't afford to use the doctor,
but these cure-alls were sometimes prescriptions which the doctors used.
They sort of cut out the middle man.
People could get access to these doctor's medicines
by just going to the pharmacist and purchasing them over the counter.
Here, Nick finds inspiration for his formula
and finally decides on a variety of perfectly safe ingredients.
He's showing Tom how to turn his formula, or recipe, into their first batch of pills -
enough for 20 customers.
l've got a secret recipe.
- What are we putting in these? - That's secret.
But l'll tell you, cos you're an apprentice and need to know.
What l've got is some soap powder. Acts as a laxative.
They actually used quite a lot in Victorian days.
Some liquorice roots going in.
Helps people cough, and it can protect the stomach as well, if people have ulcers.
l'm grinding them together now, nicely.
And then we've just got one more thing to add, which is rhubarb, ground rhubarb root.
lt's a laxative. So, actually, two of these ingredients are laxative.
What we've got to do now is bind this together.
So a little glucose syrup. A little bit at a time. Just...
lt's quite a laborious process, isn't it?
lt's kind of, the sort of thing you can imagine an apprentice like me having to do quite a lot,
just standing there, pestle and mortar.
You'd have a good right arm, l can tell you.
lt's worth the effort, l can assure you!
So l suppose the main cost is man hours if anything.
On average, the price charged forjust one pill
would have covered the cost of making over 200.
Coming together nicely now.
They sold in massive quantities,
despite having what we now know were very modest healing properties.
lf you give people a sugar-coated pill and they think it's a medicine,
you can get a 20% to 30% recovery rate in some conditions.
The power of the mind to heal is quite amazing.
And this is just beginning to thicken now at the bottom here.
l think this is quite a nice situation to be in, watching the pharmacist so hard at work!
l'm doing something wrong somewhere. l'm not sure what it is.
No, l'm learning a lot.
Just a little bit more on the crumbly bits.
All that powder just gradually comes together into this sort of cake.
lf my calculations are correct!
A cheesecake base, isn't it?
(Nick laughs) Yes. l don't think it'll taste as good, though.
Shall we have a go at actually rolling some pills, then?
Yeah, it is now one mass.
The pharmacy has a brass and mahogany pill-making machine
which Tom's getting his hands on for the first time.
So what l need to do here is sort of break off a bit and make it into a sausage, don't l?
That's right.
Before this machine was invented,
the pill mass was rolled out by hand and cut to size with a spatula.
Roll it down into a long, thin sausage.
This is a piece of advanced kit, making sure you got the same dosage for everyone,
because it standardises the size of each little pill coming out.
That is looking good.
Ah, no, still a bit too much, though. Oh, no, look! Flattened the thing.
You don't need a lot for this at all, do you?
Now we just sort of roll it across these bits, yeah?
- Yeah. - This way round?
The brass grooves are designed to cut a spherical pill.
Push back and forth a few times.
That's it.
Get your body into it.
And we have lots of kind of slug-like pellets.
Try and make them look a bit better with this pill-rounding device.
They do look horribly like rabbit droppings.
TOM: l think we needed to have slightly stickier pills.
Hm.
Appearance was key.
They had to look like they were going to work even if the main ingredient was soap powder.
Some pharmacists even coated pills for their wealthier customers in silver leaf
to increase their desirability - and their price.
How many thousand have we got to make?
So, if we're doing 50 pills in a box...
and a box a week for a patient.
- Right, 20 people. - 20 boxes a week.
So that's er...1 ,000 pills.
We've just nearly done 50.
As apprentice, it'll be Tom'sjob to make the rest of the pills.
lt'll take about three days to do it.
(Chopping)
ln the kitchen, Ruth is making a remedy for Bill Jones,
the plumber who complained of hair loss.
Herbalist Eleanor Gallia has come to show Ruth how to make Macassar hair oil.
lts recipe came from Macassar in lndia, giving it exotic connotations.
But most British pharmacists used ingredients from closer to home.
l've got here the European alkanet, which sort of produces a hugely effective dye.
Just look at that.
You've got the fresh, you've got the native British.
So if you look there, can you see the glistening there?
Yeah, you can, can't you? lt's really quite pretty.
lt's beautiful. Really beautiful.
- Yeah, there's a sort of... - Gooey-ness.
lt's weeping a gooey, sort of sticky sap, that'll help coat the hair.
- And make it easier to comb and... - Yeah. Act like a conditioner.
Absolutely. And nourish the scalp as well, moisturise the scalp.
Victorians didn't have a proper understanding of hair loss, and saw it as an illness.
One 1 864 medical report stated its causes as ''habitual drinking'',
''late hours'', ''violence'', ''intense study or thoughtfulness''
and ''the pernicious practice of constantly wearing a hard, non-ventilating hat''.
We're putting it all into cold oil and then heating it above the fire.
This recipe has gone unchanged for hundreds of years.
l'm just going to stir this in.
- Yeah, red. - Already pink, even cold.
Yeah. Lovely.
The mixture needs to heat for an hour before the remaining ingredients can be added.
- Shall we have a cup of tea? - l'll make a pot. That sounds good.
ln preparation for the launch of their cure-all pills, Nick is drafting a poster.
ln the 1 850s and '60s, more people could read, printing processes had improved,
and advertising really starts to begin to take off.
And it was really influential on people.
But even in Victorian times
there were some limits on the claims you could make for a cure-all.
Nick is seeking advice from Barrister Phil Taylor on what it was legally safe to say.
l've got something to start with. ''Professor Barber's Miracletts.
The miracle medicine.
lf it does not cure all your ills, we will pay £50.'' As a way of getting the public in to buy it.
ls that OK?
Yes, l think it probably is, erm, because this is a reward.
But you have to understand that if the cure does not work, you have to pay the money.
- Ah! - That's the big problem.
The reward offered for one Victorian product, the carbolic smoke ball,
set a precedent for penalising false advertising promises.
Mrs Louisa Carlill actually bought that,
having seen an advertisement which clearly says if you then contract influenza,
having used our smoke ball, you, erm, can get £1 00 as the reward.
So this would have been inhaled, there'd be a nosepiece or something,
and people who inhaled this, were supposed to be kept free from influenza?
She tried it, but she actually contracted flu, so she wanted her money.
Of course, they wouldn't pay her.
So then she decided to sue them. She was a tough lady.
And she went through the courts and this case, probably the most famous case in English law,
clarified the law, so they had to pay up.
OK. l think we'll cross that bit out.
Erm, what about other cures? Can l claim it cures anything?
lnsomnia, l thought of.
Why don't we add consumption? And...
Yes, you could have depression, to some extent.
Low spirits, they'd probably put then.
But, of course, the important thing is that you're not offering a reward of any sort.
- And then you should be safe. - Great, thank you.
- We're ready to go. - Good.
What happened to the patient, by the way?
Well, she lived to a ripe old age - 97.
Died in 1 942, erm, of influenza.
For Nick, this relative lack of rules is unfamiliar territory.
lt was completely different, of course, to how things are today
when we've got a whole mass of rules.
Lots of medicines can't be advertised to the public at all.
And if you do advertise medicines, there's got to be evidence as to how they work,
whether they work and can really cure you or not.
You can't claim anything cures unless there's a whole load of evidence behind it.
You'd have to give information about side effects and all sorts of things,
so it's a very different situation.
l'm gonna get the printer to print lots of copies, l'm gonna put them all round the town,
and try and get people to come in and buy my miracle cure.
ln Ruth's kitchen, the Macassar hair oil has heated through.
There you go, that's been boiling, boiling, boiling, boiling, hot, hot, hot, hot!
- Lovely. - Fantastic colour.
Beautiful.
Look at the colour of that!
Eleanor has an old trick up her sleeve for blending in another ingredient.
Cleavers.
You get your cleavers... l picked these this morning.
So your first row goes up the way.
Your second row goes across the way. So, basically, you're weaving.
And they all want to stick together, anyway, don't they?
To make a mat sort of thing is pretty much what they've got in mind, by themselves.
Yes.
lt's a sieve. lt's gonna make a really nice filter.
Yeah.
But at the same time we're pouring hot oil through it,
- so that's going to draw some of the... - Plenty of it.
..contents of the cleavers into the liquid at the same time, isn't it.
So, in a sense, by making a sieve of it, you're sort of killing two birds with one stone.
And then we pop that in there.
- lt does smell good, this. - Mm.
- We haven't added the perfumes yet. - We haven't.
Good. Looks like it's coming through quite nice.
Ooh! Ooh, that smells good!
The final stage is to scent it with cinnamon, lemon and cloves.
So this is a hair oil aimed... well, l suppose, at both sexes...
..to some degree.
And people usually put sort of slightly different scents in,
according to whether it was a male hair oil or a female hair oil.
- This one could actually go either way. - lt could.
lt's just how you package it as to whether it's for women or for men.
The pharmacy will market the hair oil as a preventative remedy for hair loss aimed at men.
Oh, it's gonna be too full! We're gonna have to switch it back in there.
One, two, three, whoo!
(They laugh)
Many enterprising pharmacists expanded its appeal beyond medicine
as a health and beauty product aimed at women.
- That's a lot of hair oil, isn't it? - lt is a lot of hair oil.
Tom's been busy pill-making -
one of the many chores an apprentice would have carried out for his master.
The apprentice would be a really important part
of the chemists and druggists in the 1 9th century.
Not only are you doing all the dogsbody work, but you're actually a source of income.
You wouldn't be paid by the pharmacist.
Your parents would actually pay for you to learn off them.
You'd join this place at 1 4,
so you're sort of looked after as member of the family, in a way.
Of course, it's not a normal parent-son relationship,
cos actually you've got to work really hard for your living.
You know, it would be a tough life.
An apprentice had to impress his boss,
and Tom's hoping to do just that
by drumming up further publicity for Nick's cure-all medicine.
He's drafted in engineer Chris Hill to help him put together a promotional stunt.
What we want to do at the pharmacy is make some sort of, sort of a bit of an event, really,
and a bit of a show to attract some customers.
And what we thought we could do is maybe fix up some sort of machine
that we could maybe power a pestle and mortar with,
so we can show our ability to grind all the medicines and so on.
Yeah, OK. An automated grinding mechanism.
That's right, yeah, yeah.
He's been inspired by a contraption used by a chemist in Knaresborough
in the early 1 9th century - a pestle and mortar...powered by a dog.
Victorian England is actually filled with advertising.
And there are adverts in all the papers.
Some of the papers are just composed of adverts
in exactly the same way as today.
What's fascinating about doing a stunt like a dog pestle and mortar
is that you're creating a real, physical event in the street.
And it's a lot more local. lt's a lot more...
You're advertising it on a local scale.
Chris is going to make the machine.
All Tom needs now is the dog.
- Morning. - Morning.
lt's time for the first marketing push.
Nick's claims for his cure-all have been put into print.
l can feel them working already!
The first batch of Professor Barber's Miracletts is ready for delivery.
Morning, Ross!
Morning.
l've brought you something!
We've got some special pills for you.
Pharmacies, of course, are a business.
We have to make a living.
We've got these Miraclett miracle cures for you today.
And that means getting in touch with your local community.
- Hello, there. - As promised, Professor Barber's Miracletts.
Thanks very much.
lt means finding the products that they want to buy.
See if it sorts out your back. lt should clean your blood if nothing else.
Clean me blood, right! Sure l need that.
And you'd have to project an image that was enormously trustworthy and deeply convincing.
- l have my doubts. - Really? OK.
- Do you know what's actually in it? - Erm...
With the best will in the world, it's not gonna cure everything, is it?
l think pharmacists would have been quite coy about revealing their secret ingredients.
Oh, of course, yes.
- l hope that it does some good. - Any side effects that l might...?
- You could tell us! (Laughs) - OK.
lt must have been quite difficult, mustn't it, sort of...maintaining this front.
Better go and sell some more.
The Victorian public may have clung to the hope that cure-alls would provide miraculous results,
but they'd be of little help for people suffering from the most serious disease of the day -
cholera, a water-borne infection whose main symptom is violent diarrhoea.
Cholera was an appalling illness
because they were just shrinking and wizening and dying from dehydration, ultimately.
With major cholera epidemics in 1 849 and 1 854 claiming the lives of almost 1 00,000 Britons,
the race was on to stop the spread of the disease.
But at first they didn't even know about germs.
A fundamental breakthrough in medical science came in the 1 860s
when the existence of germs, the invisible causes of disease,
was established by scientists like Louis Pasteur.
A number of researchers, and particularly Pasteur,
said this is actually tiny ''animalcules'', as one of them, called them,
tiny, little organisms which they could begin to see under the microscope
and which affected people.
Now that they understood that germs existed, they could develop products to kill them.
ln a consumer revolution,
the public finally gained access to effective methods of preventing disease.
You begin to find for the first time that products are being advertised as antiseptics,
as disinfectants - things to kill these newfound, extremely dangerous germs.
Things that might have been there, anyway,
but now were being recognised and valued for their germ-killing properties.
The first chemical to be used as a disinfectant was carbolic acid,
previously used as a deodoriser to mask the smell of raw sewage.
Delighted with a new use for this previously under-valued chemical,
enterprising pharmacists were quick to create
a vast new range of household cleaning products.
To make his own disinfectant, Nick's asked scientist Mike Bullivant, who's running the lab,
to help him extract some carbolic acid from its unlikely source - coal tar.
lt's horrible stuff to work with.
lt's viscous, it's thick, it's black... it smells, it's obnoxious.
lt was always regarded by the early Victorians as waste product...
which was difficult to get rid of.
What l'm doing is heating the coal tar up, and the vapours will pass through here
and they'll start to condense - this is an air condenser.
lt condenses on the cold surface. You'll see droplets forming.
l'm interested in the components that come off between and 1 70 and 230 degrees Celsius.
Anything else is just rubbish -
because that's where the carbolic acid is.
- The magic of chemistry. - Yeah.
Here we go. Can you see in...
l think we've got one or two drops here now.
Yeah, there's liquid in the bottom there.
lt won't be clear at this stage, cos it's impure.
Obviously we want as pure a product as possible.
lt took the Victorians over 30 years of trial and error
to uncover the benefits of this mysterious substance.
First extracted from coal tar in 1 834,
its germ-killing properties were finally realised in 1 867.
One of the first people who sort of used this for health was Joseph Lister, the surgeon.
He reduced the death rate in operations by using this.
- What? Carbolic acid? - Yeah.
A patient lying on an operating table
had less chance of living than a solider at Waterloo.
lt's true.
l mean, 35% death rate from infection after surgery.
After amputation, two thirds of them died from an infection.
And so what Lister did, he got carbolic acid...
..and he made it into a paste, and he also had a spray.
So he sprayed the theatre?
- He sprayed the wounds. - Oh, yeah.
Everyone was working in this mist of carbolic acid.
- Which is really nasty when it's concentrated. - lt's corrosive.
But they'd spray this into the wound during surgery, and the death rates dropped.
One in seven people died after he introduced this.
So big improvement from, you know, two out of three.
Come on. Come on.
Come on.
Give us your carbolic acid.
Here it comes. Look at that. Look at that go.
That's gorgeous, isn't it?
This is all profit.
- l think you've hit your upper limit there. - l think we'll call that a day.
- So it's a matter now of just letting it cool down. - OK.
Then we'll come back and look more closely at what's in here.
Let's go for a bite to eat whilst that's doing.
Yeah, it's safe enough.
The shop has a new customer who's in search of a cure.
Local council worker Maria Morris has a bad back.
lt's mainly across the shoulder blades.
Erm, l've had physio in the past,
but it hasn't really done a lot.
- So it's sort of muscle? - Yes, mainly between the shoulder blades.
Yeah.
ln the Victorian period there would have been several options available to you.
There would be creams and things you could have rubbed in.
But there was a brand-new treatment that you might be interested in.
Tom? Have you got that electrotherapy machine?
Yeah, l have, just here.
- He's quite into this. - Oh, right.
Yeah, bit of boys' toys, isn't it? Yeah.
So here we go.
And this little contraption would be designed to give you an electric shock.
- Oh, right. - Or, sorry, to electrify your muscles.
lnvented in 1 862, this precursor to the modern-day TENS machine
was the height of technology.
Pharmacists either charged money to use the machine,
or offered it for free to draw people into the shop.
Does it actually work?
Well, there's plenty of evidence to show that it works in pain relief.
However, the main body of 1 9th-century use for it is not for pain relief at all.
So not really for things like your back.
More for conditions associated just with being female.
- Oh, right. - Hysteria.
Oh, right, yes!
Your womb would get out of control and sort of cause you to go mad.
The idea of shocking you in some way to cure your hysteria would be quite a big thing.
So any sort of mental unhappiness, or distress that a woman was suffering,
or that other people thought she was suffering, could be, therefore, cured by electrotherapy.
Although there were a number of patients
who were coming for the same problems that you're experiencing.
- Oh, right. - So shall we give it a go, then?
Yes, definitely!
- So, are you all right there? - Yes.
You're sure? OK, here we go.
Give me a shout if it gets too much or anything, all right?
Yeah.
- All right? - Yeah. Nothing.
Nothing. Just try a bit faster.
No.
- OK. - Go on, as hard as possible.
Nothing.
Oh, no!
Er, it doesn't look like it's gonna work, does it?
Oh, right. OK, shall l have a go?
lf l just do that. Go as fast as you can.
- Hold the box down. - l don't think it's...
Oh, dear. Right, OK.
Nothing!
We're gonna have to maybe take this away to the workshop.
- Yeah. Oh, that's a bit disappointing! - Oh, yes!
Haven't we got anything else electric?
The pharmacy has one of Doctor Hoffmann's electric brushes,
which claimed to cure everything from skin disease to paralysis.
lt's, erm...
lt's got like a zinc plate on the back.
So you'd soak that in acid, wouldn't you?
Yeah, and then that's copper.
So it's sort of working like a battery.
How rough is that brush, though?
- That is rough. - That is rough, isn't it?
lt was important to Victorians to feel an effect in order to believe a remedy was working.
l don't think you were supposed to do much with it.
l think you were just supposed to, just gently...
- lt's wire, you see, in order to carry the charge. - Yes.
So you'd be sort of like doing a sort of tingly stimulation all over the surface of the skin.
- Right. - A body brush. lt's amazing, isn't it?
lt doesn't look like electrotherapy's going to work for us today for you! l'm really sorry!
We do, however, have a very good line in liniments.
We've got some really good ones. l'll go and find some.
Thank you very much.
ln the lab, things are going more smoothly,
and the distilled liquid from the coal tar is one step away from becoming pure carbolic acid.
Once the temperature starts registering 1 80 to 1 83,
l know that's pure carbolic acid coming over.
The chances of two things being in there that boil at the same temperature are slim,
so we assume it's carbolic acid.
lt's 1 81 .
- And here it comes, dropping through. - 1 81 .
Which is smack on the... boiling temperature of carbolic acid.
lt's nice and clear, isn't it?
Chemicals that kill germs became so popular that many over-relied on them,
neglecting the importance of basic cleanliness.
Lister, the surgeon, didn't believe in hygiene.
He believed that carbolic acid did it all.
He was filthy.
And he had a blue frock coat which he used to do dissections in...
- Yeah. - ..of dead bodies.
He'd also do his surgery in the same coat.
There was another movement who believed that hygiene was the answer.
They just had clean, open wards, and made everything washed, and so on.
- Keeping the windows open. - Yeah!
And their death rate was much better than Lister's.
They got it down to one in 50 dying.
He ignored them for a long time until it was so clear that their method was better,
and he said he'd thought that all along.
But it's a bit like what's happened recently in hospitals.
We trusted chemicals so much,
people had sort of forgotten about the importance of hygiene.
Nick will dilute the pure acid to turn it into a saleable cleaning product.
l am a happy bunny, because... Can you see that?
l think we'll leave it at that.
There is our carbolic acid. Beautiful.
- ln a boiling tube over there... - Yeah.
..there's some of the material we started out with earlier on.
- Coal tar. - Wow!
- So we've gone from that to that. - Wow!
- Magical, isn't it? - Yeah, amazing difference. Yeah.
l'm gonna dilute it down.
And then we can sell disinfectant as well.
- This is gonna be your best seller, mate. - Thanks very much!
Engineer Chris Hill is putting the finishing touches
to Tom's dog-powered pestle and mortar.
Hey, Chris!
One small dog. All right?
Up until the mid 1 9th century,
a breed of dog called a turnspit was often used to turn meat on a spit over a fire.
The dog pestle and mortar is an adaptation of that technology.
Hopefully all we need to do is get Tilly to move a little bit.
The turnspit dog is now extinct so Tom's using a Jack Russell...
Tilly. Tilly.
..a breed less renowned for its turning capabilities.
- No intention of... - Come on, come on!
No! Tilly, Tilly, Tilly, Tilly, Tilly!
- l'll give her a hand. - A little start.
She'll be fine once we get her sorted.
Hey, come on, Tilly.
- There we go, look at that, she loves it! - She could get used to that.
Look at the pestle going round. She's almost doing that by herself.
Well, l think Tilly needs...er, some sort of treat.
Come on.
What's that?
- Hey, look at that! - Hey, there you go!
Good girl.
Animals played an important part in 1 9th-century commerce.
Despite industrialisation, most local transportation was still horse driven.
Many people still relied on livestock to make a living.
With the veterinary profession in its infancy,
animal health provided pharmacists with a lucrative sideline.
lf your livelihood depended on the horse, as it did for the farmer,
and your food supply depended on the animals as well,
clearly they wanted them to be healthy.
Horseman Steve Ledsham has asked Nick if he can provide something
to soothe the aching muscles of his shire horse, Casey.
Luckily for Nick, there was little distinction between animal and human medicines.
He can use the same chemicals and techniques as he would in making a human remedy.
The way they think about animals' bodies is the same as what happens to humans.
A horseman would demand something that was similar to a medicine he'd applied on himself.
Nick's making a liquid embrocation, or muscle rub, that will be applied externally.
The white of egg.
And then oil of turpentine. Then we've got acetic acid as well.
Just vinegar.
People were likely to have more confidence in a medicine if its effects were noticeable.
lt's what's called a rubefacient. lt gives you a warming effect when you rub it in.
And feels good. So they worked to some extent,
but people would certainly have felt that they were working.
l think this is getting ready to pour.
Nick has an appointment to see the horseman later in the day.
That should be enough for one. And that's ready to rub on the horse.
With the public's confidence in pharmacists growing,
they began to expand their range beyond traditional products.
lnspiration came from their neighbours on the high street.
l could probably go in another inch and a half.
- Yeah? - l think.
ln the draper's shop, Ruth is helping her daughter Eve with a new corset -
a source of several marketing opportunities for a pharmacy.
For a start, they sold corsets.
Medical and health corsets, which were pretty much the same,
except they had sort of eyelet holes punched in them to let the air breathe.
Supposed to make all the difference.
Erm, and you also get a range of creams and powders.
Special nipple shields and suction cups to...
(Giggles) ..to help counteract the effects of a corset.
Most young, healthy women
were looking to take their waists down to something between 20 and 22 inches.
Slatterns, sluts - those with loose morals - wore loose corsets.
Because it's pressing your ribs, your diaphragm can't move.
So all your breathing happens up here.
Yeah, definitely.
Many people think that this led to enormous numbers of fainting incidents,
and it can do.
So one of the things that people would... sell, use, carry as a result, were smelling salts.
To sort of bring you round when you fainted.
l've got the ingredients here.
There we are.
Smelling salts themselves are one of the easiest products to produce in a pharmacy.
Ooh, that's powerful stuff!
lt's not about curing anybody, it's about profit.
So l just need to sieve it.
And this is the ingredient, really. This is all smelling salts are.
Ammonia.
Ammonia proper can in fact be produced by stale urine.
This gives you some idea of the smell that we're talking about here.
Not nice.
Swooning was considered to be very feminine.
And even if you didn't faint every five minutes,
the fact you had your smelling salts and might pull them out,
and you might say things like, ''l feel a bit faint'' -
actually, you didn't at all, but it was all part of the paraphernalia.
Rather than filling up that whole bottle with liquid,
l'm basically going to fill it up with liquid-impregnated sponge.
So yet again, a bit cheaper.
For quite a long period of time, policemen actually carried smelling salts
so that they could deal with women who'd fallen down in the street or fainted.
So, you know, as part of your equipment - truncheon, whistle...smelling salts!
Most smelling salts had essential oils or something in them,
to just make it all a bit nicer.
This is oil of lavender.
Give it a really good shake.
Are you ready for your first whiff?
lmagine yourself, it's a hot day, somebody's over-laced your corset -
- and besides which, your boyfriend's watching. - Oh, right!
So you've just faked a little swoon to look lovely!
And some kind person takes a beautifully, beautifully presented scent bottle
and waves it beneath your nose.
Yeah, that's the right effect. Oh, that's horrible!
lt's like smelling a badly-cleaned toilet.
However, somebody has sprayed some lavender oil over it.
The link between well-being and the proper fitting of corsets
saw what had once been solely a fashion accessory
become the preserve of the pharmacy.
As apprentice, it's Tom'sjob to disinfect the shop.
Well, Tom, these are pure crystals of carbolic acid.
Extremely corrosive, but in the right dilution a really good disinfectant.
So we're gonna put some water in and dissolve the crystals.
lt's a really powerful smell. You can feel your eyes running a bit already.
You can see it dissolving.
What we'd be doing before we sold this was adding some more colorant, l think,
just to keep it safe, so people knew it was disinfectant,
and also it shows you it's not just water, you can't mistake it for water.
You don't want to try and quench your thirst with this stuff.
Absolutely. You'd be in hospital very rapidly if you did that.
This is still very strong.
So we're gonna dilute it down to about 3% solution.
We're just about ready to put it into something bigger
and then that's something which we'll be able to add to a bucket.
And then you can get on with your chores as an apprentice.
So we're using it in the shop to show that you're cleaning the place.
Hygiene was one of the most important things to come out of this understanding of germ theory.
And so we need to be seen to be doing it as well as actually doing it.
Right, should l go and get to work, then, l suppose?
- Absolutely. - All right!
Earn your keep. Get on and do some work.
l imagine it'd be a really unusual smell when it first came out.
By using this disinfectant, it's kind of a way of taking control of health in your own home.
You know, you're fighting all these germs that the doctors keep talking about
as the new cause of disease.
ln some ways it's empowering, but at the same time,
it ties you in to having to buy the disinfectant all the time,
so it's great for our business.
You've got to spend your money to do it.
Nick is keeping his appointment with horseman Steve Ledsham
to apply the muscle rub to his horse.
Vet John Broberg will check that Nick applies the embrocation correctly,
and should be able to shed light on some other products
Nick has brought from the pharmacy.
So, John, l've brought a universal medicines chest,
which would have been brought to farms - it's animal medicines.
- General farm box. - Yeah.
ln the absence of affordable vets,
pharmacists sold these DlYmedicine kits to horse and cattle owners.
They contained a vast range of medicines.
ln Victorian times, there were all sorts of chemical mixtures.
Herbal mixtures, chemical mixtures.
lt may be the wrong shape, but that's a horse ball.
For the horse's general condition.
- Was it a bit of a cure-all, really? - Yes, yes.
- So which end did they go in? - Oh, these go in the front end.
- Thank goodness for that! - Yes.
lf you've got hands my size it can be more difficult, but l'll show you.
- Are you gonna demonstrate it? - l'll show you what was done, yes.
Show us how it was done.
l am quite happy with a table between me and this enormous animal.
Yes, he's a nice big chap. Which means he's got a nice big mouth.
- Oh, fantastic! - Which suits me better!
Come on, fella.
You are a big chap, aren't you?
Oh... Oh, rather you than me.
You use the tongue as a gag.
So you take the tongue to one side.
Your hand goes up to the back of the mouth, pops the ball down, and that's it.
Not everybody would want to do that. How many vets have ten fingers?
Did you get danger money as a vet?
You probably adjusted your fee according to the beast.
Constitution Balls are still administered to horses today,
often with the safer balling gun method, similar to this Victorian model.
So this, you just push it, basically a tube with a stick in the middle.
l'm not gonna put it up him but you can see that will reach to the back of his mouth.
- Pop it in. - Amazingly trusting horse.
lf l was that horse, l wouldn't let you near me again.
As with humans, there's, erm, two ends you can get medicines in.
We've looked at the front end. l gather there's an alternative.
- Yes. - This is the the other end?
Yeah.
What would they insert into the backside of a horse?
Er, simple enema, if you thought the horse was bunged up.
So that goes up the back end.
- Shall l turn him round now, John? - l'm not gonna bother, actually.
l haven't got any stuff with me.
Steve, we've got some embrocation that was made earlier.
- Fire away. - Yeah.
- Let's get stuck in. - Yeah.
This is a test of Nick's credibility.
He needs to impress if his new line of veterinary medicines is to succeed.
Here we have some of the finest embrocation.
- Right. - Where am l putting it on?
- We want to rub it all round this shoulder area. - This shoulder area.
- Let's have a go. - Put it on and have a bit of a rub around.
That's it.
- lt just goes straight into the hair, doesn't it? - Yeah.
No, it'll work its way through to the skin.
Just to warm the skin, increase blood flow, then warm the muscles underneath,
again, increasing blood flow.
- And it's massaging the muscle as well. - Yeah, it all helps, yeah, yeah.
Lovely. There you are. You're ready for work tomorrow.
Having finished his cleaning duties, Tom has returned to electrotherapy.
He's changed some parts around and uncovered the problem.
How's it going?
- Finally got it working. - Oh, really?
- Yeah. - What was wrong with it?
A really silly mistake.
You know we attached them there? Well, it was the wrong one.
We needed to do it to that one.
- Yeah. - Oops!
- Do you want to try it? - Yeah, go on.
Hang on. What do l do, hold them in each hand?
Make sure you hold it tight.
- OK, go on. - And tell me if it's too...
- Hold it tight. - l am, l am!
Anything?
Argh!
(Laughs)
Yes!
By the late 1 860s, huge advances in the scientific grasp of illnesses
enabled the pharmacy to come up with products that didn't just claim to cure,
but were actually proven to kill germs dead.
The pharmacy was progressing towards a more professional era.
Blind trust was being replaced by scientific certainty.
What's been amazing is the growth of scientific knowledge during this period,
and how the chemists and druggists have picked it up and been applying it.
Start of the 1 850s, some of them were borderlining on quackery, really.
They didn't know what they were doing.
But the chemists and druggists had taken their knowledge,
been able to apply it to their medicines,
and really begin to make things which are much more likely to work.
That feeling of giving a customer a product you really believed worked must have been great.
l imagine that many pharmacists felt a real boost of confidence, you know?
A slightly stronger position in the community.
And that must have helped them to expand out into a whole new range of products.
But one thing the Victorians understood above all else
was that no matter how great the advances of science and medicine,
the best way to draw a crowd was good marketing.
At last Tom will reveal his new-fangled marvel, the dog-powered pestle and mortar,
giving Nick a chance to catch up with his cure-all customers.
lf they say the worse a medicine tastes the better it does,
l should be really fighting fit, because it was vile.
- l didn't think they were too bad, actually. - They weren't very nice.
A little bit tart, but they went down OK.
Don't you think a Victorian medicine should taste a bit nasty?
lt probably should taste nasty. Yes.
- Have you got a sore throat now? - No. lt hasn't come back.
lt shows they're fantastic. They work for everyone.
- That's healed. This nearly has. - lt's improving.
- So you had a sty on your eye? - Yes, l did.
- Do you still have it? - l do.
Can you see?
- Did your back get better? - My back did get better.
- Fantastic. - But l didn't take the tablets.
(Laughs) Really?
The thing that it did do is give me a bit of extra flatulence.
Oh, yes! Oh, really?
Fortunately, Nick has other products he can turn to,
including Ruth's Macassar hair oil.
Just put a bit on your hand.
- And how long does this take? - Oh...
Well, l don't think we're working in minutes.
lt's Tom's moment to impress the public - and his boss.
- Your big moment, Tilly. - This is it, the big night.
Oh, go on, Tilly, just for us.
Watch it. She'll get it out of your hand any second.
- Go on, Tilly. - Come on.
- Go on, Tilly.
Oh, come on, you know you like cheese. You liked cheese before.
No, you're actually bored of cheese now. You don't want any cheese.
Tom's first PR stunt has drawn a crowd.
And the pestle is finally turning.
Ooh!
But it's not being driven by Tilly the dog.
This is not quite as it was planned, l think, was it?
- No, not entirely. - Not quite.
Not entirely, Nick, no.
Now, as an apprentice you've got a lot to learn, clearly.
You don't think dog-powered pestle and mortars have got a future?
Er...l think if we work on it a bit we could get it going.
But...folks, thank you very much for coming.
l'd like to show you this, the first dog-powered pestle and mortar prototype.
Thank you very much for coming, everyone!
As the team look forward to the next phase of their pharmacy adventure,
trial and error finally gives way to real scientific understanding.
- There you go! - Wow!
Next time on Victorian Pharmacy,
Nick, Ruth and Tom will face an era of new laws and new inventions.
And it will all go off with a bang.
(Bang)
(Cheering and laughter)