A History of Pharmacy and the Society

it is really hard I mean for us to sort of as pharmacists now in 2025 to imagine what it was like 100 years ago so I think in 1925 it's pretty clear from looking back isn't it that the word even the word pharmacist wasn't really used that much by practitioners at that time they tended to refer to themselves as a chemist or a druggist even if they were a pharmaceutical chemist by training and I'm really interested in this sort of the roots of our modern profession you know how do we How do we get to this point, especially as we're on the cusp of developing into something completely different again as we go forward with our new reformed course of pharmacy? And I think we can probably trace some of it back to the formation of the Pharmaceutical Society in Great Britain in 1841.

And in those days, as we know, pharmacy largely was a trade.

I mean, we have a shared history with general practitioners of apothecaries and we also have our chemists and drugists colleagues.

But really, people were practicing and it was really a craftsmanship, wasn't it? This compounding of medicines and it was aligned to the Peppers and Spicers Guild of the day.

But in reality, those chemists and druggists, really their role extended way beyond the formulation and combining of medicines.

So they moved into diagnosis and management of ailments, minor and major, I would probably argue, as the most accessible health care professional as they were available on the high street.

And that is still the case today.

So I find one really early example in Northern Ireland was Conor's Chemist in Hill Street in Newry, where I'm from, which was established in 1826 by Dr. Patrick Conor, who was a physician, surgeon and a druggist.

And that was really common.

He would probably have been an apothecary and he would have been part of the Apothecary's Hall, again, that we'll talk about later on, and would have been practising and registered in Dublin.

But at that time, there were also a lot of quacks.

So this quackery in early pharmacy and in medicine was unfortunately rampant and really born out of a desire for a more formal curriculum and a sort of university quality seal, I think, for pharmacy.

We then start with medical reform and some of those passing of some of the acts afterwards.

to start to establish pharmacy as a profession.

And I think one thing that I really loved is really where pharmacies start to see that maybe they are emerging as considered to be as professions is when they're noted for the first time on the census of Ireland, where it is in 1861, they're noted as persons who render direct service to mankind, reflecting their emerging status as I guess, in society.

But there was a lot of work to get them there.

They had to work very, very hard to identify themselves as a profession and separate themselves from the apothecaries and find a way forward that required the establishment of the society in Great Britain, as we said, in 1841, and then later on in 1875, the society in Ireland.

And after that, then you have more formalisation of qualifications.

But I'm really interested in your family and Rose's journey and a little bit about your grandfather and your grandmother.

Can you tell us a little bit about that, Ian?