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.

    82/96 (page 66)
    — — Manufacturers of Flint & Bottle Glass. Chemists and Druggists supplied with stoppered Rounds, Specie Jars, Pear-Shaped Globes, Black Flint Jars & Carboys ... Fishergate, York, 1897, p33. Chem. & Drugg., 1889, 34, 583-4. Blue syrup bottles appear in Apsley Pellatt’s loose- leaf price list, bearing the manuscript date Novem- ber 1838 (in library Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) though not in Pellatt & Co’s earlier, shorter list, dated January, 1830. Griffenhagen, G., ‘Poison bottles and safety closures’, J. Am. Pharm. Ass., 1961, NSI, 563-566. Cf also Munsey, C., The Illustrated Guide to Bottles, New York, 1970, pp161-164. Other American pharmacy ware is also featured in this well- illustrated book. The Edinburgh New Dispensatory, Edinburgh, 1803, pl II, fig 13. ‘Savory and Moore’s Patent Glass Bottles, for Poisons, Liniments &c.’, are featured in Rotherham Glass Works, Established 1751, List of Flint and Green Glass Manufactured by W. C. Beatson, for the use of Chemists and Druggists, np, 1862 (p11). British Patent no. 215 for 1859. Examples of this occur in the Wellcome Collection. For an early reference to the use of sandpaper see Gilbert Thonger’s British Patent no. 2866, dated 16th November 1863, entitled “Labels for bottles or jars containing poisons’. The use of sandpaper was also advocated after the introduction of the 1899 regulations (see below). Cf, for instance, Chem. & Drugg., 1899, 54, 413. For a. convenient summary of the Act see Matthews, L.G., History of Pharmacy in Britain, London and Edinburgh, 1962, pp135-136. A helpful summary of the situation was set out in the Chem & Drugg., 1898, 53, 934-936. For some interesting general background, see Cowen, D.L., ‘Liberty, Laissez-faire and Licensure in Nineteenth Century Britain’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1969, 63, 30-40. Cf Chem. & Drugg., 1899, 54, 16, 56-57. Op. cit., (fn24), pp20-21. Another account of com- pressing corks by biting occurs in a description of a ‘sixpenny surgery’, entitled ‘A Bottle of Medicine’, Guy’s Hospital Gazette, 1909, 23, 132. Redwood, op. cit., (fn64), p16, remarked in 1848 that the dispensing counter should be arranged so that those dispensing may not be exposed to un- necessary interruptions, while a few years later (see Pharm. J. & Trans., 1865-66, 7 (2nd ser.), 397-401) dispensing counters were available with a screen ‘to protect the dispenser from intrusion without rendering him invisible’. 83 For a stimulating hypothesis see Boorman, W.H., “The Winchester Quart’ Pharm. J., 1963, 191, 59- 60. Boorman believes (reference and private com- munication) that the term Winchester arose from the supply of bottles for the Winchester Infirmary, and that the ‘quart’ was derived from the milk trader’s use of an ‘8-quart gallon’ (New Barn Gallon). 84 Op. cit., (fn68), p13. 85 See Boorman op. cit. (fn83). The same company, Beatson & Clark, also changed the name to Winchester, indicating the close similarity of the bottles by at least the 1930s. Cf Pharm. J., 1963, 191, 98. 86 It may be that the York Glass Company first supplied such bottles for Winchester hospital (cf fn83), but it has to be remembered that such appellations as ‘Winchester bottle’ were used as early as 1819 (see Chamberlain, W., Tyrocinium Medicum, London, 1819, (2nd ed.), p144). 87 Op. cit. (fn43), p61. 88 Cf Chambers’ Encyclopedia (1868). The English Dialect Dictionary also shows that in the North Country (1783) the word ‘quarter’ was a measuré containing a quarter of a peck and that in Shropshire (1818) ‘the quarter bushel was a hoop, or peck, the fourth part of which was a quarter’. It is also of interest that chemical quart retorts often held around two gallons (cf Phil. Trans., 1767;575521): 89 The contents of.one tincture room are listed in. Catalogue of the Whole of the Extensive and Valuable Stock in Trade of Drugs, Chemical preparations in the premises of Messrs Balkwell & Sons... which will be sold by Auction by Paddon & Son, Plymouth, nd [1836]. 90 Cf, for instance, two papers by an English pioneer, Henry Deane, ‘On the process of displacement as applied to pharmaceutical preparations’, Pharm. J. & Trans., 1841-42, 1, 61-68, and his general account in Pharm. J. & Trans., 1863-64, 5 (2nd ser.), 544-548. 91 Hunt, R., ‘On the changes produced in some drugs and pharmaceutical preparations by the solar rays’, Pharm. J. & Trans., 1845-46, 5, 171-174. 92 Ibid., p171. 93 Ibid., p172. 94 The etching process — using hydrogen fluoride — came into popularity in the first half of the 19th century. Cf Parkes, S., (A Chemical Catechism, London, 1807 (2nd ed.), pp232-33) who noted that it had become a ‘fashionable employment for young ladies to etch landscapes and other drawings on glass by means of fluoric acid’. Its use for pharmacy bottles seems to date more from the second half of the century when it was also used for making glass tablets for chemists’ windows. Sandblasting also came into common use in the second half of the century, whereby stencil lettering