Why Cannabis & Opium Potions Were So Popular | Victorian Pharmacy EP1 | Absolute History

blissed Hill Victorian town in Shropshire revives the sights sounds and smells of the 19th century morning that it's hard to stands the pharmacy a treasure-house of potions and remedies from a century and a half ago now in a unique experiment Ruth Goodman Nick barber when Tom quick are opening the doors to the Victorian pharmacy recreating a High Street institution we take for granted but which was once now they'll bring the pharmacy to life sourcing ingredients mixing potions and dispensing cures but in an age when skin creams contained an arsenic and cold cures were made from opium the team will need to be highly selective they'll only make safe versions of traditional remedies and try them out on carefully selected customers the staff was like the Wild West people didn't know what was good and bad I get a bit of speed of although girl yeah the pharmacy was something that affected everybody's lives in one way or another they'll discover an age of social transformation 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 the Victorian pharmacy opens its doors in 1837 the year when the teenage Queen Victoria ascended a throne Wow look at this place that's fantastic oh that smell it's much bigger than I thought it would be okay I got a lot of stuff here isn't it it's tremendous amount of stuff fresh from her time on the Victorian farm Ruth Goodman will now be applying her skills in new areas for medicines to cosmetics as a domestic historian she knows just how important the pharmacy was to ordinary people doctors were expensive really on a day-to-day basis only the rich were using doctors occasionally a poor person might be able to save up for a consultation maybe a doctor might offer some free consultation but in general most people in the 19th century turned to the pharmacist for the majority of their health care it's a beautiful place to be and we're gonna be able to make us work really well Nick barber is professor of the practice of pharmacy at the University of London School of Pharmacy parrot brand polishing soap and monkey brand things like sloan's liniment which people use nowadays in Xan buck as the pharmacist he will be responsible for recommending and preparing all the remedies and medicines that his shop dispenses it's a unique opportunity for Nick to learn how his profession evolved it's a fantastic chance to recreate what it was like to be a Victorian pharmacist at a time when pharmacy was completely different to how it is today pharmacist were creating new things lots of innovation happening them that growth of chemistry through this period and pharmacists are experimenting and developing new sorts of treatments as well have fun with this [Music] there's old pill rolling devices here these liquids up here this is our teacher of zynga 'b no Victorian pharmacy would be complete without an apprentice and these are all the latin names that i'm gonna have to know about and that job Falls to top quick a PhD student in the history of medicine he's hoping to put theory into practice all the drugs were the natural products were all in there Latin names as well I learned so much equipment as well right it's remarkable isn't it really what I think of as history isn't about just seeing things behind glass cases it's about people's lives and what people did on a day to day basis we've got all the kits here which is we're all needed in those days they've got some of the balance there right yeah you'd be weighing things out yeah you know careful being the key word because you killed people if you got these things wrong I mean I'm just old enough that some of these things I was taught when I was an undergraduate but I never used them professionally so actually to do these sorts of things to go back to mixing - pounding - compounding things is is an enormous challenge the front of shop is where they will come face to face with the public in the early Victorian age new ideas on how to treat illness were beginning to filter through to the high street but in this moment of change from traditional to scientific medicine many of the cures the pharmacy will sell are based on old beliefs and remedies poison atlantes headed Viper o market in 1837 despite the dangerous products on the shelves anyone who trained as a pharmacist even grocers was setting up these chemists wow so good well it's just fantastic to see your name of a shop like that you'd want a good standing within the community would be to be a pharmacist it was a hub of the town really and then people used to come here everybody's ill everybody comes to a pharmacy opening a new shop was a massive investment and pharmacists needed to be entrepreneurs to survive Marketing was everything [Music] like many of their predecessors the new policy [Music] in order to understand how people responded to 19th century remedies is sue Dodd who's worked as a nurse for 35 years hello mr. barber hello I have a very bad cough is there anything that you can help be well have you tried modern kills for a cold do you think they work some do although you can't beat natural local honey and lemon for sore throats and generally things like that well in Victorian times what we'd have given you is dr. John Collis Brown's horrid I got a Cora dine in here it's invented when he was an Indian Army doctor for cholera it didn't treat cholera but it became a very popular treatment for coughs cold chests and things like this it's got in chlorophyll his cut um opium in it and it's got cannabis in it why don't they put those things here well it makes people feel better as you might imagine many pharmacists made up their own versions of Clara diamond but the high opiate content made these medicines addictive and death from overdose was a real risk Collis Browns mixture is still on sale today and with a load non-addictive dose of morphine opium suppresses cough so if people do have troublesome coughs then it would help bring that down what we'll do is we'll look out something for you which is a bit safer and will it have the opium and things like that no no we'll find one without those sorts of things yes use some natural herbs we'll use this one that sounds wonderful before his customer returns for her authentic Victorian cough meds Nick will need to find a less risky for hound or hound and analyte and aniseed both abandoned and aniseed certainly one so what do we got in paregoric Alex a teacher of Seneca chemists the pharmacopoeia listed all the remedies and potions of the day the one we can't use definitely is paregoric and paregoric is is camphorated opium it's it's a form of opium so again we've got the morphine in so what I think we need to do is take that Boltzmann of horehound and aniseed and see whether we can reformulate it using current knowledge and using things which are a bit safer than some of the ingredients goodness is gorgeous at this tummy yeah isn't it mixtures and remedy olsommer horehound was made up largely of natural herbs and flowers cleavers this is what we're after yeah perfect exactly the job of sourcing the essential ingredients who falls to Ruth and herbalist Ellen agalya helena is an expert in plant meds Victorian pharmacists would have needed her knowledge of the natural world so why do we want cleavers in a cough medicine then because they're the most wonderful immune stimulant and they're very cleansing for the body with respiratory Qatar and conditions the first thing you really need to do is encourage the phlegm away from the chest so the body is very good at cleansing itself and draining itself a pharmacy needed to maintain a healthy stock of medicinal plants so do we need anything else as well as the cleavers while we're out plantain found it oh that's really quite a common thing the surrounding countryside was a valuable and free resource yeah they like to be stood on planted into the ground while Ruth is gathering the ingredients for the cough medicine at the back of the shop Nick and Tom open up the pharmacies laboratory this place this is gonna be amazing business this is where the pharmacists would experiment with new cures manufacture drugs and potion it's halfway between a and alchemists cave and a kitchen and a storeroom and also it's really yeah and this is a really interesting space for me this is a place where they probably changed and most dramatically over the time period we're looking at I say cook 1840s 50s this is kind of like a kitchen right when you look you've got the kind of all these ingredients over here these purple things and you be here sort of at the bench making your latest kind of concoction for the other self a totally public out there but by the end of the century this is kind of a more a place of chemical experimentation right and we've even got got a hammer for pounding the herbs what I hope to learn is some of the techniques which Victorian pharmacist used to use and manual skills which some others have forgotten I also hope to learn some of the different sorts of approaches which they had to medicine in those days the Industrial Revolution was crowded sewage ridden cities but Victorians have only the hazy estat ideas about what caused illness or how to treat it and so they often fell back on traditional remedies as Nick is about to discover as he prepares a bruise medicine made from earthworms well I didn't think I'd be doing this when I was doing it Victorian remedy digging rather bizarrely for earthworms earthworms were part of a an old remedy which is around before Victorian times medieval times really in which people would take the earthworm and they boil up earthworms with olive oil and some form of wine into oil of earthworms which they put on bruises here's one I want back to my horse I almost be easier ways to treat mothers isn't this customers would often ask a pharmacist to make up favorite traditional remedies like this you can always say if people believe in things and things do work it's the power of belief on health is is very great oil of earthworms who had a thought that that was a Victorian recipe it's obviously something that has come from long before an old idea one of those things that has hung on into the early part of the Victorian medical experience in the proper recipe we use real earthworms and boil them in oil but in the interests of worm welfare we're not going to do that we're going to use these dried worms exactly the same species which we've obtained in pharmacy at this time you took things which were whole and you have to break them up by physical force oh it's been quite fond of earthworms Charles Darwin spent lost his life studying them I think he'd be upset by this I don't think the worms would have been any use at all in a bruise I think probably it was just came from the old days when people saw things that looks similar and related them so for example they the skin of an earthworm earth well when you take it out the soil does look a bit like bruised they didn't understand what a bruise was as we do now of course in those days there wasn't much science around so things look similar that was probably good enough for those people we can have some red wine seems rather waste but [Music] it's now ready to heat up we've got the stove lit over here I'll put it on there [Music] I'll bring them over here to cool and take these lucky ones back to the garden there's a strong tseebo effect with with all sorts of treatments you know even modern days we can get 20 to 30 percent effect size from a Percy beau treatment and we know that if the doctor is very positive about it and says this will work it's more effective than not at the rusty booth how did you get that playing around the tennis ball James Scott is a pharmacy students are being common throughout history and there's been lots of remedies for it we're going to try the oil of earthworm how literally actually literally earth mixed with olive oil and some red wine we're just gonna put that only at the top now we're going to leave that and I think tomorrow you should try applying again and probably morning and evening and then we'll see how you do in a few days time come back then okay thank you very much bye pharmacist apprentice tom is hard at work setting up the Cowboys iron-oxide I believe I'm gonna try and make a lovely purple color so that we can the idea will be to attract as many people in by sort of demonstrating your pharmaceutical skill in some way and basically I think we'll just see what happens for the moment at a time when many customers couldn't read these tall colorful storage bottles were a clear sign that this was a chemist's shop very red this is a washing soda mix them together learning how to mix the chemicals precisely enough to produce a successful color there is a fundamental test of a young apprentices skill read bet I don't want to mess up this how can you trust the chemist you can't even make the colors that enable you to recognize them as a druggist you know [Music] yeah so it's not really it's not working that well is it lovely am I looking at the right thing yes until you lancelot oh that's the lancelet planting roof and eleanor have found another wild plant that common plantain fornix coffee you'll ribs so what's good about this for a cough medicine than plantain it's used in all sorts of allergies and irritations in the lungs once the link once the lungs are irritated then they become inflamed and then they produce more mucus so at short plantain does is it soothes the intones the mucous membrane the mucosa is incredibly important because it's where the oxygen that you breathe in dissolves from a gaseous form into a liquid form and you can actually take it in the tea you can use it in hay fever to when you have that problem the allergy problem so it's a very useful plant to befriend so we're about the more exotic ingredients those things from farm parts you'd buy those in from maybe down from from London yes I suppose they're being gathered by herb lists and other parts of the world really aren't though force herb lists and and collectors and they still are they still are it's really interesting isn't it how at the beginning of the nineteenth century there's this sort of body of herb all knowledge I mean people like Boot John boutté you know his son Jesse and his son Jesse exactly you know the boots the chemists the founders they begin as a medical herbalist a little medical herbalist shops selling botanicals in one form or another inspired by all sorts of different people because Jesse himself Jesse boots John son was very interesting he studied pharmacy in his spare time and then they employed a chemist business was no longer making money moving into Anna druggists were so big at the time and they were very much about making money and so it was in their interest not to be encouraging to we're not not say encouraging people to be using their own medicines the word drug derives from the Dutch drug for dried plant today there are more than 7,000 medical compounds derived from plants Tom is edging closer to a near perfect color it looks not right cool now all we need to do really is dilute it so hopefully a little bit of light coats that comes through it's very thick so I'm just going to go for it and pour this straight in trying to make too much of a mess and see what happens having achieved a reasonable purple Tom moves on to the yellow carboy one explanation for the fixed colors of the Cowboys reveals an ancient theory that still influenced early Victorian medicine I think that each of the colors represented one of the four elements job dog or humors that made up the body the four humors were black bile blood phlegm and yellow bile and those really equated to things which could be seen coming out of the body to put it basically and this is how they understood the body the body had too much of things inside it and therefore things would come out when it had too much of that humor so it could be kept in balance believe him for human persisted well into the 19th century and an excess of blood in particular was filled to be the cause of many illnesses bloodletting was big business and the jar of healthy voracious leeches was a real money spent for the Victorian pharmacist things are men Carl Peters bond runs a leech farm in South Wales what they use them for in Victorian times basically where they used to cut people to remove blood which is obviously very painful the leech come can bite it sort of cuts a little why so probably this size would probably take about eight mils and you probably lose about 50 afterwards it's almost a luxury because it's painless yeah fairly painless then and with a luxury items or were they everyday items yeah they will probably been a very expensive item so you know I would consider my luxury yeah go on then let's see what they're they're like well feels a bit like a slug yeah feels very leach ish so these would be picked out and they'd be put onto onto a patient whoop not too keen on getting stabbed by that hand I must admit I'm a bit nervous about it I have to say Carl's partner Christopher Peters bond has bravely volunteered to befriend a leech quite a bit smaller than the other liter they are these have basically been starved for almost two years so their their gut is completely empty of blood yep oh it's really arched it's heaven yes it's very different - I know just holding almost yeah just tasting it out yeah here we go it's just he said I've I've been in a bit of a nipple I can feel a little easting yes sir the popular no it's nothing at all it's a very volatile millions of years to do with a bike painlessly and remove the blood such a natural pharmaceutical tool really and this is a really net evil sight isn't it on 2,000 years of history here it's great long Western European tradition in bloodletting but I mean that's that's very human of us isn't it that the hanging onto tradition you know my mother did it my grandmother did it my great-grandmother did it of course it's good for you here's one of its sisters that have one hungry leech one leached three-quarters away through his dinner it's like me and my pudding stomach however for my dinner stomach hiss there's always room for pudding the leech injects an anticoagulant when it bites the can bleed for up to ten hours after the leech is dropped off even the modern first aid can do very little to stop the bleeding it's about fifty Millicent the chemicals are in its saliva so really it's produced that effect for such a long period of time how do you feel after it what if you're fine to be honest with you I don't want to feel any different before experience you think um it's certainly not as unpleasant as it looks perhaps it's all a bit more straightforward this I surprised it to study there's a no pain at all or anything like that so uh completely couldn't understand how or someone might sit through several of these or thinking that they're dudes themselves some good yeah I mean it certainly beats all the other bloodletting methods doesn't it's so much better than being cut with knives or certainly wouldn't be I don't think I would have volunteered where I've had a knife cut through I hope you still feel as positive about it in ten hours time when you change the bandages six after use the leech goes back in the jar and the bloody bandages are dried out ready to use again it wasn't until the mid 19th century the Victorians understood the dangers of cross infection so disease spread easily right next Java but while leeches remains popular the ever inventive Victorians came up with man-made alternatives for drawing blood including the scarifier they press this button here and the blades would shoot across and then I suppose once you've got it in you know you've got to sort of like draw the blood out absolutely it will just clot otherwise quite quickly so if you want to be losing blood which is the idea then you need something to draw it out and they've got this beautiful pit of really Victorian kit here which is the vacuum pump it's like a bicycle pump in Reverse they new have to make equipment didn't in those days beautifully engineered and turned once a cut had been made in the skin the vacuum inside the glass cup drilled out yeah and then straight yeah you can see there bit of redness to it absolutely it's bringing the blood thicker so it's probably breaking little capillaries under there the blood to be welling up out of errors as well I mean if you made all those little cuts that would be quite a different thing drawing out evil vapors but had somehow been clogging things up I could live with that I'm not sure I could live with that yes all the ingredients for the bolt some of horehound cough medicine have been brought to the lab where herbalist elephant joins Nicky so this is horehound is it well yes it sounds live is a big plant all right it's a shrub it's a kind of bluey green shrub she's so good you know now in your original recipe you had syrup of squirrel yes now I'm sure you familiar with squirrel yes yes can be rather toxic that very old medicine we've actually got squirrel and we got it in an ox smell well it sure is an oxen an oxime Alys honey and vinegar Lily family barrier will has been used for centuries mucus from the lungs so another tincture that we've got is cleavers this is a really common herb as brief and I discovered plantain this is an interesting one again a very common herb and in the final hope we've got this thing any campaign huge tall yellow golden fog that like a sunflower but with enormous leaves so that is our preparation ready to go a couple of teaspoons of treacle and it's a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down absolutely slow job of stirring this in there more patients that you can work with like cooking you're better so this is the oxy ml of of squill you can keep staring as we put it in the schools been going for a long time hasn't there I think it was in the ebiz POC iris which is the the oldest recorded formulary if you like which was 1500 BC in Egyptian times something like that and apparently was considered so effective that it was an object of temple worship really yeah so that's lovely probably ready to bottle it now yes early pharmacists put art and skill into the medicines they created thank you very much but in order to make a profit it was essential that the customer was satisfied and that word got out to the local community that he was a medicine that could be trusted it smells fantastic I have to say I don't have a smell it smells quite nice it's half a teaspoon three times a day in the glass of water see how it is it's very very strong mmm oh yes it's clearing something here's the bottle we'd like you to give that a try and come back in a few days and we'll see how you feel I'll let you know [Music] other industrial centers [Music] this noxious mix of smoke sulfur dioxide thrown up by the burning of coal Ruth is preparing another type of cough treatment volunteer coming in who says he's willing to try out plaister or plaster listen isn't quite the same some cotton plaster this is a medical treatment that something that you put on the skin to draw things out of the body so it can be all sorts of things like you there are plasters that fit on the head to help draw away foot working for headaches and there are plasters that help to sort of you know like ear ache you could put plasters around the back of the ears and that will help to draw humors out so all sorts of conditions were believed to be able to be relieved in this way of all the sort of early Victorian forms of medicine in some ways this is one of the least invasive or the most gentle methods because you're not breaking the skin or anything you're just applying it on the surface of the skin and certainly that warmth and the vapors that rise off it even if they do nothing else can be really soothing I've got to melt this wax down which is going to take a little while and then I add the olive oil play stirs were a common preparation for many conditions throughout the 19th century these sticky leather strips could be infused with different active ingredients and were used to treat a variety of ailments and this is the most active ingredients this is an oil of frankincense it sounds wonderful I just want a couple of drops of this some ailments were treated with more dangerous ingredients the poisonous belladonna plant to relieve muscle spasms lead for cuts and opium for local pain relief oh gosh that goes into the warm oil boy can I smell that frankincense is one of those valuable spice it west it's a spice it's a raisin from a tree but it's one of those really important ones in the history of Medicine it's particularly good it's sort of clearing things out from the chest which is why it's the important ingredient for this plaster next door in the treatment room tom is using a favorite Victorian implement the bronchial catalyst to try and relieve the symptoms of customer Keith Dodds dry wheezy cough what we've got to try and help you with that today is a thing called a bronchial Kettle looks very interesting and the idea of this is going to make lots of steam and so on it's got some herbs in there and what we're gonna do is get if you want to come round here and I can sit you in this there are little booths that we've made in the back here we've added herbs and Tom's self-made tent the bronchial kettle is an industrial step up from placing the customers head under a towel over a bowl of steaming water we'll try and create a kind of steamy environment hopefully what will happen is we'll get a kind of a nice thick steam coming up and you mentioned cough was drunk very very drawing really coffee and so what the idea behind it would have been willing to have counteract the dryness of the coffee in some way by creating a very wet environment for you this is a scary bit Ruth now has to cut out a template for her cosplay stuff place the leather on a thick and smooth it before putting on the shape now I've got to cut a paper stencil I'm just a little card that sort of the shape I want ish oh I like making things and to make it stay in place I'm to wet it along so don't be very much tall okay so all I've got to do now is cut around and then I could pack these in boxes you put a piece of wax proof paper between each one and you can stack them up in boxes that you could sell a box of cough plasters the Fox of headache plasters well it's sort of a very old idea and an old technique the whole way of packaging it and selling it is actually really new there we go that's my first chest plaister I do have a bit of a cough yes you do and what sort of a cough is it a bronchial sort of cough bit asthmatic retired Army medic Anthony Dunford is coming to try the play stuff what I'm hoping is that as the wax melts it will release the act of agreement which is frankincense so you're going to get that sort of pungent smell rising up you know under your sort of nose if it's breathing it in and it's pointy end down so that just goes on the centre there right now and we just smooth that I can feel the warmth of your body's melting that wax like it's more pliable and when I put it on it seems to be sticking I would tell you sitting there hey the self adhesive plaster I pop the dhoti by bandages after all I mean the Victorians obviously would have worn it as long as possible two or three days yeah so it's really a matter of how much you can put up with before you need to get it off and we'll have a wash I'll persevere you gain any benefit from that there yes it's definitely helping local actually breathe really deeply now which is a walk on the done you know ten minutes ago so it's great really helped I'm certainly breathing more easier than I once right yeah well since you seem to be enjoying it so much there now that I'll leave you there for a while okay and don't forget my bronchial kettle was one way of clearing the airways but another popular method was spitting if a shop wanted to keep the flame off the floor it was in their interest to provide a spittoon oh we've got here here's a spittoon full of phlegm would have been one of the first JT's in the shop they were have to empty this thing basically cleaning them out was a serious health hazard as the spittoon could easily be contaminated with tuberculosis a common disease in Victorian times the way we think about medicines today or and disease today I mean this this idea of lots of different people spitting into the same Bowl it seems likely bizarre but I mean actually if you think about certainly early 19th century ideas of disease it's not so weird because the idea is that really diseases like a visible thing this is before bacteriology remember so there's no idea of sort of a hidden substance there that's going to give you a disease so although there might be a big sort of the way we might think of it would be a big kind of huge amount of tuberculosis and all sorts of things festering in this this swamp really actually as far as they were concerned as long as you get rid of the mucus itself no problem few things were indirect torian's more bowel movements and the pharmacist was able to offer a very special treatment to keep them regular Victorians believed there was nothing like a good purge to make them feel better it was what you needed to do it clear yourself out this is something called the everlasting pill it's one of my favourite remedies from the Victorian age and particularly at this time people wanted to to purge the body and this was one of the ways of doing it and what they used was a pill a bit like this which has made out of something called antimony Anne Smith is a really heavy metal it's quite a toxic methyl which we wouldn't use nowadays but in those days they didn't see it as that they take this it will go and forget a little bit of the antimony will be dissolved they'd have vomiting they'd have diarrhea and the pill would pass through and it's called the everlasting pill because it's fished out of the theses at the end washed up put on a bottle on the shelf and any member of the family who wants a good purge takes it the next time they want to take it and potentially it's passed on through the generations some doctors began to question the wisdom of using such dangerous techniques the search for alternatives less risky treatments the revolutionary new hydrotherapy cure [Music] it's only cold north and remember it's five or six in the morning and I need your help to wet the sheets okay dr. John Harker has brought the water cure tube lists well not wrapped in a wet sheet but it had a cold bath on many occasions by cold me oh yes very cold we did some research work in the 1990s about this was amazing I mean I had my blood tests blood tests before and after a cold bath and my white cell count winter went up dramatically so this is actually simulating the immune system and really is I mean did they know that in the Victorian period the clue so why were they doing it then what is this supposed to do for me this is supposed to relax you well this is the effect of water you see your heart worked more efficiently and hard there and you get a better circulation in other parts of the body it was so different from bleeding and purging and these heavy-metal poisons so this is a cure for the same sorts of things that all those really invasive techniques were being used that's right of course none invasive really [Music] dangers of the drugs and techniques in canoes you owe me tap very quickly you're impatient you're impatient patient you're going to feel better because you've been relaxed and you've been stimulated by the cold water strange though it is I would rather do this than swallow a dose of arsenic mercury never loathe lead exactly so you could either go to your physician and have something really poisonous yeah described or you could come to Morvan the health regime that's right one day sort me out no no you came for three weeks at least all right so you've got all the accommodation costs yeah four guineas a week and enhance a lot of money it's 400 pounds there were a quite a number of famous names on them on the patient list yes Charles Darwin came and he ended up by saying he didn't think the water cure was quackery right and Florence Nightingale came when she collapsed after working too hard doing the report for the Royal sanitary commission and she wrote seven years afterwards that she owed her life to the water cure ignore them yes I know right read on and then I'll come and unwrap you okay I expect you'll be asleep actually okay Jeremy all tied up always pull the bedclothes out at the bottom of the bed I'm gonna go to bed the more than water cure was far more than just being wrapped in wet sheets plenty of Hill walking and the drinking of endless glasses of spawns and were all part of the regime taking the waters was hugely fashionable the manufacturers began producing drinks that mimicked the taste and fizziness of spring water these quickly established themselves as popular health drinks scientist Mike Bullivant will be running the pharmacy laboratory his working knowledge of 19th century chemistry will be invaluable aerated gassed waters are a really big part of the sales for for pharmacist lots of money on it Oh the basic ingredients is cheap enough for me so how do we make gases for today's water three ingredients yes is water obviously would stop we've got citric acid right which is an ingredient in today's waters as Sir as perfectly harmless seconding of the third ingredient sodium bicarbonate baking soda another harmless compound could not even guessing together there the gas being producers Oh can see the gap sharpener dioxide for me so there's the aerated water and the acid test is does it pop when you open it okay give it a go whoa that's a fairly tight seal on there yeah it's a nice design there this is a good buffer as well as Nick one of the big problems in the early days was that producing this water produced pressure and the bottles weren't strong enough and the early days the pharmacist used to have thick woollen jumpers on they were told to wear them to protect them from the broken glass if the bottle exploded they tried various other bottles I've got a close range rifle this is a bottle which they produced because one of the problems was if you produced a normal bottle put a cork in it as you did as a cop dried out it shrunk pops out and therefore they produce this bottle which has a round base so it can't stand and let the cork dry out it's put down it rests on its side so the corks kept permanently where right here we are shallow bath and this will prepare you for going up the hills it's to tone you up now there are other things we can do with the water we can put give you a douche you stood naked underneath one of three pipes one and a half two and a half or three and a half inches in diameter the water from the springs on the hills was in assistant yeah and it dropped 20 feet onto your naked body and you get 56 Imperial gallons of cold water going on you doctor I think I better go and get some more water aerated or soda waters spread across the Empire in India british army officers discovered that mixing soda water and the drug Queen was the perfect tonic for victims of malaria simply named Indian tonic water it became not only the world's most celebrated medicinal drink but also the perfect mixer for gin Tom's going to learn how to extract the vital ingredient we need from the bark of the South American cinchona tree so what is this bark this is the bark from a tree you know which one Peru it was Peruvian bark it's from the cinchona tree there I got the quinion out that way by doing it or you can make tea with it you can boil it up with water it controls fever and it stops you shivering that's one of the things of the the reasons they used to take it which is quite separate from his anti-malarial properties he's and killing the animal aerial parasite I'm gonna take the stuff that you've grounded already this is the ground bark and mix it up with this very strong alkalis calcium hydroxide right and it releases the kwitny this is the process that we're getting that one element out of all of the other we've got to isolate one it's like a needle-in-a-haystack I guess we will be able to isolate twini but none of the others let's add the chloroform the solvent chlorophyll was also popular as a Victorian anesthetic Queen Victoria was administered the drug for the birth of two of their children the quinium will be dissolved in chloroform I'm going to really squeeze this extraction procedure the next stage is to add sulfuric acid to separate the Quinny from the chlorophyll return that chlorophyll this one the custard layer though right the Quinny is in this top layer the custard layer I like that and this is a very highest highly skilled work for an apprentice as well is it be kind of almost if you were going going into a laboratory and doing something like this would be really kind of top of your game sort of stuff Tom's chemistry lesson is about to get even tougher tell me if you want a break I'm alright so far as my dad's ammonia to the solution I'd do it outside but I think then one of the reasons for showing you this is to show you what a profession you've joined boom oh wow that's a turning point now that means that all of the sulphate convert it alright let's leave that to heat up a little bit and see what happens he's gonna get some fresh air a cup of tea okay great I'll see if Nick wants to come have a look good idea [Music] hi Mike how's the Quinny an extraction going if you've arrived at just the right moment the Quinn Ian is in here see but we've also got a load of rubbish in there and I've been purely that we don't want so I'm filtering that off quitting's equip should crystallize out that's as if the processes worked yeah this is just such a tremendous story of the the Victorian times was making it so sort of how many how things changed in says well the extraction particularly yes Quinn was was valued so much women little wars for say work winning and well there are certain people who would say that enabled europeans to colonize after the Dark Continent because people were going over there explored in Africa getting malaria I'm not coming back yes but Quinn you know because of his anti malarial properties would actually allow people to come back well crystallizing as its falling out yeah adding the crystallized quinium to the pre-prepared soda water produces the classic Indian tonic water pick up one crystal there's probably way over the legal limit I don't think it was legal limits in those days I use the dam site safer than the everything else that we're doing where you are professor barber Oh fantastic let's go find some gin sounds good to me tonic water wasn't the only recipe to be brought home from the British Empire as pharmacists established themselves customers came to them to make up all kinds of preparations not only medicines but anything that required precision including exotic food recipes this needs to be very very very much more precise than I'm used to Ruth is attempting to recreate a recipe made famous in 1838 like to Worcestershire chemists John Lee and William parens so I tend to be quite a touchy-feely cook you know this precision this being able to produce something exactly the same time after time is what brought in money Worcestershire sauce began alive as a recipe for curry powder brought back from India and given to local pharmacists liened parents to make up how annoying an employee then suggested that it might work better as a source you see if I was just cooking how would a darling would have been fine I've got ginger obviously and allspice pepper coriander ground coriander seed mace brandy and after putida an interesting substance it was used as an aid to digestion for centuries in Persia which is where it's from it helps to and when it stops flatulence basically this like many of these ingredients actually were felt to have medicinal properties of course as well as being nice tastes and that could be some of the reason why they're in here I mean asafoetida you know this is a source a relish to eat with food so the fact that it might help to calm your digestion would be really useful we were benefit a bonus now with vinegar Battalion parens found the resulting mixture so distasteful that they abandoned it in the shops seller years later while clearing out the cellar they discovered the source had fermented into something far more acceptable and the new product was born my instinct is just a guess all right that's all of those in there a nice spicy spicy mix if a recipe proved particularly appealing there was nothing to stop pharmacists from selling their own preparation on mass some of the day's biggest brand name started from such humble origins mr. Lee and mr. parents thought it tasted utterly disgusting at this stage that thinking has powerful eye strong it's quite nice maybe I was stronger palate than mr. leer mr. Baran's and that was quite good all I want to do is come up with a name in the 1840s getting the name right getting the brand right it was really important if you wanted to sell those Barbarin Goodman's spectacular Shropshire source Ruth spectacular Shropshire source joins the pharmacies new range of branded products at the end of the process isn't it yeah I'm just getting an insight into all the the different processes that get went into making this tonic so you know I know it is different isn't it the whole business of making stuff and then selling hands right you can see how people would have felt really proud of what they've achieved as well now in terms of seeing it through from the very inception there's a sense in which the chemist and druggist is becoming a much more powerful force in some way through on the one hand you know being hard-headed businessman and making it making their shops into profitable going concerns if you like and on the other hand saying we're going to introduce chemical knowledge into the pharmacy to celebrate their first week in business Barbara and Goodman are holding an open evening a chance to offer some of their new products to the public to catch up on how their customers a job you only need a tiny bit it's is strong you know you want a couple of drops on your chips tartar sauce those sorts of flavors I've really enjoyed this first experience of early Victorian medicine it's been such a combination of so many things from the past and new experiments into the future we've been launching off now into the new science and if anything this experience has really sort of whetted my appetite for the next finding out and the next where did it go from here [Music] what's the actual same cattle go in and the actual herbs came through was at ten minutes but when the smell of rosemary thing came in once it got going it was really exciting for me still got the bruising on the brain mostly gun shades of yellow yeah a little it's changing my mind ado I would say those remedies have had no effect whatsoever what do you think I'll be tempted to agree yeah well they've been as a nuisance to be honest the main issues actually going to bed knowing that I've got worm on my arm for Hanan lying there and actually not wanting to get the duvet on the worm that does your mind to it it's greasy and it kind of yeah I'm constantly I never wet I'm just giving up my play that doesn't really thinking so yeah I can't see the appeal to be honest it's not look like a good remedy to sell in one day today I found this seeing how the Victorians approach farmers say fascinating there's a spirit and adventure and entrepreneurism there we're understanding the nature of the interaction between the medicine and the patient's themselves in fact you know I would swish it around a bit before I swallowed out something with the time you can really use it as a gospel and it helped get rid of the soreness that had made the holy new throat I can actually say yes it has helped a lot and is it eased your breathing it's much better before as I breathed out it was very frankly it was very difficult a typical accented feelings and it has helped I feel itself breathe normally again for the first time in more than three weeks know our lovely which is super I'm dying to ask how long did that last last about three hours per free out was more my fault actually what was it like well I've never had chamois leather next to my skin but it's also quite comfortable but I did not get any feeling of the frankincense right doesn't seem to be any ester that's coming out of it and what I mean when it fell off it just so just literally just peeled off though just dropped at my feet so let's have a toast all right or that we should say by the end of the 1840s scientific advances were beginning to filter down to the High Street pharmacist old ideas of bloodletting and purging gave way to exciting new techniques and cures and pharmacists would spearhead a whole new range of consumer experiences nipple hounds curtain stomach velvet one next time on Victorian pharmacy the medicine that was supposed to cure everything so powder acts as a laxative yeah I'm willing to try everything the discovery of how to kill germs give me a shower gets to my anything right yeah and more Victorian contraptions are unleashed on the public he's almost doing that by herself

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 374,960

Rating: 4.8707027 out of 5

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: KNS3SZQ5IwY

Length: 58min 44sec (3524 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mierecat]

A bunch of historians spend some time recreating an old English pharmacy and the treatments therein. They do a lot of things covered in Sawbones but seeing it in action is a completely different experience. In this first episode they talk about and demonstrate Quinine, the Everlasting Pill (Antimony), Opium, Tuberculosis, Water Treatments and more. There are other series on this channel with similar premises too!

[u/AdPuzzleheaded3823]

Also in this vein, there’s a great book called Quackery that has full-color illustrations! I read that before I ever heard of Sawbones, and as soon as I found out about the podcast I knew I had to get in on that good good medical mishaps action.