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've brought 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 are being highly selective.
They're only trying out safe versions of traditional remedies
on carefully selected customers.
Whoa!
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.
Having followed the evolution of the pharmacy through 50 remarkable years,
Barber & Goodman's high street shop is approaching the end of the 1 9th century.
A period when pharmacies were responding to a fast-changing world of fresh opportunities.
And women, too, were entering a new age.
Now we're sort of coming towards the end of this journey through the 1 9th-century pharmacy,
l ought to have some clothes that are more appropriate.
At the end the century women in business, and, of course, women were in business,
were wanting to emphasise that sort of quality.
So they started dressing in a much more manlike way,
to emphasise their sort of business credentials as such.
So you get women's suits for those who wanted to show that they were in the world of work,
holding their own professionally, alongside the blokes.
Do you know, l think l could run the world of pharmacy dressed like this!
The pharmacy has now moved into a new era of scientific understanding.
Old ideas of what caused disease and how to treat it have faded away
and the foundations of modern medicine are firmly in place.
But while other retailers had stayed fixed on their core business,
pharmacies had seized every opportunity to expand their goods and services.
No longerjust a provider of drugs and remedies,
the Victorian pharmacy now sold a wide range of products
which wouldn't look out of place in today's chemist shops.
This is what the whole of the 1 9th century, in a sense, ends up as, isn't it?
- lt's like a culmination. - Builds up to this, doesn't it?
And all of a sudden we have this scientific knowledge, the pharmacist has the expertise.
We're stocking branded products, probably, for the first time,
we're not making them ourselves.
Pharmacists are starting to look like, well, department stores.
An enterprising pharmacist used his chemical expertise
and the materials he already had on his shelves
to cater for one of the great growing fashions of the age.
Right, that's ready. Could you give me the slide? Thank you very much.
Photographer Terry King has come to demonstrate the latest technology.
Right, if you'd like to stop...
Photography was invented in the very early years of Victoria's reign.
But it wasn't until the 1 880s that the real boom began.
..the names in the window.
Easier-to-use equipment gave amateur photography popular appeal as a hobby.
And that meant big profits for pharmacies, who could supply the chemicals, process pictures
and sell cameras.
OK. l'll just check once more that we've got the focus right.
Slide out. We all ready?
Watch the birdie, keep still while we do it.
- (Click) - Thank you very much, we're done now.
Later, after Terry has set up a dark room,
Tom will be learning how to develop the photograph.
lt's early spring and in the fields around Barber & Goodman's Shropshire pharmacy,
many medicinal plants are beginning to emerge.
Nick and herbalist Eleanor Gallia
are on the hunt for one of the most effective traditional painkillers.
So what's this plant we're seeking?
Meadowsweet. Filipendula ulmaria.
- Beautiful name. - Beautiful name.
l could marry someone called that.
And what was it used for?
Digestive, calming digestive. Very popular in rheumatism, pain relief.
Diaphoretics, so used to help sweat out the early stages of a fever.
- Yeah. - l keep thinking l see little bits of it.
lt's very small at the moment. There's some here, actually.
More of it here.
So the effects depend partly on the time of the year when it's picked,
and obviously the parts of the plant which are picked.
And was that something which herbalists and chemists
and druggists would have paid attention to?
Hugely. Very, very important.
And especially so when, traditionally, the herbalists were collecting their own herbs
and dispensing their own herbs and making up their tinctures and medicines.
- Shall we pick some meadowsweet? - Yes, let's.
Remembering all the time that this is just the very young growth.
And so this would help from diaphoresis, and the sweating of an early fever.
But really the main action, the antacid action,
which has got a lovely, soothing action on the inside of the stomach,
it helps the mucosa, the alkali, which actually protects the gut from the acid
that's produced in the whole digestive process.
And we could make an infusion out of it, make it like a tea?
Yes.
The key of making an infusion is always to make it in a warmed pot.
- With a lid. And that way... - Really?
Yes, very important.
And that way you preserve any of the volatile oils
- Oh, right. - Volatile, coming from ''volare'', to fly.
- Really? l didn't know that. - And so these oils, they're longing to fly away.
You give them hot water and off they go. So you have to quickly catch them with a lid.
Ruth has collected the raw ingredients for a product
that would quickly become a popular ''under the counter'' product.
Now what l'm actually making here are condoms.
This is sheep's intestine. Of course it's the small intestine, not the large intestine.
l can't say that this is the pleasantest of jobs. lt's pretty smelly. Pretty dirty.
So having pulled it apart from the rest of the stomach contents,
l'm just squeezing it so that everything inside comes out.
l mean, this is the intestinal tract. So it's sort of partly digested grass, basically.
Oh! l've ruptured it at the side.
l'm not actually expecting anybody to actually wear this.
So l could think, ''Oh, well, it doesn't matter.'' But l sort of want to get it right!
l quite like the whole experimental thing. l want to make one that works.
So l've got quite a number of processes to go through before this is a finished product.
lt's got to soak for a bit, and then l've got to turn the whole thing inside out,
so that l can make sure that the inside is thoroughly cleaned,
and it's then got to be macerated,
sort of lightly worked and soaked in an alkali substance to sterilise it.
Then l've gotta dry it out over brimstone, sulphur fumes.
Again, we're trying to sterilise the whole thing.
And then l can start shaping it.
So, alkali overnight, and change the alkali in the morning.
Condoms, in one form or another, had been available for centuries,
whether they were made of sheep gut or, after the vulcanisation of rubber, made of rubber.
They'd never had any effect whatsoever on the birth rate.
They had been used almost exclusively to protect men from sexual disease
when they were busily playing around.
Keen to exploit every business opportunity in the 1 890s,
pharmacies began offering another new service to their customers.
(Drilling)
With only one qualified dentist for every eight and a half thousand people
there was money to be made from tooth-pulling.
Retired dentist and dental historian, Professor Stanley Gelbier, has come to train Tom up.
Now, what l don't understand, Stanley, is as a pharmacist's assistant,
why would l be extracting teeth?
Oh, well, that's quite simple.
Because you're gonna be one of a number of people who were extracting teeth
at that particular time of the century.
ln London, many of them were surgeons who also did dentistry almost as a sideline.
As you got outside London you had a variety of other people.
You had blacksmiths - blacksmiths could make the tools in their forge
and then they would use them.
Some were wig-makers, silversmiths, whole load of different people.
There must have been quite a market for it.
l mean, what state were Victorian people's teeth in at this time?
Well, a lot of people had bad teeth. The problem was sugar. As always.
Their mouths were often full of bad teeth.
They had pus draining into their mouth through gum boils, et cetera.
So it was quite horrific and quite smelly.
But the thing is, dentistry was horrific at that time,
so people didn't rush to get their teeth treated until it was absolutely essential.
Right, so shall we just have a go and see how l go about this then?
- So what would l be using here? - Why don't we try out one of the keys?
Which one...?
The brutally efficient dental key was the weapon of choice for extracting diseased teeth.
Some of the earlier ones wouldn't have had a handle, just a straight piece of metal.
And this is more sophisticated, more comfortable. You get a better grip.
- Why don't we try it out on your finger first? - Erm...OK.
So there we are. We won't take your finger off.
And l'm just hooking it over. So we can see that now.
- And you'll feel, as l slowly turn... - Oh! Oh yeah.
Feel the grip. Very tight.
- That's actually, yeah... - So we won't do anymore. Right.
You have a try. Try it on this.
So l need to go round the back here then?
No, you can't do that, because that'll be the back of the head and throat.
- You need to go in through the mouth. - Right.
Which is the front. Get that gripping on the tooth.
- Ooh! - Right?
And then when you grip, quick yank.
- That's it, it's gone. - (Laughs)
Wow! Yeah, you can see how that'd do quite a lot of damage.
That's right.
More often than not, not only the tooth comes out -
sometimes the tooth breaks, sometimes it comes straight out,
but often you damage the gum around the tooth and the bone around the tooth.
But it was really horrific.
Remember this is a day when there were no anaesthetics, so it really was painful.
- lt's not a friendly technology for your mouth? - No, not at all.
To avoid the terror of tooth pulling,
wealthier customers might lavish some care on their teeth with a tooth powder, or dentifrice,
specially prepared by their pharmacist.
What l've been doing is grinding up some myrrh.
And we can use it to make a dentifrice, which is what they used before they used toothpastes.
lt's a powder, a mixture of various things, which l'm gonna be bringing together.
At this stage they didn't use toothpaste because of a practical reason,
which is, in particular, they couldn't get tubes, which we're so used to now.
lt was only when soft metal tubes were made available in the 1 890s,
that they could put toothpaste into these tubes,
and be able to have them sealed, and used in a way which we are so used to now.
First thing l'm gonna do is mix some chalk together with some peppermint oil.
Some of the orris root - this is a plant substance.
We've got some lumps in here, because of the mixture of the oil and the chalk,
sort of binds it together and makes it a bit lumpy.
We'll try and get rid of those. But we will be sieving it before we give it out!
Before we produce it as a final product.
Pharmacists would sometimes add ground cuttlefish, brick dust
and even crushed china to their toothpowders for extra abrasive effect.
We've got some soap flakes coming in as well.
And soap was used, as you can imagine... to clean the teeth.
But the art of mixing is extremely important.
lt's no use having a dilution of something if you end up with a very concentrated part of it
which is poisonous or dangerous in some ways.
l am worried it's going to be given to someone and l'll be rubbing some on my gums
before l'm giving it to anyone else.
And that sense of responsibility was there all the time.
That's why that whole concept of checking is so important in pharmacy.
Because you only have to make a careless error we all make in that aspects of our life
and you can severely harm someone.
But we're getting close to be ready...to try it.
We'll try sieving down a small amount.
That's looking good. Hello, Helen. How are you?
- So this is what l'll be testing then? - lt is indeed, it is indeed.
lt's very kind of you to volunteer to try this.
Helen Wright is a researcher of dental diseases,
and the perfect customer to assess the quality and appeal of Nick's concoction.
lt would be presented in one of these little pots and they'd have a toothbrush.
And l've got a lovely selection of toothbrushes here.
- So are you ready to give this a go? - Yep.
- Well, pick a toothbrush. - l'll have this one here. lt's nice and small.
And give it a try, see how it's... l don't know how much sticks on.
l have to say... Yeah, it seems to stick quite well to the toothbrush.
There we go. Right, here we go.
Let me give it a try as well. Put some on my finger.
You're still standing, that's a good start.
What's it like?
lt's got a definite sort of zing to it, hasn't it?
l can feel the inside of my lips and my gums tingling with the...
- Yes, it's a real... - That'll be the myrrh doing that.
- l'm waiting to see if there's a secondary kick. - You can smell the peppermint.
You can definitely smell... You can't taste it too much.
No. But you can feel it sort of gritty on your teeth as well. l certainly can with my finger.
They feel nice and clean using the brush, though.
- Yeah. - l think we might have a product here.
l've got a pot here for you to take away.
- And a toothbrush as well. - Thank you very much.
Thanks very much indeed for coming in. Bye-bye.
Nick is on his way to try out the natural painkilling plant, meadowsweet,
that he and Eleanor picked.
- Hello, Eleanor. - Hello, Nick. Perfect timing, kettle's just boiled.
Oh, fantastic!
So...any chance of some of this meadowsweet tea, then?
For sure. For sure.
See what it was like being a Victorian taking a natural medicine.
Yes.
For you to experience it...just warm the pot.
lt was quite difficult in Victorian times with pain control.
l mean, partly pain was thought to be there, sent there by God, so there's an issue about it.
- As a punishment. - Yes.
When they introduced chloroform to stop the pain of childbirth,
there was a lot of religious leaders who were against it.
Saying that it was stopping God's work being done.
So there was quite a barrier to it.
- And so the... - Ow!
The movement against it was quite strong.
People were saying, ''This is against God's way.''
Most of the natural products that were used for pain control...
The only natural products were basically opium and cannabis.
And Queen Victoria had cannabis for her period pains.
What did the vicars say about that?
l don't know. l think perhaps they didn't tell them!
Fantastic.
- Thank you. - Meadowsweet tea.
(Sniffs) Mmm!
- That's quite restorative as just a smell, isn't it? - Yes, it's lovely. Almondy.
Mmm!
- Good health, Nick. - Cheers.
Good health. This is very good.
l was prepared for a bit of a witch's brew, but this is good!
For thousands of years medicinal plants like meadowsweet and also willow
had been used to control pain.
But by the end of the 1 9th century scientists had discovered that the plant's painkilling properties
were due to a chemical called salicylic acid.
And it could be extracted using the latest laboratory techniques.
By isolating salicylic acid from meadowsweet and willow
they could produce a range of painkilling medicines.
lt is the key ingredient in modern, non-prescription painkillers such as aspirin.
This is a source of salicylic acid, it's willow bark.
Right. Just from normal willow trees?
Normal willow trees, and that, if you chew it...
lt's quite bitter, isn't it?
Hippocrates in 400 BC was prescribing an infusion of willow leaves, not the bark -
because you use the leaves of the willow tree as well as the bark -
to ease the pain of childbirth.
Two and a half thousand years we've known that this is a painkiller.
Yeah. Salicylic acid can reduce pain, it also is antipyretic.
Right. So it reduces fever if you're hot and feverish.
lt's anti-inflammatory.
Right, so things like rheumatism, or where you've got an inflamed area of your body.
Gums can be inflamed, all sorts of areas, yeah.
lt could help treat that. lt's a bit of a wonder drug.
lt is, isn't it?
lt's still used in things like wart treatments.
- lt's used in strong concentrations... - Really?
..to like 60%, to burn off erm...warts.
The first step is to grind this bark down.
lf Nick and scientist Mike Bullivant can extract the salicylic acid from the willow bark
then Nick can make up painkillers to sell in the pharmacy.
- Having ground it, the next step... - How are we gonna get it out?
- ..is to add some ether. - Ether? Why are we using ether?
The ether is a solvent that will dissolve the salicylic acid.
Uh-huh.
l've got to just let this settle.
There's lots of little bits of dust in there
which l'll allow to settle and then l'll just tap off the ether.
With the salicylic acid in. Fantastic.
As Ruth is discovering, making a sheep gut condom requires patience.
This has definitely changed in the alkali.
lt's certainly bleached it.
lt's much paler than it was,
and it seems to have loosened all the mucus membrane.
And the next thing l've got to do with it, so it says,
is to sterilise... well, is to smoke it in brimstone smoke.
lt doesn't say what for. l think it's to sterilise it.
So if l just... stick this on the line for a minute.
Bleurgh!
Brimstone, of course, is sulphur.
So l went and got some of that out of the lab.
Just plain old sulphur.
And l've got to burn it.
l also found in the lab this Victorian smoke vessel.
So what l've got to do is make the smoke inside there with all of that hanging in there.
(Hums)
So the fumes that you get off sulphur are quite poisonous.
Which is good, in that it kills the bugs,
you've just got to be careful it doesn't kill the people too, while you're at it.
OK, that's starting to look a bit more active, isn't it?
ln it goes.
Lid on.
Quite weird, isn't it?
Making condoms, and it looks like some sort of laboratory experiment you did at school.
The fumes seem to be clearing, so presumably that's that.
Just got to wash them out now.
And cut into lengths.
l don't want to offend my customers by making them of an inappropriate size.
OK. Tied.
Oh, my goodness. l don't want to do this bit!
Urgh! l really don't want to do this bit!
l've got to inflate them, it says, so that they can dry to size.
That is just too weird for words.
Hang it on the line and let it dry.
The finished sheep gut condom would not have been cheap.
So the custom, generally, was to wash them after use and keep for next time.
Towards the end of the 1 9th century, a new alternative to tooth pulling arrived.
For those who could afford it there was now the option of a filling,
thanks to the dental treadle drill.
So, l think the only thing we haven't talked about is this instrument here.
- Right. - ls it the treadle drill?
This is called a treadle drill.
Till about 1 870 you didn't even have this sort of drill.
And it worked simply on the basis you put your foot up and down on the treadle,
this revolves, comes right round here,
drives gears in there, right down to the handpiece.
Oh. lt's a skill getting it started.
lt is indeed. Often if you twist that, it saves time.
- So you start that off like that. - You've got to keep up the motion.
Ooh!
- Yeah, there we go. - Not easy. You're doing well.
- You've got to get your timing right. - That's correct.
You've got to concentrate on that, on your hand, on the patient's mouth.
And all the time try to instil some sort of confidence in the patient, l suppose?
You've got to think about so many things at once.
The thing is, the faster you go, the better it is,
cos there's less vibration on the tooth. Still quite a lot.
Try and get a bit of speed up. There we go.
You've got the speed, that's good, keep it up.
And slowly get that onto the tooth.
That's good. The faster the better.
- Oh, you can really get a... - Yeah.
- Kind of vicious, isn't it? Brilliant. - Starting to cut.
Ooh, missed a little bit.
Oh, straight in.
Great. That's looking really professional now.
Think of the vibration you can feel, and the patient will feel it even more.
- Terrible vibration. - The whole jaw's moving, right.
Yeah.
Now you can see the dust coming up.
Feel a bit like a carpenter.
You have to remember not to blow if it's a patient's mouth.
Yes, that's a good point.
You'd have a chip syringe, just to blow it.
And it's really difficult to be accurate there. You go all over the place.
Absolutely.
Sorry, sir, l've scratched your teeth a bit.
And you're dealing with a patient who'll be moving around the whole time.
You've knocked the tooth out.
Oh, no.
lt's like, ''Sir, it'll get better. lt'll just grow back, sir.''
But you get the idea anyway? Now you know what it is.
Brilliant.
Having this done must have been quite expensive, then?
lt was expensive.
So much so that poor people wouldn't have had fillings, usually.
They just would have waited until they had awful toothache,
had the tooth taken out, and that was it.
And indeed there were some people even had, perhaps a bit later in the century,
had teeth out for their 21 st birthday.
Particularly females.
And the idea was they'd have the teeth taken out before they got married,
and then there would be no expense for the future husband.
Really?
All the teeth gone, that was the end of it.
Oh, wow. So would you get dentures or...?
Well, if you were poor, no, you didn't have dentures.
That was something the middle classes and rich people had.
- Thanks very much for your advice. - My pleasure.
l think l might have another go on this.
- You do that. - So let me just...
Don't let anyone know.
(Drill whirrs)
Wow! l'm getting better at it now.
You are. Yeah.
l think l would have been an over-enthusiastic dentist.
l think l would have quite enjoyed looking for the slightest problem
that l could go and fix,
so l think l'd have a problem in terms of laying off the teeth.
Cos l really enjoyed using that drill.
ln the lab, Nick and Mike are extracting the pain-killing drug salicylic acid
from the willow bark.
What's the stuff in the funnel there?
A little wad of cotton wool.
l'm passing the solution through a wad of cotton wool,
and that will filter off the fibres.
Or any fibres that are suspended in the ether solution.
But what's coming through the filter funnel
should be an ether solution of salicylic acid and other things.
Right.
And the next step is getting rid of those other things,
so we're left with as pure salicylic acid as possible.
So do you think this would have been worth it for pharmacists
in terms of the cost of the ingredients and stuff,
and the yield of salicylic acid they'd get out?
Well, the yield's really low. l suspect we'll get a very low yield.
Don't expect too much.
But l think it would have been economical if you had the time.
- Because the willow bark is free. - Yeah.
Takes time and patience doesn't it, this?
Like life.
Take your time.
l'm separating in a minute.
So in goes the ether and the salicylic acid and other things.
And other things.
To isolate the salicylic acid from all the other chemicals in the bark
it's first turned into a salt by adding sodium carbonate,
better known as washing soda.
lf l give it a good shake, that's just getting the two layers mixed up as much as you can.
The two layers are separated out.
Perfect.
Then Mike adds dilute sulphuric acid to turn the salt into solid salicylic acid.
So...
Whoa!
See, that's neutralising the sodium carbonate
and converting it back to acid, see?
Mm.
lt's changing the colour.
And do you see that white solid coming down?
- Do you see that? - Absolutely.
That's salicylic acid that's forming. Can you see?
- Yeah. The white salicylic acid. - The white, foamy solid.
So it's not looking too bad at the moment.
lt's heartening that we've got some salicylic acid.
lt's amazing, just three or four stages, we're going from pieces of plant,
all the way through to a pure chemical.
Er, well, a kind of pure chemical.
We'll leave it at that, l think. l've added enough acid.
Just leave that to settle.
Fantastic.
Without effective birth control in the 1 9th century,
unwanted pregnancies were all too common.
However, pills were becoming available that regulated women's periods
and a side effect of these pills was that, if taken during pregnancy,
they could trigger a miscarriage.
The lurid safety warnings on these medicines
gave them an obvious appeal to women desperate to end their pregnancies.
A fact that was not lost on many pharmacists, who did a roaring trade in ''female pills''.
lt wouldn't be hard to go and openly buy female pills,
because they had this perfectly acceptable use.
The knowledge of how to use them to produce an abortion, that was the dodgy thing.
That was illegal,
and considered to be immoral, and against the teachings of the Church,
and huge social pressure against that sort of knowledge.
lt was quite suppressed.
lt was also very dangerous,
taking totally unregarded amounts of things that are toxic in your system.
People got into a terrible state.
An awful lot of women died trying to induce an abortion.
ln the pharmacy's display case,
Ruth has discovered another disguised attempt at contraception.
This is one of the most exciting things l think l've found in the pharmacy.
A universal douche.
lt may not sound much.
But it is, in fact, one of the first widely available forms of contraception.
You would never know from the packaging.
lt's very, very carefully...general.
lt says ''Universal douche.
For directions see inside lid.''
And it's only when you open and read it that the word universal ''vaginal'' douche comes in.
And that's it, this could be openly on the shelves,
because there were medical uses for a vaginal douche,
for the hygiene of keeping the vagina clean.
You sort of had to be in the know that it was also a form of contraception.
For hundreds of years, douches had been one of the most popular forms of birth control.
ln reality they were unlikely to work and might even have increased the chances of conception.
Contraception was probably not on the minds of most of the men buying sheep-gut condoms,
like the ones Ruth has made.
Purchased mainly to protect against disease,
rather than to guard against pregnancy,
a gentleman customer would expect the pharmacist to supply them in confidence.
Of course, this would very much be a sort of, a discretionary trade, one amongst gentlemen.
People really would not appreciate having their private lives known about and discussed,
so, l mean, it's really about being able to trust the person you get these products from.
And really, you know, there's two things,
it's, one, you don't want anyone to know that you've bought them in the first place.
And secondly, that you want to be able to trust the actual products themselves
and know that they'll work.
ln a time when most people walked everywhere, relief from foot pain was in high demand.
Local businessman Richard Eley
has come to see what the Victorian Pharmacy could offer for his problem.
Well, l have a rather painful but rather small corn on the inside of my little toe.
Oh, l see, yeah.
You can sort of see a sore area, yeah.
The pain goes from my little toe, up to my knee,
to the point where l have considered having my little toe amputated.
- Really? As bad as that? - Yes.
lt offers Ruth an opportunity to find another use for salicylic acid.
ln stronger concentrations the chemical Nick and Mike have made as a painkiller
can also be used to remove warts and corns.
Well, the Victorian wonder drug for this,
the thing that they thought was going to transform the care, was salicylic acid.
Ah, salicylic acid?
And in fact, l've got...
Well, actually, this is a modern preparation of salicylic acid,
so there's a few other things in here to sort of carry the acid.
And you could have it in a liquid form,
- or have it put on corn plasters that you applied. - Ah, yes.
And you'd get a little tin with sort of medicated corn plasters.
Right.
So it's just...
Just at the side of the...
- Just there? - Yeah.
That little area. There you go.
Then that should sort of whiten as it dries.
You get a sort of skin over it,
which sort of holds the active ingredient against the affected part.
So it does actually burn the skin away?
- Yeah. lt's sort of quite... - Slowly.
Slowly kills the whole area and then allows the virus, basically, to be lifted out.
- So... - Now you see it.
- Now you see it. Now you don't. - Now you don't.
Basically you take that away and a drop every day on the same spot.
Drop every day keeps the corn away.
That's the theory.
Nick is ready to use the same chemical,
the salicylic acid he and Mike made,
to prepare some cachets,
thin rice paper capsules that he can fill with the finished drug.
As a modern pharmacist, it's a skill he's never needed to learn before.
- Here you are. Here's your salicylic acid. - Ah, fantastic, mate. Well done.
Last time you saw it, it was in a filter funnel and looked like that.
l said l'd purify it by recrystalising it.
- That was the result. - They're fantastic.
Yeah, really long needles.
- Well, you wanted it really pure? - Yeah.
So l took that, the needles, and recrystalised them,
and l ended up with really pure needles, which l've ground up.
You asked for it ground and that's it.
- So there's your pure salicylic acid. - Fantastic.
l'm going to stick them in these cachets.
l'm going to have to mix that.
lt'll be such a small amount in each one,
l'm going to mix it with something which is OK to swallow, like citric acid, grind them together.
Make a nice mixture, and then we just put an amount in each of these caches.
Mm-hm.
And then we put the other half in this, close it up, and they stick together.
You know those sweets, Flying Saucers, they were called, like, or Spaceships...
- With sherbet in? - Yeah. Two halves of rice paper
with sherbet in the middle.
Used to stick them in your mouth and they'd dissolve and the sherbet would be released.
Cos this rice paper is, you know, as you know, once it gets wet and...
Yeah.
Bit of acid on it, it'll fall apart and release the powder.
- Cor, wonderful. - By the fraction.
Well, there you are.
Don't use either of those, cos they're impure.
- That's what you work with. - Thanks very much. See you later.
No worries.
See how this goes.
This'll be the top half of each cache.
They're quite delicate, so l'm a bit worried about cracking them.
l don't quite know how far to press them in. They're quite a tight fit.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah.
There's a dampness there.
Press these down and hope!
That's all we can do at this stage!
And now, fingers crossed.
Yay!
Look at that!
Fantastic.
And now you use this thing to push them out as well.
l'm really pleased about this!
l didn't think it would work anywhere near as well as that.
Look at that. Perfect caches.
- Holding together. - (Powder shakes)
You can hear the powder inside.
You know, what we've been through is just a remarkable process, really,
which doesn't happen nowadays.
lt's the sort of thing which everything's manufactured and standardised and so on.
But we started with willow bark, a natural product,
and we chemically extracted the key element,
and we've put the salicylic acid in here, in this dose form,
ready to give to a patient,
or as a Victorian person would give to a patient.
Salicylic acid was an effective painkiller but could be a stomach irritant.
The big breakthrough came in 1 899 when aspirin,
a chemically altered version of it with less side effects, was released onto the market.
Whatever the content, cachets allowed pharmacists to dispense a premeasured dose.
The practical problem for the patient was swallowing them.
Student Tom Chandler has volunteered to try one out.
- Powders are put inside. - Right.
And two halves are just...
The texts of the time say just take it down like an oyster.
OK. ls there any more advice than that you can give me?
- lf you're not an oyster eater, it's not helpful. - No!
You're gonna have to work it out. Willing to give it a go?
- Yeah, why not? - There you go.
- Erm, so... - So dunk it in the water.
- Just get it a bit wet? - That's it. Yeah.
OK. Then...
- ln your mouth, back of the tongue. - OK.
And swig it down, swallow it.
Oh!
Feels like it's stuck about here!
- Oh, my goodness! - lsn't big, isn't it?
- Yeah. - You wouldn't get a modern tablet that size.
But as it softens with the water and the moisture of your body,
it'll start deforming and be easier to go down.
Yeah, l can feel it sort of like, moving!
- Whereabouts is it now? - lt's about here.
- Right. - lt's getting slightly lower!
lt'll work its way down.
And in reality you'd have a biscuit or a piece of bread with it or something like that,
if it was stuck, and then it physically knocks it down into the...
- into the stomach. - There we go!
And then dissolves there, and releases the drug, and then cures your headache, hopefully.
Thank you.
Bet you're glad science moved on and we have aspirin tablets.
Oh, yes, l'm so glad!
Little small things, rather than those, yeah, definitely.
Photographer Terry King has set up a dark room in the lab.
Tom is about to learn that the life of an amateur photographer could be hazardous.
OK, Terry, we've taken a photograph. What do we do next?
Well, what we have to do now is to develop the photograph.
And things have changed.
ln the late 1 880s things became a lot safer.
But before that, say in the 1 870s, 1 860s,
the plates would have been covered with something called collodion.
To hold the silver solutions.
And collodion was actually made out of gun cotton, you know, the stuff that goes bang.
Right!
Erm, dissolved in ether, which makes you go to sleep.
And it tended to shorten your life.
So as an amateur photographer,
l could come into the pharmacy and get this stuff and do it a lot more safely,
and it's the sort of stuff we'd be selling a lot more of towards the end of...
Exactly. l mean, in fact it was even so safe that people used to do it on the kitchen table.
- Right, great. - So we can sell a lot of this stuff.
And so now let's get on with it, and let's make this place dark.
Great. OK.
l'll get these drapes down.
Safer chemicals made photography much easier, and far less risky,
and pharmacists were able to profit from the new trade.
There we go. Here we are.
- So is this the moment of truth, then? - The moment of truth.
Let's see if we've got something on it.
There we are.
Oh, wow!
- l think that's pretty good, don't you? - Great!
- lt's nice, that. - Yeah, it's quite good.
Wow!
l think we should feel fairly pleased with ourselves.
- Great. So, do we need to hang this up, then? - Let's hang it up.
Shall l hold this here?
OK.
- Right on the edge, yeah? - Slide it in.
- Brilliant. - There we are.
- OK. - Lovely.
Brilliant.
The negative must now be left to dry before the print can be made.
Towards the end of Victoria's reign,
an emerging middle class with an increased disposable income
looked to the pharmacy for more than just cures.
They wanted to be pampered too.
The pharmacists'expertise with chemicals
left them well placed to take advantage of this consumer boom.
Perfumier Alec Lawless is going to give Ruth a lesson in perfume-making.
You've brought some amazing stuff in here, Alec.
This is things from the perfumier's trade, yeah?
Things for making perfumes.
l suppose in the earlier periods, perfume was very much the reserve of the super-rich, yeah?
Yes. Yes.
And then that changes now?
lt changes dramatically.
What characterised this age was the beginning of mass production and branding.
You could sell an eau de Cologne
and nobody was going to say you can't call that an eau de Cologne.
And so there were several perfumes like that.
One was called Jockey Club.
- There was another one called Mille Fleur. - Right, that sounds a bit nicer.
And another called New Mown Hay.
So basically these names became known as perfume.
The other thing was that the pharmacist,
because they'd been university trained,
and they liked experimenting,
and they had this whole cornucopia,
and a lot of the things that were used in apothecaries for medicine
were also perfume ingredients.
l recognise most of the things.
We've got a drawer full of myrrh sitting over there.
There they go.
That's right.
- That's sandalwood. - Sandalwood.
- We've got that up that end. - There you go.
Many of these are sort of ingredients
that we'd have, medicinally, in the pharmacy.
How easy would it be for us as sort of,
you know, local pharmacists to invent a perfume of our own?
Well, a lot of them did.
And l'm sure like a lot of recipes at the time...
These recipes come down,
but it's basically what you had in the fridge!
Could you give us some advice on how to make our own?
What sort of things should we do
and perhaps even a name... what sort of name would be appropriate?
Maybe we should pay homage to Queen Victoria in some way?
Erm, and that would tie in very nicely with parts of the Empire.
lndia.
l mean, this is East lndian sandalwood.
Finest, erm...
Cor, flipping heck, that's powerful!
lt's one of the finest of all perfume ingredients,
and of course Queen Victoria's the Empress of lndia.
- Empress of lndia. - Empress of lndia.
l have to say, that sounds a lot nicer than Jockey Club!
Now all we've got to decide is how to make it smell nice.
Well, there were two oils and essences
that were highly revered at the time
but still not used in perfumery because of the exorbitant cost.
One of them was rose otto, and the other one was sandalwood from Mysore.
So we're going to use both of those, because we want our perfume to be really posh.
Yes!
But also relatively cheap to make that we can sell for a high profit.
Oh, good point.
OK. Well, we can put some other thi...
- We can put coriander in. - That sounds cheaper.
- Cos that's a really nice little top note. - Yeah.
The daft thing is, you know, when l said l was doing this, the boys want to have a go too!
Boys and perfume? Whoo!
- Nick and Tom both want to have a go too. - lt could happen.
We thought we might sort of all have a go.
Why don't we split the perfume into top notes, middle notes and base notes,
and then each of you can have a play around
and come up with the combination for each of those that you like the best.
OK. l'll have a go with that.
Pharmacists were creating perfumes because they had the raw materials there.
They had the plant products, the aromatic products, the essences.
And also they needed to make money.
- l've got some money to deposit. - Certainly, sir. Thank you.
lf you look in the Chemist+Druggist of the time,
you'll see, you know, whole pages of bankruptcies and so on.
lt was an expensive thing to be in.
You needed to stock your shop, you needed to buy the shop or rent it and so on.
They had a lot of outgoings.
And they needed the income to keep going as well,
so they were diversifying into any areas to do with their knowledge,
to do with their knowledge of chemicals and so on, which allowed them to make income.
- Thank you very much. - Have a good day.
- Bye-bye. - Thank you, sir.
ln the lab, Tom's photography lesson is about to reveal a snap shot of Victorian society.
He's mixing up gum arabic, a gluelike substance sometimes used in food preparation,
with the light sensitive chemical potassium dichromate and a coloured pigment.
Together they create a photographic emulsion that reacts with sunlight,
a technique that was particularly attractive to the discerning photographer.
So this idea of, l don't know, making up, almost a paint, isn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
This is the sort of thing amateur photographers would be doing,
towards the end of the 1 9th century.
Well, what was happening was that all the amateur photographers had got Mr Kodak.
Mr George Eastman.
And all the posh people thought,
''Oh, dear, all these nasty lower orders are making photographs.
And we've got to do something more arty.''
And this was a way of making photographs look like paintings.
lt's essentially a photographic watercolour.
What we need to do now, Tom, is for you, this time, to coat the paper.
- OK? - Ready.
Ready, off you go.
That's it.
- Want more? - Continue, yes.
That's it.
lt really is just like painting, isn't it?
- lt's amazing how close to painting it is. - lt's just like painting a front door.
Right, that's fine. Well done.
Tom and Terry have reached the final stage of the photographic process.
To create the finished picture,
the gum arabic mixture needs to be placed under the negative and exposed to the sun.
l mean, photography's absolutely essential
to so many different activities in the late 1 9th century, isn't it?
- l mean... - Well, yeah.
Right from the beginning it was everything from military, spying,
taking photographs from balloons...
Practically any activity, human activity, you can think of,
photography was involved in one way or another, just as it is today.
The sunlight hardens the gum arabic mixture,
binding the pigment to the paper and creating an image which looks rather like a watercolour.
The popularity of this artistic method with wealthier photographers
added to the pharmacy's already lucrative photographic business.
l can now remove the glass and the negative, and there we have...
- And there we go. - We have an image.
And what we want to do now is to wash away the softer parts,
so that we get an image with more contrast.
Many of the developments in photography actually came from pharmacists.
So pharmacists are sort of, they're involved with the technology, in developing...
- They were involved. - All the chemicals. All these different things.
And it's the sort of thing maybe, l don't know,
if you're really good at this particular side of the pharmacy business,
do you think you could set up on your own maybe?
Oh, l don't think there's any doubt about that.
They supplied the professional photographer.
Oh, yeah!
And of course, millions of amateur photographers throughout the world.
Right, shall we take this and hang it up to dry?
l think that's a good idea!
Right!
Nick, Ruth and Tom are receiving a crash course in perfume making
as they try to create a scent that would have appealed to the Victorian nose.
1 9th-century perfumiers applied scientific ideas to the ancient art of perfume making.
They used musical terms to describe how a scent should be constructed.
This symphony of smell was made up of three separate mixtures of fragrant oils
known as the top, middle and base notes, which evaporate at different rates on the skin.
Perfumier Alec Lawless has given Tom the job of making up the long lasting base note.
lt seems like two of these are a lot stronger than the other three.
Yes.
And l was wondering, if l'm sort of making, is it the base note?
Yes. Yeah.
- What's the idea? - These things are the most tenacious,
and the reason for that is that they're heavier molecules
- than either the top or the middle notes. - OK.
So they're gonna retard the evaporation of the perfume.
They're gonna make it last.
- So it's the bits that come out last basically? - That's right.
This'll be what's left on the skin. Now, all of these...
Nick has been entrusted with the most expensive ingredients.
The smell is so intense...
- that it's sort of driving out anything else. - OK.
These are the middle notes, so it's the floral heart, the main personality of the perfume.
- And these guys are really expensive. - Right.
The powerful fragrances are proving a little too much for Ruth.
The lady is very sensitive and delicate.
You told me these were not overpowering. You lied.
- Oh, really? - They are...
Sorry.
OK.
Well, you're obviously incredibly sensitive.
Well, l smelled all four of them first.
By which time my nose was beginning to burn.
Yeah.
And then l thought, well, the one l liked best still was the bergamot oil,
so l put more of that in,
and you'd mentioned that the lime was strong.
- So l put least of that in. - Yes.
l'm going to go for that one.
l suppose l ought to smell it, then.
- OK. So... - They're still being masked by those.
l have to get somewhere where there isn't already a smell!
- Oh, bless! - Ooh!
That's very orangey.
lf the team's efforts can be combined into a popular perfume,
then the Empress of lndia scent could be a real money-spinner for the pharmacy.
Now in order to have some sort of structure, these would be blended.
Roughly, 50% of it's going to be the floral heart, the number two.
Right. Yeah.
- 20% the top notes and 30% the bass notes. - Right.
- Just as a rule of thumb. - Fantastic.
l'm also going to put some musk in there, and one or two other things, and then...
And make it into entirely your own...
Well, they were too expensive to let you play with!
Alec blends the three sets of fragrant oils together to produce the finished perfume.
So if you wave it around a bit to encourage the oxygen to, erm...
Accelerate the evaporation.
l don't need to. l can smell it.
l didn't smell either of your two independently,
and this certainly smells very different from mine. When it's blended.
- That's all right. - lt is quite complex.
- Smells of benzene. - That's quite nice.
Yes!
Let's compare... l've been looking forward to this all day.
Yes, absolutely!
Hm.
l think it's really funny that it's you chaps enjoying the perfume more than me!
TOM: lt's great fun.
l think all we need to do now is to get that properly bottled and a nice label on it.
Yeah.
- And then start making some money out of it. - Exactly.
We can have different dilutions for different people.
- Yes. - Different classes.
That's right.
Here we have the upper-class dilution!
Ruth is keen to find out if the Empress of lndia will be a hit with the ladies of the town.
Good morning.
Hello.
Oh, hello!
Hello.
l wonder if you could help me.
l'm doing a bit of market research about perfume.
Yeah.
l love perfume.
- Really? - Yes, l do, yes.
That's a very fine bottle.
lt's nice, isn't it?
Let me know what you really think.
lt's quite a potent one, so just have a little sniff first, see what you think.
Oh, yeah, it is.
- lt's quite strong. - Strongish, yeah.
Oh, it's lovely.
- Yeah? - lt's quite flowery.
lf l just pop just a tiny little bit on there.
Yeah.
Mmm!
Uh! Oh!
- lt is a strong one, isn't it? - Mmm.
lt's growing on me.
Well, that's a good sign.
Mmm.
- Not nice, is it? - Not nice.
l think it's more for you than for me.
One of the things the perfumier was saying to me was that it smells different on everybody.
Oh, it's beautiful.
Yeah?
- lt smells expensive. - Your sort of thing?
Yes, l like it very much.
ln the Victorian period you begin to see perfumes getting a little bit cheaper,
so that people like schoolmistresses could afford, occasionally, a little bit of perfume.
l'm going to have some for Christmas.
You think this is something that you would actually enjoy,
that would stand up against a modern perfume?
Oh, definitely, it's quite a strong, powerful smell. Yes, and it's quite flowery, which is lovely.
We were going to call it Empress of lndia. What do you think about that?
l think that sounds really royal and regal. l like that.
Tom's finished photograph is ready for hanging.
Just had our photograph framed.
l'm really proud of it actually.
And it's such a long process to make, all very much more involved than l imagined.
lt was more sort of painting a watercolour than anything else.
l mean, very different to the point and click photography we do today.
And the idea is we'll put this on the wall and people will come in and say,
''Oh, that looks great.
How did you, you know, how do l get to make something like that?''
Yes.
See the shop and then us in the middle there, looking a little bit like ghosts, you know.
Yeah.
Nick, Ruth and Tom have traced the evolution of the pharmacy
through more than 60 years of Victoria's reign,
reliving a revolution in public healthcare that put a chemist's shop in every town in Britain.
Today's modern pharmacy stocks a vast range of consumer goods
and this is a direct result of the entrepreneurial spirit of the Victorian pharmacists.
By the death of Queen Victoria in 1 901,
the pharmacy was forever established as the high street institution we know today.
l'm about finished back here.
- How are you doing? - Yeah, l think l'm pretty much done here.
Yeah.
Been a long journey, hasn't it?
l'm never going to go into a pharmacy with the same eyes again.
Never.
You take it for granted. lt's one of those things that's always there.
- There you are! - Look at that!
That's rising!
l think l value the skills and the experience and the expertise of pharmacists
so much more than l did before we started.
The 1 9th century, there's so many different things going on.
You know, it's a place of scientific exploration and commercial development,
and all these different themes you don't think about when you're just going to the pharmacy.
Go on, Tilly, just for us.
l think l'll take away pride in the fact that chemists are retail environments.
Here we have some.
And that's not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be proud of.
lt's something which brought health to the masses in an accessible, effective way,
and it's something we should be proud of and celebrating.
(Clapping)
(Cheering)
TOM: l suppose we'd better head off, then. - Yeah. Leave this lovely place behind.
Right, well.
- lt's sad to see it go, really. - lt is. lt is... l'll be very sad.
TOM: lt'll be sad not being part of this Victorian world any more.
lt is time to go, though, isn't it?