Hazardous Victorian Cures That Promised To Cure Everything | Victorian Pharmacy | Absolute History

West Hill Victorian town in Shropshire revives the sights sounds and smells and the 19th century morning at its heart stands the pharmacy the treasurer's 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 the which was once a novel idea they're bringing the pharmacy to life sourcing ingredients mixing potions and dispensing cures in an age when skin dreams contain 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 the staff was like the Wild West people didn't know what was good and bad get a bit of speed of althoguh 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 room heralding a consumer revolution that reached far beyond medicine to create the model of the modern high street chemist as we know today so far after a grand opening the pharmacy team have made the transition from the traditional remedies of the early 19th century to the birth of new scientific advances now they're taking on the medical and commercial challenges of the 1850s and 1860s hello there's promised professor Barbara's miracles in the mid 19th century overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions had reached their peak leading to unprecedented outbreaks of diseases like cholera and tuberculosis desperate for cures people turn to the pharmacies as never before I mean this is the point when public health is at its worst apart for all time in Britain the 1850s is the very very worst the most scary time of all there are whole series of infectious diseases cholera scarlet fever typhus typhoid influenza all of them killing people right left in the center measles what you get as well is there sort of a new fear it must have been a really scary time actually mm-hmm and you would you would just you 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 pharmacies of business so there needs to be medicines which either cure or believe to cure the diseases which are there in 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 I need to have separate medicines reach of those things that we can come up with a cure-all which is going to make you better whatever is wrong with you all those they address the public's fears and brought people clamoring to the pharmacy it'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 hi there my name is Tom this is Ruth my name's Tom nice to meet you Tom from their pharmacy just up the road yeah we sort of got a bit of a market research sort of I say yeah we're sort of looking for people who might have something wrong with them of any sort really I've got quite a few actually there I do have a small sty here on my eyelid yes working with the sewerage as well I tend to get septicemia quite a lot because I burn myself my back is absolutely killing me I've got a burn there which is in an open joint movable joint which takes a little and then quite a nasty one wow that's really horrid though yeah I've had a really sore throat for a couple of months now like quite bad tonsillitis and then the other thing my knees these they swell up and then of course there's anything you can do with a ball this will 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 well some of the really big sellers are things like let's have a look at them I guess Beechum's pills here so 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 again Thomas Holloway who styled himself as a professor no medical backgrounds but absolutely hit the big time and was making so much money did people know what was in them could they say oh well it's got listen missing it might be found now and you know I don't like that no nuts 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 and how many would people take were they generally a sort of a one a day or one a week sort of minimalist thing some you would want to say just when you were ill but a lot of these now you really did want to encourage people to take a regime of many many mersen's is a really good example people were taking up to a thousand of the pills a week and in the 1830s the first case of someone dying and clearly a very serious issue you have to trust your pharmacist or trust the advertising or trust the person that recommended it to you and that they wouldn't do you harm and they would do you good grief and tamo making headway gaining trust from their potential customers according up with the kind of concoction aren't we that would have been considered a cure-all there's sort of medicine that would cure a whole range of things I certainly think that these pills should well there's only designed to help you everything happy taking them yeah give them a go yeah it'll be great great I'm willing to try everything well if you can stop it growing in a media's and let me know put a bit on my head 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 what they were aiming to do really did spelt out on the cover a lot of them have things like senna aloes licorice rhubarb that sort of thing all right most of them relax ative and so they did have an effect people think it's working because I can't feel as an effect one example the wonderful title pink pills for pale people which they were claiming as with all of these things they could treat a really wide range of diseases really like one of the adverts says the dark days of dyspepsia dr. Williams pink pills go to the very cause of the mischief if you look at the ingredient and nothing particularly worrying certainly got licorice in there got sugar in there and say along with a sulphate of iron and potassium carbonate but I don't think anything they would have done anyone great home no well great good either for that matter today it's hard not to be skeptical about the ingredients of cure-alls but in a mid 19th 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 had called a miasma the miasma theory of disease believed that the disease was spread by evil clouds of bad smelling air people said well you know obviously these new diseases they are caused by the evil in the Asura's wherever there is stink there is ill nassif dit was the same miasma for everything so it was 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 will give you the the disease State if they had a bit of flatulence or a bit of diarrhea they didn't know whether it was a start of cholera or not so that's when they take their cure-alls they take it to nip the disease in the bud and stop it progressing with their thinking rooted in full scientific theory pharmacists were inadvertently misleading the public pharmacists in the eighteen fifties are somewhere between a sort of 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 that they had to make her a living out of it as well the pressure to make money was very real records show that in the middle of the 19th century about a hundred pharmacies went bankrupt every year shops open six days a week often from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. the staff would even longer hours preparing the show early morning for business and catching up the day's prescriptions the counter night organizing their expensive stock was another time-consuming priority poor storage or overstocking could put their whole business at risk supply is coming quite regularly in batches and of course the things have to be stored properly it's no good putting herbs down in the cellar for example they get damp they're better off being decanted into the drawers here where the atmosphere is dry and people are opening the doors fairly 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 stock-in-trade knowing how to care for things that they don't lose their potency I don't like having the center pods for example 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 Santa Paws I'm not most effective of the herbal laxatives so make sure I put these back in the right places I really love this having loads of stuff or stash table it's really sort of I don't know if the magpie in me and of course should I get ill everything I might possibly need is here as a 21st century pharmacist nick is struggling to select the ingredients for his 19th century cure-all we know that one set of ingredients is not going to cure all ailments so what I 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 pharmacies prescription book a lot 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 corals were sometimes prescriptions which the doctors use they'd sort of cut out the middleman people could get access to these doctors medicines by just going to the pharmacist and getting them purchasing them inspiration [Music] nothing than 20 customers I've got a secret recipe so what we're putting in youngness what secret see I'll tell you because you're an apprentice I need to know so what I've got is some soap powder acts as a laxative they actually use quite a lot in my in Victorian days some licorice roots going in helps people cough and can protect the stomach as well if people have ulcers grinding them together now nicely and then we just got one more thing to add which is rhubarb ground rhubarb roots its laxative and so actually to these ingredients a laxative what we've got to do now is bind this together so little glucose ooh a little bit at a time just it's quite a laborious process isn't it it's kind of sort of thing you can imagine apprentice like me having to do quite a lot just standing there s water good right arm and I tell you it's worth the effort I can assure you so the main cost is man-hours if anything on average the price charged for just one pill would have covered the cost of making over 200 they sold in massive quantities despite having what we now know were very modest healing properties if you give people a sugar-coated pill and they think it's a medicine you can get 2030 percent recovery rate in some conditions so the power of the mind sale is is quite amazing and this is just beginning to thicken out like the bottom here this is it's quite a nice situation really to being a pharmacist so hard at work did something wrong somewhere I'm sure what it is just now I'm learning a lot a little bit more on the crumbly bits all that powder just gradually comes together into this source of cake if my calculations are correct she's cake base I don't think it'll taste as good that show you have a go it's actually rolling some pills then yep it is now one mass the pharmacy has a brass and mahogany pill making machine which tom was getting his hands on for the first time so what I need to do here is sort of break up a bit and make a sausage don't that's right before this machine was invented the pill mass was rolled out by hand and cut to size with a spatula long thin sausage you know this is a really piece of advanced kit in a way making sure you got the same dosage for everyone because it standardizes the size of each each little pill coming out it's looking good so much though oh no look flatten the thing so now we just sort of roll it across these bits yeah yeah this way around though the brass grooves are designed to cut a spherical pill push it back and forth a few times get your body into it and we have lots of kind of slug-like panics try and make them look a bit better with this pill rounding device we do have a probably like rabbit droppings I think we needed to have slightly stickier pills mm-hmm 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 today so if we're doing 50 pills in a box yeah and a box a week or a patient right 20 people 20 boxes a week so that's a thousand pills we've just nearly done 50 as apprentice it'll be Tom's job to make the rest of the pills it's gonna take about three days to do it [Music] in the kitchen Ruth is making a remedy for Bill Jones the plumber who complained of hair loss herbalist Ellen agalya has come to show Ruth how to make him a casa hair with its recipe came from a casa in India giving it exotic connotations the most British pharmacists used ingredients from closer to home I've got here the European out connect which sort of produces I'm hugely effective dye just look at that you've got the fresh you've got the native British so if you look at their can you see the glistening yeah I can can't you it's really quite pretty it's beautiful really beautiful yeah there's a sort of gooey weeping a gooey sort of sticky sand it'll help coat the hair and make it easier to curl a human yeah at all like I see a condition like absolutely and and nourish the scalp as well moisturize the scalp Victorians didn't have a proper understanding of hair loss and saw it as an illness one 1864 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 what we'll do is we'll put they're all winter cold oil and then heat it above the fire this recipe has gone unchanged for hundreds of years I'm just gonna stir this in yeah already paid even cold yeah lovely the mixture needs to heat for an hour before the remaining ingredients can be added [Music] in preparation for the launch of their cure-all pills Nick is drafting a poster in the eighteen fifties and sixties more people could read printing processes have improved and advertising really starts to begin to take off and it was really influential on people but even in Victorian times there was 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 I've got something to start with professor barbers miracle it's the miracle medicine if it does not cure all your ills we will pay 50 pounds as a way of getting the public into buying is that okay yes I think it probably is 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 penalizing false advertising promises mrs. Luiza Carlisle actually bought that having seen an advertisement which clearly says if you then contract influenza having used a stroke you can get a hundred pounds as the reward so this would have been something which would have been inhale there being those piece or something then people inhale this they're supposed to keep them free from influenza she tried it but she actually contracted flu so she wanted her money because they wouldn't pay her right so what then happened she decided to sue them she's a tough lady and she went through the courts and this case probably the most famous case in English law I clarified the law so they had to pay up okay I think we crossed that miss out yeah and what about other cures can I claim it kills anything insomnia I've thought of why don't we have consumption and you could have depression yes low spirits they're 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 I died in 1942 of influenza for Nick this relative lack of rules is unfamiliar territory it 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 who 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 I'm going to get the printer to print lots of copies I'm going to put them all around the town and try and get people to come in and buy my miracle cure [Music] in Ruth's kitchen the Makassar hair oil has heated through I go that's been boiling boiling boy you've only been hot hot hot hot fantastic color beautiful look at that color of that Eleanor has an old trick up her sleeve for blending in another ingredient cleavers you'd get your cleavers by Pixies this morning so your first row goes up the way the second row goes across the way so basically you're weaving and I just want to stick together anyway don't they so it's making that sort of thing that's sort of pretty much what they've got in mind by themselves yes it's a sieve it's going to 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 contents of the cleavers into the liquid at the same time isn't there so in a sense by making a sip of it you just sort of killing two birds with one stone and then we pop that in there to smell good this and we haven't even added the person yeah [Music] looks like it's coming through quite nice [Music] all that smells good the finest oh you just dissent it with cinnamon lemon and cloves so this is a hair oil aimed I suppose of both sexes to some degree and people usually put sort of slightly different sensing as according to whether it was a male hair oil or a female hair and this one could actually go either way it could go either way yeah it's just how your packages - whether it's for women or for men the Farsi will market the hair oil as a preventative remedy for hair loss aimed at men oh it's gonna be too full enough to switch it back in there 1 2 3 whoa many enterprising pharmacists expanded its appeal beyond medicine as a health and beauty product aimed at women that's a lot of hair oil this is apparel Tom has been busy pill making one of the many chores and apprentice would have carried out for his master the apprentice would be a really important part of the chemist and druggist during the 19th century not only doing all the dog's body 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've joined this place at 14 so you sort of looked after as a member of the family in a way of course it's not a normal parent son relationship because actually you've got to work really hard for your living you know if your tough life twenties had to impress his boss Tom's hoping to do just that by drumming up further publicity for Nick's cure-all medicine he's drafted an 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 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 ways so we can show our ability to grind all the medicines and say okay okay what an automated grinding mechanism that's right yeah yes slightly he's been inspired by a contraption used by chemists in knaresborough in the early 19th century the pestle and mortar Victorian England is actually filled with advertising and there are adverts in all the papers some of the papers are just comfort 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 it's a lot more you're advertising on a local scale Trish is going to make the Machine Tom needs now [Music] it's time for the first marketing push Nick's claims for his cure-all have important to print I can feel them working already the first batch of Professor barbers miracle X is ready for delivery morning have them brought you something we've got some special pills for you pharmacies of course our business we have to make a living we've got these miracle at miracle cures right today and that means getting in touch with your local community hello there as promised professor Barbara's miracles thanks very much it means finding the products that they want to buy I'll see if it sorts out your back it should certainly clean your blood if nothing else you have to project an image that was enormous ly trustworthy and deeply convincing I have my doubts really okay you know what's actually read Oh with the best will in the world it's not gonna cure everything is it I think pharmacist would have been quite coy about revealing their secret ingredient oh yes hope that it doesn't get any side effects am i you could tell us must been quite difficult wasn't it sort of maintaining this front they're gonna sell us more [Music] the Victorian public may have clung to the hope that cure-alls will provide miraculous results they'd be of little help for people suffering from the most serious disease color waterborne infection whose main symptom is violent diarrhea cholera was an appalling illness because they were just shrinking and wizza ningún and dying from dehydration ultimately with major cholera epidemics in 18-49 in 1854 claiming the lives of almost a hundred thousand 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 1860s when the existence of germs the invisible causes of disease was established by scientists like Louie Pasteur a number of researchers and particularly Pasteur said this is actually tiny and in the cools as one of them called them tiny little organisms which they could begin to Sander the microscope from which affected people now that they understood the germs existed they could develop products to kill them in 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 new found extremely dangerous germs things that might have been there anyway for different reasons but now were being recognized and valued for their germ killing properties the first chemical to be used as a disinfectant was carbolic acid previously used as a deodorizer to mask the smell of raw sewage delighted with a new usefulness previously undervalued chemical enterprising pharmacists were quick to create a vast range of household cleaning products to make his own disinfectant Nick's arsed scientist Mike Bullivant who's running the lab to help him extract some carbonic acid from its unlikely source coal tar it's horrible stuff to work with it's viscous it's thick it's black it smells it's obnoxious it was always regarded by the early Victorians as a waste product yeah it was difficult to get rid of what I'm doing is heating the coal tar up and the vapors will pass through here and they'll start to condense this is an air condenser here it condenses on the cold surface you'll see droplets for me I'm interested in the components that come off between 170 and 230 degrees Celsius anything else is just rubbish because that's that's where the carbolic acid is the magic of chemistry Magica chemistry yeah but here we go can you see him I think we've got one or two drops in oh yeah there's a liquid in the bottom that it won't be a clearly at this stage because it's impure but obviously once the pure product as possible yeah took the Victorians over 30 years of trial and error to uncover the benefits of this mysterious substance first extracted from coal tar in 1834 its germ killing properties were finally realized in 1867 one of the first people who sort of used this for health as Joseph Lister II the surgeon he'd reduced the death rate in operation was by using this what carbolic acid yeah yeah a patient line on operating table had less chance of living than a soldier at Waterloo it's true I mean 35 percent death rate from infection after surgery after amputation two-thirds of them died from an infection and so what Lister did he cut carbolic acid and he made it into a paste and he also had a spray it was heard the theatre he straightway spoke the wounds oh yeah was working in this mist of carbolic acid which as you know is a really nasty stuff around concentrated yeah but they spraying this into the woman when they're doing surgery in the death rates dropped one in seven people died after he introduced this so big improvement from you know two out of three Baltic acid I think you hit your upper limit there I think we'll call that the day so it's a matter now just letting it cool down okay and then we'll come back and we'll have a look a bit more closely at what's in here let's go for a bite to eat while sustain yeah it's like you know the shop has a new customer who's in search of a cure local council worker maria morris has a bad back it's mainly across the shoulder blades I've had physio in the past but it hasn't really done a lot it's sort of muscle its muscle yes mainly between the shoulder yes yeah well I think in a Victorian pit there would have been several options available to you there will be all sorts of creams and things you could erupt in but there was a brand new treatment that you might be interested in Tom have you got that electrotherapy machine yeah just here he's quite into this boys toys yeah so here we go and this this little contraption will be designed to give you an electric shock oh right I'm sorry to electrify your muscles invented in 1862 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 well there's plenty of evidence to show that it works in pain relief however the main body of 19th century use for it is not for pain relief at all so not really things like about more for conditions associated just with being female Oh hysteria all right yes the wound would get out of control and of cause you to go mad this is the idea of shocking you in some way to cure your hysteria would mental unhappiness or distress that a woman was suffering or that other people thought she was suffering could be therefore cured by electric therapy although there were a number of patients who were coming for the same problems that you're experiencing all right so shall we could we give it a go then yes definitely all right yes sure okay here we go give me a shot if it gets too much or anything right yep [Music] nothing nothing try a bit faster nope okay alright I hope so I have to go I just do that then as fast as you can idea all right okay we're gonna have to maybe take this away to the workshop the pharmacy has one of dr. Hoffman's electric brushes which claim to cure everything from skin disease to paralysis it's a it's got like a zinc plate on the back so soak that innocently yeah and then that's copper so it's sort of working like a battery i ruff is that brush though that is rough that is rough it was important to Victorians to feel an effect in order to believe a remedy was working I mean I don't think you were supposed to do very much with it I think you were just supposed to just gently nits it's why I see but so in order to carry the charge yes so you'd be sort of like doing a sort of tingly stimulation all over the getting a body brush it's amazing isn't it it doesn't look to me like electrotherapy is gonna work for us today we do however have a very good line in luminance we've got some really good ones and why I've gone fine see what's going thank you very much that is still liquid from the coal tar is one step away from becoming pure carbolic acid once the temperature starts registering 190 283 I know that has pure carbolic acid coming over so the chances of two things being in there that boiled at the same temperature slims that we assume is carbonic acid it's a hundred and eighty white comes dropping through a hundred eighty one which is smack on there boiling temperature carbonic acid it'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 list of the surgeon didn't believe in hygiene he believed that carbolic acid did it all he was filthy and he had he had a blue frock coat which he used to do dissections in you know dead bodies and he's also do his surgery in the same coat there's another movement who believed that hygiene was the answer and they were just having clean open wards and making 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 thought about that all along but it's a bit like what's happened recently in hospitals you know we've trusted chemicals so much people had sort of forgotten about the importance of hygiene Nick Halden leaves the pure acid to turn it into a saleable cleaning product I am a happy bunny because you need to see that I think we'll leave it at that there is a combo like acid beautiful in a boiling tube over there yeah there's some of the material we started out with earlier on Coulter Wow so we've gone from that to that Wow magical isn't it amazing difference yeah I'm gonna dilute it down and then we can sell disinfectants as well this is gonna be your best thanks very much engineer Chris Hill was putting the finishing touches to Tom's dog powered pestle hey Chris one small dog all right up until the mid 19th century a breed of dog called a turn spit was often used to turn meat on a spit or a fire the dog pestle and water is an adaptation of that technology hopefully all we need to do is get Tilly to move a little bit the turn spit dog is now extinct so Tom's using a Jack Russell tank the breeds less renowned for its turning capabilities notice come on come on no Jimmy Tillie Tillie Tillie Tillie I'll give her a half give a little start she'll be fine once we get sort of hey come on silly there we go look at that she loves it Oh actually she could get used to look at the pesum going round she's almost doing that by herself well I think Timmy needs some sort of tree [Music] [Music] animals played an important part in 19th century Commerce despite industrialization 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 if your livelihood depended on the horse as it did for the farmer and your food supply depended on the animals as well then clearly they wanted them to be healthy horsemen Steve legend has asked Nick if he can provide something to soothe the aching muscles of his Shire Hall's 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 all of turpentine and we've got acetic acid as well just vinegar people were likely to have more confidence in a medicine if its effects were noticeable it's what's called a ruby patient it gives you a warming effect when you when you rub it in and feels good so they they work to to some extent where people would certainly have felt that they were working I think this is getting ready for poor 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 inspiration came from their neighbors on the high street I think I could probably go in another inch in the world yeah I think in the Draper's shop Ruth is helping her daughter Eve with a new courses a source of several marketing opportunities for a pharmacy for star they fold corsets medical and health score sets which were pretty much the same except they had sort of eyelet holes punched in them to let the air breathe that was first making the difference and you also get a range of creams and powders special nipple shields and suction cups too to help counteract the effects of course it most young healthy women were looking to take their wastes down to something between 20 and 22 inches slatterns those with loose morals will loose corsets because it's pressing your ribs your diaphragm can't move so all your breathing happens up here yeah definitely now many people think that this led to enormous numbers of fainting incidents and he can do so one of the things that people would do cell use carry as a result were smelling salts just to bring you around when you faint it I've got the ingredients here we are smelling salts themselves I'm one of the easiest products to produce in a pharmacy that's powerful stuff it's not about curing anybody it's about profit so I'm just need to sip it and this is the ingredient really this is all smelling salts are ammonium ammonia proper can in fact be produced by stale urine this gives you some idea of the smell of we're talking about here swimming was considered to be very feminine and even if you didn't actually faint every five minutes the fact that you had your smoke salts and you might pull them out and you might say things like whitener I feel a bit faint actually you didn't at all but you know it was all part of the paraphernalia [Music] rather than filling up that whole bottle with liquid I'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 now most smelling salts had essential oils or something in them to just make it all a bit nicer this is all of lavender and give it a really good shake are you ready for you first with you imagine yourself it's a hot day somebody's overlay stew course it and besides what your boyfriend's watching yeah so you've just faked a little swoon to look lovely and some new kind person takes your beautifully beautifully presented scent bottle and waves it beneath your nose it's like smelling a badly clean toilet however somebody has sprayed some lavender all over it the link between well being in the proper fitting of corsets so what had once been solely a fashion accessory become the reserve of a pharmacy as apprentice it's Tom's job to disinfect the show 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 it's a really powerful smell you can feel your eyes running about already and sit dissolving and so what we'd be doing before we solve this was having some more colorant I think just to keep it safe so people knew it was disinfectant and also it shows you it's it's not just water you can't mistake it for alternative Frank went research with this stuff absolutely you'd be in hospital very rapidly if you did that this is still very strong and so we're going to dilute it down to about 3% solution we're just about ready to put it into something bigger and then that's something that you'll be able to add to a bucket right and then you can get on with your your chores as an apprentice so we're using it in the shop show that you're cleaning the place yeah that's right 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 I yeah and get get to work then I suppose absolutely Oh Aniki get on and do some work emotionally 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 no you fighting all these germs that the doctors keep talking about as the real quiz a new cause of disease in some ways empowering but at the same time you know just tie you into it having to buy the disinfectant all the time of course so it's great for our business now you've got to spend your money to do it [Music] he's keeping an appointment with Horseman Steve illegible to apply the muscle-up to his horse John Breaux burg check that nick implies the embrocation correctly should be able to share some other products because moved from the farms so Jonah brought a universal medicines chest which would have been brought to farms it's an animal medicines general form box yep in the absence of affordable vets pharmacists sell these DIY medicine kits to horse and cattle owners they contained a vast range of medicines in Victorian times are all sorts of chemical mixtures rival it's just chemical mixtures may be the wrong shape but that's a horse ball nice for the horses general condition was it a bit of a cure-all really it sort of it so which ended they go in oh these go in the front it oh thank goodness for that yes yeah if you got hands the size of mind and can be a bit more difficult I'll show you demonstrate it I'll show you how what was done yes charis how it is done this Amy I am quite happy with the table between me and this enormous animal there's a nice picture which means you've got a nice big mouth oh I mean sooner you better come on fella you're a big turbo 200 rather you than me you use the tongue as a gag you take tongue to one side that's your hair to the back of her mouth Oh pop the ball down that's you know everybody would want to do that how many vets have ten fingers did you get danger money as of that you pollute your adjusted your fee-based Constitution balls are still administered to horses today often with the safer bullying young method similar to this Victorian model though this you just push it basically a chew stick in the middle I'm not going to practically put it up in BC that will reach to the back of his mouth probably in amazingly trusting horse if I was that horse I won't let you near me as with humans there's two ends you can get medicines and we've looked at the front end I gather there's a an alternative yes this is the the other end is there a no what would they insert into the back side of a horse simple enema if you thought the horse was banged up so that goes on the back end so I turn him around now yeah I'm good to start with me well Steve we got some embrocation that was made earlier oh whoa yeah let's get stuck in this is a test of nick's credibility he needs to impressive his new line of veterinary medicines is to succeed yeah we have some of the finest embrocation what am I putting this on we just roll around this shoulder area a shoulder area yeah and a little bit of a rub around it just go straight into the hair doesn't it yeah no it'll work his way through to the skin just to warm the skin increase blood flow there warm the muscles underneath again the increasing blood flow and I suppose it's massaging the muscle as well as yeah we'll help ya yeah that's like you hey are y'all ready for work tomorrow [Music] having finished his cleaning duties Thomas returned to electrotherapy he's changed some parts are finally got it working oh really yeah yeah really silly mistake you know we attach them there yeah well there's the one to that one yeah it's Jewish right yeah yeah go on hang on what do I didn't hold roll design make sure you hold it tight okay go up and tell me first time I am I [Laughter] [Music] by the late 1860's huge advances of a scientific grasp of illnesses enabled the pharmacy to come up with products that didn't just claim to cure to blind trust has been replaced by scientific certainty what's been amazing is the growth of scientific knowledge during this period and how the chemist and druggist sir have picked it up and been applying it starts the eighteen fifties you know some of them were borderlining on quackery really they didn't know what they were doing but the chemist and druggist have taken their knowledge being 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 approach you really believe work must have been great I imagine the many pharmacists tells a real boast of confidence you know a slightly stronger position in the community and that must have helped them to expand out him to a whole new range of products one thing the Victorian the listed 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 newfangled marvel the dog powered pestle and mortar giving Nick a chance to catch up with his cure-all customers if they say the worst that medicine tastes the better it does I should be really fighting fit because it was violent I didn't think they were too bad yeah yeah a little bit tart but yeah okay don't you think I saw the Victorian medicine should taste it probably should taste 50 yes have you got a sore throat man that hasn't come back and I'm it just shows that fantastic they work for everyone that's healed up this is nearly deliverance you have to stay on your eye socket do you still have it I do see did you back get better my back did get better fantastic but I didn't tell you tablets the thing that he did do for me is just giving me a bit of extra flatulence oh yes fortunately Nick has other products he can turn to including Ruth's Makassar hair oil put a bit on your hand and how long's this take oh I don't think we're working in minutes [Music] it's Tom's moment to impress the public and his boss I went early it's all this is it the big night oh go on silly just for others watch watch it you'll get island any sex come on go on silly come on come on oh come on you know you like cheese you like cheese before now you actually bought a cheese now that won't any new Tom's first PR stunt has drawn a crowd is finally turning but it's not being driven by to leave Adele this is a not quite as it was planned I think well there no not entirely not entirely make no no you know as an apprentice you've got a lot to learn clearly you don't think Doug powerpost and others have got a future I think if we work on it a bit we could get it going but folks thank you very much for coming I'd like to show you this the first dog powered pestle and mortar prototype thank you very much as the team looked forward to the next phase of their pharmacy adventure trial and error finally gives way to real scientific understanding Wow next time on Victorian pharmacy Nick Ruth and Tom will face an era of new laws and new inventions with a bang [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 328,421

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, british history, living in britain, ruth goodman, nick barber, tom quick, victorian pharmacy, weird pharmacy, ancient cures, victorian cures, pharmacy history, potions, health and safety, victorian era, 19 century

Id: k31-XApBFR0

Length: 58min 31sec (3511 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020