Glass and British pharmacy, 1600-1900 : a survey and guide to the Wellcome Collection of British glass / J.K. Crellin and J.R. Scott.

  • Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Glass and British pharmacy, 1600-1900 : a survey and guide to the Wellcome Collection of British glass / J.K. Crellin and J.R. Scott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The attractiveness and elegance of many Conti- nental pharmacies of the 17th and 18th centuries can be seen from a host of illustrations?. Unfortu- nately, there is not the same documentation for English pharmacies, though it is commonly thought that they were just as elegant because of the well known ‘blue and white’ tin-glazed phar- macy jars that have survived. However, such pottery jars were by no means the only containers in use, and in fact may not have featured in every shop?. There is no doubt, as early inventories show, that drawers, boxes and glass vessels were widely employed for storage in the 16th-17th centuries. For instance, in 1591, Thomas Baskerville’s shop in Exeter had many gallon, pottle and quart glasses *. Some of these were probably used for distilled waters, as ‘glasses for waters’ and ‘water glasses’ are occasionally listed ‘. It is of interest that the physician Robert Pitt in his Antidote (a critical attack on apothecaries published in 1704) remarked that, while there had been a marked reduction in the number of distilled waters in use during the previous few decades (from around 150 to ten or fifteen), ‘the glasses remain to affect [the] eye and imagination’®. The general use of phar- macy glassware in the early 18th century is further suggested by Daniel Defoe’s statement of 1727 that ‘fine flint glass [including] apothecaries and chymists glass phyals, retorts, &c. [are made at] London, Bristol, Sturbridge, Nottingham, Shef- field [and] Newcastle’*; also, in 1725, over 200 glass containers were bought for the new apothe- cary shop at Guy’s Hospital (see appendix), there being no evidence of a similar purchase of pottery ware’. Despite the general use of glass containers, sur- viving English examples generally do not match those from the Continent in elegance of decora- - tion or of design, though this may be due to the small amount of remaining 17th- to 18th-century English material. Some that does remain is first- as even the economy-minded Guy’s Hospital was buying special flint pill and extract glasses etc in 1725. There is also evidence of growing numbers of elegant premises in the 17th century, at least in London. For example, in 1670 it was said that ‘it is little wonder [that] so many young apothecaries set up. . . anew, and open shops in every corner almost of the City [of London] .. . for it requires no great sum to purchase fine painted and gilded pots, boxes and glasses, and a little stock is improveable to a manifold proportion of what it is capable of in other trades’ *. Another comment stated that the apothecary should spare the patient the ‘charges of leaf-gold for gilding pots, glasses, pills, electuaries, boles, &c., which serves only to raise the bill’®. Apothecaries, and Chemists and Druggists Nevertheless, it is difficult to say how general this elegant décor was, especially outside London, not only because of the dearth of illustrations, but also because of the disparity among owners. Many were apothecaries who, from the 17th cen- tury onwards, gradually developed into general medical practitioners, a movement completed in the first half of the 19th century. Other premises were owned by ‘chemists and druggists’, a wide spectrum of practitioners evolving from three main groups, namely apothecaries, manufacturers of chemical remedies (cf p62) and wholesale drug- gists. The apothecaries were those who chose to continue mainly or wholly in the practice of phar- macy rather than in medicine. They diminished as the 18th century progressed, even being actively discouraged bythe London Society of Apothecaries when ‘trading’ apothecaries were no longer allowed to become liverymen of the Society after 17741°. Sixty years later, in 1834, the Master of the Society remarked that perhaps only half a dozen apothecaries were ‘practising [pharmacy] exclusively +1,