Images courtesy of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
British Society for the History of Pharmacy
BSHP

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 Events

Our events programme covers a wide range of pharmacy history topics.  We hold 3 evening meetings each year, and annual conference, a summer visit, and a joint meeting with a School of Pharmacy.  Click on an event below to find out more.
 
ANNUAL CONFERENCE
George Marshall Medical Museum, Worcester
Saturday 5 April 2025 9.30am
Cost: £45 (plus booking fee)
 

Join us in Worcester for our annual conference with a packed programme of talks, socialising, our Annual General Meeting, and plenty of time to explore the George Marshall Medical Museum.

Programme
 

Friday 4 April 2025
3:00pm Optional private visit to Worcester Cathedral Library to view medieval medical manuscripts, monastic infirmary rolls, and selection of medical publications.

Additional fee of £10 (plus TicketSource booking fee). Limited places.

Note: The medieval library is located up a spiral staircase of 46 steps
7:00pm

Optional dinner in central Worcester

Saturday 5 April 2025
9:30am

Arrival and refreshments

10:00am

Welcome from BSHP President, Professor Mark Nesbitt

10:05am

Early modern plague amulets
Dr Chris Duffin

10:30am

Sir Edwin Landseer's part in pharmacy history
Briony Hudson

10:55am

Stomatin from the laboratory of pharmacist Mr Milan Kovaćević
Jelena Manojlović

11:20am

Coffee and tea

11:35am

Culpeper on compound medicines in the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis 1618
Dr Graeme Tobyn

12:00 noon

“Serum Medicines Meet the Market”
Edward J Wawrzynczak

12:25pm

Lunch

1:00pm

Guided tour of the George Marshall Medical Museum by Curator Louise Price and free time to explore

2:30pm

Refreshments available

3:00pm

Presentation of Leslie Matthews medals to Dr Anne Stobart and Dr Chris Duffin

3:15pm

Researching historical medicinal recipes - collaboration and links between household medicine practitioners and apothecaries
Dr Anne Stobart, Leslie Matthews Medal recipient 2025

4:00pm

Annual General Meeting

5:00pm

Depart museum

7:00pm Optional dinner in central Worcester

Optional visit

There is an optional private group visit to Worcester Cathedral Library at 3pm on Friday 4 April to see a specially selected range of medical material including medieval manuscripts, monastic infirmary rolls and medical publications.  This visit is limited to 15 places at an additional charge of £10.  Please note that the medieval library is located up a spiral staircase of 46 steps. If this presents accessibility issues for you, please indicate on your booking form as we may be able to organise an alternative viewing arrangement.  

Alternatively, you may wish you make your own visit to The Infirmary Museum. Curator Harriet Hathaway will be available on the afternoon Friday 4 April, with the opportunity to view the boardroom where the precursor to the British Medical Association was founded. There is no charge for this visit, and no need to pre-book.

Optional dinners

There will be optional dinners in central Worcester on Friday 4 April and Saturday 5 April. Please indicate when booking whether you would like to join these meals. Further details including cost and menus will be shared for confirmation once we have an idea of numbers.

Where can I stay? 

Delegates are responsible for making their own accommodation bookings.  
 
Our suggested hotel is the Worcester Whitehouse in the city centre, where a number of committee members will be based.


Other options include:

Any queries?
BSHP conference organiser, Briony Hudson conference@bshp.org

Deadline for bookings: Friday 14 March 2025 

For full details and booking transfer to our TicketSource page: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/pharmhist/bshp-conference-2025/e-jkdxbr

 

 

BSHP conference 2025 abstracts

Early Modern Plague Amulets. Dr Chris Duffin (Scientific Associate, The Natural History Museum)

In lieu of effective treatments for plague during the waves of infection experienced throughout Europe from the 14th to the 18th century, many desperately sought protection by the wearing of amulets. Some items (unicorn horn, bezoar stones, jacinth, amber, serpentinite and smaragdus) were commended against the plague without further explanation. Seemingly the most popular were poisonous materials which were believed to withdraw and concentrate pestilential poison from the patient, emit effluvia which wrestled with the toxins in the patient, or block disease-causing miasmas from entering the body. These included arsenic in its various forms (native, orpiment, realgar, white arsenic or arsenic trioxide), dried toads, live spiders enclosed in walnut shells and quicksilver (liquid mercury) held in a hazel nut or a quill. Often worked into small plague cakes and ‘zenextons’, different combinations of these materials were hung in a bag over the chest. A lively debate concerning the safe use of these materials took place in the early 1600s. An Austro-Bavarian approach involved the use of printed papers or ‘Pestblätter’. These combined diverse counter-reformation Catholic imagery embellished with sequences of letters (‘characteres’) separated by latin crosses, acting as acrostics for anti-pestilential appeals and blessings sanctioned by the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

Sir Edwin Landseer's part in pharmacy history. Briony Hudson (Amersham Museum/independent pharmacy historian)

Jacob Bell (1810-1859) was the founder of the Pharmaceutical Society, Member of Parliament for St. Albans and a successful pharmacist. What is less well known is that he was also business manager for his friend Sir Edwin Landseer, and at the centre of a circle of fashionable artists that included William Powell Frith, William Etty and Rosa Bonheur.  How did this pharmacist politician become an influential art patron? Through the 18 works that Bell bequeathed to the nation, and in particular his relationship with Landseer, this talk explores the interplay between pharmacy history and the Victorian artworld.

Stomatin from the laboratory of pharmacist Mr Milan Kovacevic. Jelena Manojlović (Senior curator, Museum for the History of Pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Belgrade)

The son of Mr Bogoljub Kovacevic, Milan, was the heir and third owner of the pharmacy. As had been expected, he passed the apothecary assistant exam successfully on the 5th of October 1906. He graduated from his studies in Vienna on the 20th of July 1910 and was awarded a master’s degree in pharmacy. At the beginning of the Great War, he was recruited in the military health department. After the war, he renovated the ruined pharmacy and soon after leased it, and eventually sold it in 1922. He then moved to Belgrade, where he established the pharmaceutical laboratory “The Saviour” at 52 Laudan street in Belgrade. He manufactured a number of galenic products, along with Stomatin, his patented invention (approved by the Ministry of National Health A.P.No. 569/927), used for treating severe and chronic stomach problems, for which he was awarded the Grand Prix and gold medal at the 1928 Paris Convention. Stomatin was regularly advertised in the most popular daily papers in Belgrade (Pravda/Justice, Vreme/Time, Politika/Politics). The advertisement also contained brief testimonies from patients which had used Stomatin as well as thanks for improving their health condition, or even curing them. What made up the composition of this preparation, making it so popular, will be discussed in this paper.

Culpeper on compound medicines in the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis 1618. Dr Graeme Tobyn (Hon. Research Fellow, University of Central Lancashire)

Nicholas Culpeper's 1649 translation into English of the pharmacopoeia of the College of Physicians of London was considered scandalous not least because of the scurrilous remarks he appended on the College itself. However, he also provided a commentary on problems of the pharmaceutical preparation of some of the remedies, on the safety on others and on their usefulness. When the College issued a new version of the pharmacopoeia in 1650, which Culpeper duly translated for his own 1653 edition, he was in a position to compare versions and to discuss differences between them. After Culpeper's death, at the end of the Commonwealth period, his publisher Peter Cole started preparing a new version specifically for doctors, to take its place in his 'Rational Physicians' Library' of medical works translated by Culpeper and others. For this, he elicited the support of medical doctors to judiciously edit Culpeper's comments and to append their own in support of the approved English medicines. In this talk I explore some original prescriptions, Culpeper's choice comments on them and how the physicians responded. 

“Serum Medicines Meet the Market." Dr Edward J Wawrzynczak (British Society for the History of Medicine)

Serum therapy emerged as a new approach for treating deadly infectious diseases at the end of the nineteenth century. What began as a laboratory discovery quickly entered the clinic and was soon in demand worldwide.

However, anti-bacterial serums, as products of bacteriological research made by immunising horses and delivered by injection, were unlike traditional medicines or pharmaceutical drugs. How did serum medicines impact the world of pharmacy and vice versa?

The presentation will describe how serum medicines were introduced to the UK – the challenges, the implications for pharmacy, and the expansion of the market for serums in the early twentieth century – and consider relevant issues of branding, advertising, intellectual property, competition and standardisation.

The material for this presentation draws on my research, which relates to serum products listed in Martindale’s Extra Pharmacopoeia, their manufacture by the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine and their use in peace and war (published in Pharmaceutical Historian, Topics in the History of Medicine, Vesalius, BMJ Military Health and Veterinary History), and will also include findings from more recent examination of pharmacy records.

The PowerPoint of the presentation will feature photographs, illustrations, advertising material, charts and relevant quotes. In addition, there will be cartoons and even some poetry!

Researching historical medicinal recipes - collaboration and links between household medicine practitioners and apothecaries. Dr Anne Stobart (Honorary Research Fellow, University of Exeter)

My research started from a simple question about the extent of use of early modern household recipes and women healers. As a clinical practitioner of herbal medicine today I sought to clarify the past role of botanical medicines too. Finding answers took me deep into the archives at local record offices and spanned botanical, economic, maritime, medical, social, and women’s fields of history. I became fascinated by historiography, trying to find a methodical approach that suited the many gaps in the historical archives yet accurately portrayed family health care and day-to-day life. Inevitably, the surviving household sources of accounts, letters and recipe books were more likely to represent higher status households. Yet, what I discovered was challenging to my notions of women’s role in health and their relationship to medical authority. Although many women gained confidence in domestic healing practices, they could have significant differences of opinion about the best medical treatments. And, unexpectedly, a high proportion of recorded household recipes required purchased and exotic ingredients. Apothecaries were key sources of these ingredients as well as collaborators in sharing medical knowledge. I further explored how women were challenged and supported by medical practitioners of the past. My understanding of medical authority had to be reassessed through my research. I developed the concept of therapeutic determination to describe how different alliances combined to inform medical decisions. Through this study I began to appreciate the needs of scholarly researchers and the benefits of collaboration today.

 

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