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Early recollections
By Frederick Segal
I entered the world of "retail" pharmacy (as it was called until comparatively recently) way back in the mid fifties. At that time television was blackand white, outside broadcasting didn't exist, the transistor radio was an exciting innovation, and a certain Bing Crosby was in his prime. The Beatles had not yet arrived on the scene. Rationing had ended shortly before, and we were all full of hope for the future.
All around us streets of bomb-damaged houses were being demolished and replaced with modern tower blocks. There were still the odd bomb craters, later to be bought up by a far-seeing entrepreneur who converted them into today's carparks, and there was, as ever, a war going on, but far away.
The world of pharmacy beckoned me almost by default. I blame the Perennial Delphinium. A strange statement to make but I shall clarify it. I was uncertain what my future should be but I was keen to be involved in the exciting world of medicine. My school, in common with others, split tuition in two: the humanities and science subjects. The latter were not catered for when it came to biological subjects, so I had to leave at sixteen and go to a local Polytechnic where they taught botany and zoology for the A level examinations. It was a two year course, and half way through it I was encouraged to take the Pharmaceutical Society's diploma entrance exam for "exam practice".
I passed, thanks to a lesson I had had the day before in which I had to dissect a Perennial Delphinium, and by coincidence, the practical part of the Society's exam involved cutting up the self same flower and describing the bits, a time-consuming process, which, in view of my prevous day's practice took me a matter of minutes working from memory, allowing me plenty of time to deal with the rest of the exam. Such are exams!
I was then placed in a dilemma whether to proceed with the diploma studies which involved a two year course, or to spend a further year for my A level exams followed by three years of study for a degree.
The disadvantage of the diploma was that further study for an academic career would not be possible from that point, but the advantages were very appealing, namely qualifying as a pharmacist two years earlier than I would were I to study for the degree.
I had had a taste of retail pharmacy having spent some weeks during my holidays working for an uncle who was a chemist, as we called pharmacists in those days. I was intrigued by the mystique of the dispensary with its rows of mysterious bottles and jars with their Latin titles, together with the compounding of the mixtures, ointments and lotions. I was hooked, and decided to go for the Society's Diploma.
Two years later in 1956 I was on the market as an "Apprentice"... a one year period working with a pharmacist manager supervising my progress. I found a placement in a small pharmacy in Essex owned by a company which paid me the grand sum of £12 per week, which was 50% more than the average working wage. I was lucky to have a very capable manager in charge of me. However, this happy situation lasted only three months as he had to leave for family reasons. His replacement was a gentleman who had had a recent nervous breakdown and I was requested by the Superintendent to "keep an eye" on him . Consequently the supervisor became the supervised The rumour was that he had been telling customers to avoid the black squares on the lino flooring because death rays were emanating from them. I could never ascertain if this tale were true, but he certainly had eccentriciites. To be fair to him, in spite of those ,he was capable in his work and he passed on some of his skills to me.
At that time we worked from the National Formulary, a book so thin that it required a hard cover lest it blew away. It was full of formulae for mixtures and the like, all of which we compounded on the premises. Some, such as Kaolin and Morphine Mixture are still with us, but others such as "Mist Pot Brom et Nux Vom" have disappeared. They mostly contained Chloroform Water as a preservative, which we had to prepare by vigorously shaking the deadly carcinogenic substance with water in 80fl.oz bottles which we called "Winchesters" until we were exhausted and it had dissolved. Everything was measured in the Imperial System of course, the basis of which was the grain, seven thousand of which
weighed a pound. An ounce, being a sixteenth of a pound , was, of course, four hundred and thirtyseven and a half grains. The liquid equivalent of the grain was the minim of which there were 480 to the fluid ounce. This scenario resulted in a one per cent solution being 4.375 grains in a fluid ounce. We suffered this situation for many years until the metric system came along and rescued us from this archaic nonsense...but there were many dark years of transition when we were buying using the metric system and dispensing in the Imperial System. Calculators were unknown in those days so our mental arithmetic abilities were sorely tested on a daily basis..
I left the pharmacy after my apprenticeship and had to wait till I was twenty-one to join the register and practice as a pharmacist. My weekly wage was £21, considered a very good wage by normal standards. I grew a moustache with the idea of making myself look older and was sent to a branch in East London where I was placed in charge of women assistants twice my age, without having had any real managerial experience, and left to flounder. Sensing that, they were supportive of
me, and we all worked well together. The company was undergoing what was euphemistly called "modernisation". As part of this, some one hundred or so fluted ultramarine blue poison bottles with enamelled Latin inscriptions were set aside and I was told to destroy them and replace them with what were called "shop rounds"...plain brown glass bottles with stuck on labels. I recollect, to my shame, spending a couple of hours setting them up in the shop yard and throwing bricks at them until they were a pile of shards. This wanton act of vandalism has haunted me ever since. I often wonder what their value would have been today. However, the management regarded the act as "progessive" and were pleased with my following their instructions and contributing to the up-to-date look of the dispensary.
It seems incredible these days that at that time we had no corticosteroids, no paracetamol, no antidepressants, and strychnine, (for heaven's sake!), was in everyday use (combined with bromides) as a "tonic". People always wanted us to make them a tonic, so we obliged with very bitter preparations such as Mist. Gent. Acid to stimulate the appetite. Antibiotics in the form of the tetracyclines were just catching on and an exciting new form of penicillin called penicillin V made its debut. The drug of choice for painful rheumatic conditions was Butazolidine. It came with a list of side effects, including agranulocytosis,as long as my arm . We sold Boric Acid crystals for people to make their own eye lotions at home, Senna Pods for constipation, "Dr Williams Pink Pills for Pale People" for anaemia, and a host of other weird and wonderful preparations which in today's world would be rejected with scorn by any responsible body..The concept of expiry dates was unknown, and all preparations were labelled with the dose only, or with the magic words "As Directed" if the doctor's instruction was indecipherable. One was not permitted to write the name of the contents on the container, (usually a cardboard skillet), unless the prescriber wrote "NP"(nomen propium")
on the prescription. This instruction was the exception rather than the rule, and patients trusted us implicitly to hand them the prescribed drug without any information about its action or contents whatsoever. With the advent of the Internet, the knowledgeable patient is the norm today, whereas at that time the patient was kept in total ignorance. In fact I admit I would have been caught on the wrong foot if somebody asked me the rationale in combining an expectorant with a cough suppressant, such as "Ammon Chlor et Morph".
People's trust in the medicine was touchingly trusting. Whole compendia of useless concoctions have disappeared in my time. A revolution has taken place!
Abortifacients were rife in those days and we were, of course, forbidden to supply them. There were, however, lurking in the drawers of all pharmacies various mysterious "Ladies' Pills" which, I am sure, were totally useless but had their adherents who usually were embarrassed looking ladies. I recall that Slippery Elm was a preparation we were advised not to recommend and Spanish Fly was also on the forbidden list.
My first taste of inflation, which was at that time unheard of, was my shock on finding that Beechams Pills had gone up from one and six a box to one and nine...I refer to shillings and pence....because, don't forget, we were then in the predecimal age.
The concept of inflation was not understood in the UK by the wide public because prices had been stable for very many years. Further price increases came along afterwards and the concept was soon to be experienced to our cost.
I intend to extend these musings as chronogically as my memory serves me and give a taste of what life in a chemist shop was like way back in the past.
Really interesting
This is really interesting. What subjects did you study in your diploma? Were degree holding Pharmacist's better paid? I read a history book on the University I attended (The School Of Pharmacy, London University). They had a rule in the past that women were not allowed at the University. Were there many female Pharmacist's back in the 1950s?
memoirs