Tucked away on East Smithfield, a short walk from Tower Bridge and St Katharine Docks, is one of London’s lesser-known medical museums. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum is easy to overlook. It does not have the grand scale of the Science Museum’s Medicine Galleries, the historical celebrity of the Hunterian, or the international profile of the Wellcome Collection. Yet for anyone interested in medicine, natural history, chemistry, pharmacology or the history of science, it is one of London’s most rewarding specialist collections. Housed within the headquarters of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), the Museum tells the story of how medicines have been collected, prepared, regulated, sold and consumed, while simultaneously documenting the emergence of pharmacy as a profession. The collection contains around 45,000 objects, making it one of the world’s important collections relating to the history of pharmacy. The public displays are relatively compact, but they offer a remarkably concentrated journey through several centuries of medical and pharmaceutical history. The Museum has an unusual history of its own. It was founded in 1842, just one year after the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was established, initially as a teaching and reference collection for students at the Society’s newly established School of Pharmacy. Its first purpose was very different from that of a conventional historical museum: students needed to be able to recognise medicinal substances, understand their properties and compare specimens. The collection consequently grew into an enormous assemblage of materia medica, the substances used in the preparation of medicines. By the early twentieth century, it contained more than 20,000 specimens.

As pharmaceutical education changed and students no longer needed to study large collections of raw materials in the same way, the Museum’s emphasis shifted. From the 1930s onwards, the collection increasingly concentrated on the history of the profession, including dispensing equipment, medicine containers, proprietary medicines, advertisements and other objects associated with everyday pharmacy. That change in collecting policy is important because it gives the Museum two identities. On one level it is a history of medicines: what substances people used to treat illness and how those substances were prepared. On another, it is a history of pharmacists and the changing nature of their work. The result is much broader than a display of old medicine bottles. The objects reveal changes in chemistry, manufacturing, regulation, commerce, advertising, consumer culture and medical understanding. They also demonstrate how closely pharmaceutical history is connected with natural history. For centuries, medicinal substances came directly from plants, animals and minerals. A visit therefore becomes a journey not only through the history of medicine but through humanity’s changing relationship with the natural world.

The first surprise is the building itself. The Museum occupies part of the RPS headquarters at 66 East Smithfield, close to Tower Hill and Tower Bridge. The entrance is particularly appropriate: visitors encounter rows of decorative-looking pharmaceutical vessels before they have even reached the main collection. These are historic drug-storage containers, including examples of English delftware, and they immediately establish one of the Museum’s recurring themes, the fact that medicines have always needed to be stored, labelled, measured and presented to patients. There is something particularly pleasing about beginning a museum devoted to pharmacy with containers. It is easy to think of a medicine simply as a chemical substance, but a drug has to exist within a practical system. It must be collected or manufactured, stored, identified, measured, dispensed and ultimately administered. The container is therefore part of the history of the medicine itself. This is one of the strengths of the RPS Museum. Its objects may initially appear mundane (pots, bottles, boxes, mortars and equipment) but each object represents a stage in the development of pharmaceutical practice. A beautifully decorated eighteenth-century jar is simultaneously a piece of ceramics, a piece of commercial history and a record of medical practice. The Museum’s compact size is also part of its charm. It is not an enormous institution in which visitors need half a day to navigate between galleries. Contemporary visitor descriptions commonly characterise it as a small specialist museum, with the main displays arranged in cases and explanatory material provided alongside them. One recent review described it as an attraction that could comfortably be explored in less than an hour, although anyone with a serious interest in the subject could spend considerably longer studying the objects.

The central story begins long before the Royal Pharmaceutical Society itself. Pharmacy emerged from a much older tradition of preparing and selling medicinal substances. In medieval London, there was no modern distinction between the various occupations involved in food, spices and medicines. The Company of Grocers had regulatory responsibilities, while apothecaries gradually developed as specialists in medicines. In 1617 the apothecaries separated from the Grocers and became the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. Their responsibilities included inspecting medicines and controlling who could practise as an apothecary. The Museum’s historical displays make this transition understandable. The history of pharmacy is not simply the story of discovering better drugs. It is also the story of deciding who was qualified to handle medicines, what constituted acceptable practice and how patients could be protected. The eighteenth century saw another important transformation with the emergence of the chemist and druggist. These practitioners increasingly occupied high-street premises where they manufactured and dispensed medicines while also selling a remarkable variety of other products. Pharmacy could overlap with commerce, chemistry, photography and even food production. The Museum’s collection provides a fascinating window into this world in which the modern boundaries between pharmacist, shopkeeper, chemist and manufacturer were still developing. The profession became increasingly organised during the nineteenth century. In 1841, chemists and druggists established the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, following concerns about proposed legislation that might have restricted dispensing to medically qualified practitioners. The Society was formally founded on 15 April 1841 at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand. A Royal Charter followed in 1843.

The story of Jacob Bell is particularly important. Bell was one of the driving forces behind the foundation of the Pharmaceutical Society and was deeply concerned about the status and training of chemists and druggists. Alongside figures such as William Allen and Theophilus Redwood, he helped establish an organisation that would become central to the development of British pharmacy. The Museum’s historical material makes it possible to understand the professional world in which these individuals operated. This is an important distinction from many medical museums, which tend to concentrate on famous doctors or spectacular discoveries. Here the emphasis is often on the people who worked behind the scenes to make medicines safe and consistent. Theophilus Redwood is another especially important figure. He became Professor of Pharmacy and was involved in teaching, museum curation and the Pharmaceutical Journal. The Society established a laboratory for practical chemistry, demonstrating how pharmacy was increasingly moving towards a scientific discipline rather than remaining primarily a craft. This educational emphasis remains one of the most important themes of the Museum. Modern pharmacy is inseparable from chemistry, pharmacology, physiology, microbiology and increasingly molecular biology. The Museum allows visitors to see that this scientific character was not inevitable: it developed through a long process of professionalisation and educational reform.

One of the most evocative aspects of the collection is its insight into the apothecary’s shop. Before tablets came in uniform blister packs and medicines arrived in mass-produced bottles, pharmaceutical preparation was a much more physical and visible activity. Mortars and pestles, balances, measures, jars and other dispensing equipment demonstrate how medicines were compounded. These objects reveal a world in which the pharmacist needed practical knowledge of materials and preparation techniques. A prescription might require substances to be weighed, ground, mixed, dissolved or otherwise prepared before being given to the patient. The mortars are particularly attractive objects. Some are substantial bronze pieces that would have required considerable physical effort to use. They remind visitors that pharmacy was once partly a manual occupation. The transformation from such equipment to modern automated manufacturing is a useful illustration of the industrialisation of medicine. The Museum’s collection of dispensing equipment also highlights the importance of accuracy. Small differences in dose can mean the difference between therapeutic and toxic effects. The development of accurate scales, measures and containers was therefore not merely a matter of convenience but an essential part of making medicines safer.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Museum for a zoologist or biologist is the history of materia medica. Before the development of modern synthetic pharmaceuticals, much of medicine depended directly on the natural world. Plants were major sources of medicines, but so too were animals and minerals. Human societies experimented with substances obtained from every part of their environment, often with little understanding of the chemical compounds responsible for their effects. The original museum collection was specifically designed around these medicinal materials. It became a major reference collection, eventually containing tens of thousands of specimens. Although much of the original materia medica collection was later transferred elsewhere, its legacy remains fundamental to understanding the Museum’s origins. This is where the Museum becomes particularly interesting from the perspective of zoology. Animal-derived medicines could include fats, glands, secretions, shells, bones, organs and other materials. Some were genuinely pharmacologically active; others were based on traditional beliefs rather than demonstrable therapeutic effects. For modern visitors accustomed to seeing medicines in standardised plastic packaging, these objects provide a striking reminder that pharmaceutical technology begins with much more basic questions: What is the substance? How should it be stored? How can it be identified? How much should be given? Does it work, and how? The history of medicine therefore provides an extraordinary record of how humans have experimented on the biological world.

The Museum’s collection includes examples of the more unusual substances historically associated with medicine. Visitors can encounter references to leeches, crocodiles, mummified material, bear grease and other animal-derived remedies. Contemporary descriptions of the Museum highlight some of these extraordinary treatments, including bear grease for baldness and ground human skull associated with treatments for epilepsy. To modern eyes, these remedies can appear ridiculous. But the more interesting question is why people believed they worked. This is one of the points at which a history of pharmacy becomes a history of human cognition. Traditional medicine frequently operated through associations: if an animal possessed a particular characteristic, perhaps a substance derived from that animal could transfer the characteristic to a patient. Other remedies were based on accumulated empirical observations, even when the underlying mechanism was unknown. Modern pharmacology has not completely abandoned natural products. Indeed, many important drugs originated from plants, fungi, microorganisms or animal toxins. The crucial difference is that modern pharmacology seeks to identify active compounds, establish mechanisms, determine dosage and test efficacy and safety. The Museum therefore encourages an important distinction between traditional use and pharmacological evidence.

Perhaps nowhere is that distinction more important than in the Museum’s treatment of poisons. Historically, the boundary between medicine and poison could be remarkably thin. The same substance could be therapeutic at one dose and fatal at another. This makes the history of pharmacy inseparable from the history of toxicology. One of the most striking episodes associated with the collection is the Bradford peppermint humbug poisoning of 1858. Arsenic was accidentally incorporated into sweets by a confectioner who mistakenly used it as a substitute for sugar. More than 200 people were poisoned and 21 died, most of them children. The disaster helped expose weaknesses in the regulation of poisonous substances and contributed to pressure for reform. This is exactly the kind of story that makes the Museum so effective. It begins as an apparently bizarre historical anecdote but quickly becomes a lesson in toxicology, regulation and public health. Arsenic is not inherently ‘a poison’ in some simplistic sense; toxicity depends on dose, chemical form, route of exposure and biological context. The Museum’s historical material can therefore be used to illustrate one of toxicology’s most fundamental principles: the dose makes the poison.

Another particularly enjoyable part of the Museum is its collection of proprietary and branded medicines. Before the modern pharmaceutical industry, medicine could be intensely commercial. Proprietary remedies were sold under memorable names and promoted through advertisements that often made extravagant claims. The Museum’s collection contains branded medicines dating from the eighteenth century to the present, alongside advertising material. These objects provide a fascinating intersection between medical history and consumer culture. Packaging, typography, logos and advertising claims all reveal changing attitudes towards health. Some historic advertisements are amusing to modern audiences because the claims would be unacceptable today. But they also demonstrate how manufacturers learned to turn medicines into consumer products. The transformation from the apothecary’s shop to the modern pharmaceutical industry is therefore also a transformation in marketing. The bottle and box became as important to some products as the medicine inside.

The pharmaceutical history of pain relief can be traced to ancient uses of naturally occurring analgesic compounds. Preparations derived from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) were used in Mesopotamia and later by Greek and Roman physicians, with opium becoming one of the most important analgesic medicines in Western pharmacology. The active alkaloid morphine was isolated from opium by Friedrich Sertürner in the early nineteenth century, providing a much more predictable and potent form of pain relief. Morphine subsequently became widely used, particularly during surgery and warfare, although its addictive potential became increasingly apparent. Other developments followed, including the isolation and synthesis of additional opioid compounds and the introduction of injectable formulations. At the same time, physicians continued to employ plant-derived preparations such as willow bark, which contained salicin, a compound with analgesic and antipyretic properties. The conversion of salicin into salicylic acid, followed by the development of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) by Bayer in the late nineteenth century, represented a major step towards modern synthetic pharmaceutical analgesics. During the twentieth century, pharmaceutical approaches to pain became increasingly diverse and sophisticated. Aspirin and related non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) provided analgesia while also reducing inflammation and fever, with drugs such as ibuprofen subsequently offering alternatives with different efficacy and safety profiles. Paracetamol (acetaminophen), introduced clinically during the twentieth century, became another widely used analgesic and antipyretic, particularly because it provides pain relief without the gastrointestinal effects associated with many NSAIDs.

One of the Museum’s most important underlying themes is the emergence of chemistry as the intellectual foundation of modern pharmacy. Early pharmacists had practical knowledge of substances without necessarily understanding their molecular structure. During the nineteenth century, chemistry increasingly allowed researchers to isolate, identify and characterise active compounds. The development of laboratory-based pharmaceutical education was therefore revolutionary. The Society’s early laboratory and teaching programme helped establish the idea that pharmacists should understand not simply what a substance did, but its chemical properties and how it could be prepared and tested. This scientific transition is particularly relevant to biology students. It represents the gradual movement from descriptive natural history towards experimental science. The same transition occurred throughout biology. Organisms were first described and classified; later scientists began to investigate their physiology, chemistry, genetics and molecular mechanisms. Pharmacy followed a similar trajectory. As an example, increasing understanding of the nervous system subsequently demonstrated that pain is not simply a response to tissue injury but involves complex peripheral and central neural processes. This led to the use of drugs originally developed for other purposes (including certain antidepressants and anticonvulsants) for particular forms of neuropathic pain.

The twentieth century transformed pharmacy again. The development of sulphonamides, antibiotics and industrial drug manufacturing changed the nature of medicines. Instead of pharmacists preparing many remedies individually, an increasingly large proportion of medicines could be manufactured at industrial scale. The therapeutic revolution of the mid-twentieth century fundamentally altered the pharmacist’s role. Hospital pharmacists became increasingly involved in managing medicines on wards, while community pharmacists became central to the dispensing of prescriptions following the creation of the National Health Service in 1948. The Museum allows visitors to see this transformation as a long-term process rather than a single revolution. The old mortar and pestle did not simply disappear because somebody invented a better object. The entire healthcare system changed around it. The Museum’s history also provides opportunities to explore the changing demographics of the profession. The RPS’s online exhibition Celebrating Women in Pharmacy examines the history of women’s participation in the profession. This is an important addition because the history of medicine has traditionally been written around male doctors, scientists and institutional leaders. There are a number of small things linking this exhibition to the displays within the Museum. Pharmacy provides a different perspective, revealing how women entered a profession that increasingly became central to healthcare. The RPS’s own historical material also acknowledges continuing inequalities in the profession, including underrepresentation of women in senior roles and disparities affecting women from minority ethnic backgrounds. This gives the Museum’s history a contemporary relevance. A professional museum should not simply celebrate its past; it should encourage visitors to think about how the profession continues to change.

One of the strongest themes running through the collection is regulation. The development of pharmacy regulation was not simply bureaucratic. It was driven by the recognition that medicines can harm as well as heal. The Pharmacy Acts of the nineteenth century gradually established systems of professional registration and education. The 1852 Pharmacy Act, for example, established a Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists linked to the Society’s examinations, although it did not immediately restrict the practice of pharmacy to registered practitioners. This history demonstrates how difficult it can be to regulate a profession. There are competing interests: professional independence, commercial freedom, patient safety, government oversight and public access. The Museum’s collection provides tangible evidence of how those tensions played out. The story eventually reaches the modern regulatory system. In 2010, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society relinquished its regulatory function and became the professional leadership body for pharmacists in England, Scotland and Wales, while regulation passed to the newly created General Pharmaceutical Council.

For anyone with a background in zoology or biological science, perhaps the most interesting feature of the Museum is the way it demonstrates that pharmacy is fundamentally an applied biological science. A medicine ultimately interacts with a living organism. Understanding whether a drug works requires knowledge of physiology, biochemistry, cell biology, microbiology and increasingly genetics. Understanding toxicity requires knowledge of how organisms absorb, distribute, metabolise and excrete substances. Understanding infection requires microbiology. Understanding hormones requires endocrinology. Understanding neurological drugs requires knowledge of nervous-system function. The Museum’s historical objects represent the physical evidence of this progression. A mortar represents the preparation of substances. A balance represents dosage. A drug jar represents storage and identification. A laboratory represents chemical analysis. A tablet represents industrial formulation. A prescription represents clinical application. A modern medicine represents the culmination of chemistry and biology working together. At first glance, pharmacy might appear a long way removed from zoology. In fact, the relationship is surprisingly close. Animals have been sources of medicines throughout human history. Leeches are perhaps the obvious example, but animal toxins have also become important sources of pharmacologically active molecules. Venoms contain complex mixtures of proteins and peptides that can affect blood coagulation, nerves, muscles and cardiovascular function. The history of pharmacy also intersects with parasitology, microbiology and zoonotic disease. Understanding medicines requires understanding the biology of the organisms causing disease and the biology of the host being treated.

One of the Museum’s attractions is that what visitors see represents only a small fraction of the RPS’s wider historical resources. The Society maintains a substantial library and archive, with material relating to pharmacy history, science and practice. The Museum’s wider collections include approximately 45,000 historical objects, while the library provides another major resource for researchers. This is important because specialist museums often function differently from major public museums. Their significance lies partly in the collections that are not permanently displayed. The public gallery is therefore best understood as an introduction to a much larger research resource. For researchers interested in medical history, pharmaceutical history, advertising, consumer culture, professionalisation or the history of science, this archival dimension may ultimately be more important than the display cases. The visitor experience is refreshingly straightforward. The main displays are arranged in cases with explanatory information, making it possible to explore independently. The museum is accessible without the elaborate advance planning sometimes required by specialist collections, and guided tours can also be arranged. The current museum website invites visitors to contact the Society to arrange tours, and I am tempted to book one for my next visit. The absence of a huge visitor infrastructure is part of its charm. This is not a museum designed around blockbuster exhibits, immersive screens or enormous reconstructions. It is a collection of objects. That makes it feel closer to an old-fashioned scholarly museum, and in this case that is a compliment. The objects are allowed to carry much of the story.

London has an extraordinary collection of medical museums, and the RPS Museum occupies a distinctive niche among them. The Hunterian offers anatomy, surgery and the extraordinary collections associated with John Hunter and the Royal College of Surgeons. The Wellcome Collection takes a much broader cultural and anthropological approach to medicine. The Science Museum’s Medicine Galleries provide a large-scale history of medical technology and practice (and I hope to cover them in the near future). The RPS Museum is narrower but deeper. Its subject is pharmacy, and that focus allows it to explore an aspect of medicine that larger institutions can only cover in passing. This is particularly evident in the attention given to containers, ingredients, dispensing, branding, regulation and professional education. If the Hunterian asks how we understand the body, and the Science Museum asks how technology has transformed medicine, the RPS Museum asks a rather different question: How did we learn to turn substances into medicines, and how did we learn to make doing so safer? That is a surprisingly rich question.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum is one of those London museums that rewards curiosity more than spectacle. It is small, specialist and somewhat hidden, but those qualities are precisely what make it appealing. Its greatest strength is the quality and variety of its objects. Drug jars, mortars, dispensing equipment, proprietary medicines, pharmaceutical packaging, advertisements, historical books and medicines combine to tell a story that stretches from medieval and early-modern pharmacy to the highly regulated pharmaceutical profession of today. I can imagine that someone that works in the field may spend a lifetime looking at all of the different medicines on display, see how many they recognise and how many are still on the market today. However, from my viewpoint of being a zoologist, the drug jars are among the most beautiful objects. The mortars and dispensing equipment provide a tangible connection to the working pharmacy. The proprietary medicines and advertisements reveal the commercial side of healthcare. The material relating to poisons and regulation provides some of the Museum’s most compelling stories, while the history of the Pharmaceutical Society itself demonstrates how a trade became a profession. However, the Museum’s real significance lies deeper than its individual exhibits. It demonstrates that modern medicine did not suddenly appear with the discovery of antibiotics or the invention of the pharmaceutical industry. It emerged through centuries of experimentation, observation, professional organisation, regulation and scientific discovery.

The Museum also reveals how blurred the boundary between medicine and natural history once was. Plants, animals and minerals supplied the raw materials of pharmacy. The distinction between food, poison and medicine could be remarkably uncertain. Pharmacists had to become chemists, and eventually pharmacologists and healthcare professionals, as scientific understanding advanced. For a biologist, this is perhaps the most compelling aspect of the collection. The history of pharmacy is fundamentally a history of humans trying to understand and manipulate biological systems. A drug works because of biology. A poison kills because of biology. A vaccine protects because of biology. A toxin becomes a medicine because of biology. And a substance obtained from a plant, animal or microorganism can become a powerful therapeutic agent once its biological effects are understood.

The RPS Museum therefore deserves to be considered not merely a museum of pharmacy but a museum of applied biology. It is also a useful reminder that scientific progress is rarely a straight line. Some traditional remedies were ineffective; others were surprisingly useful. Some apparently bizarre substances contained genuinely active compounds. Some respected treatments turned out to be dangerous. Regulations emerged in response to tragedies. Professional standards developed because unregulated medicines could cause serious harm. The history is consequently full of uncertainty, experimentation and unintended consequences, the very things that make the history of science so fascinating. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to the Museum is that it makes an apparently narrow subject feel unexpectedly broad. You arrive expecting bottles and old medicines and leave having encountered chemistry, toxicology, zoology, botany, industrialisation, advertising, professional politics, public health and the changing relationship between humans and the natural world. That makes it particularly well suited to a specialist museum crawl around London. It can be combined with other medical, scientific or historical collections in the capital rather than requiring a whole day in itself (which is exactly what I did). We have all benefitted from the use and development of medicine so it is great to be able to learn more about this in such an engaging and fluid way.

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