Nick Barber on Victorian pharmacy: In search of the entrepreneurial spirit

"I spent a remarkable few weeks filming The Victorian Pharmacy for BBC2. It has been great fun and I hope the series and accompanying book will help community pharmacy get the recognition it deserves.

The four one-hour programmes (to be aired on BBC2, hopefully this autumn) follow the development of pharmacy from the early Victorian period, in the 1840s (when I make up Oil of Earthworm, for example), through to the late 1800s (when I make gunpowder and fireworks). The other two presenters are Ruth Goodman and Tom Quick, historians from whom I learned a great deal. What came over to me most strongly was the entrepreneurial spirit of the Victorian pharmacists. Many of them had to fight to make a living (the pages of the C+D used to list those who had gone bankrupt) so they were certainly inventive. A modern pharmacy is an illustrated history of our forebears’ willingness to tackle anything to provide the public with what it wants. People sometimes ask why pharmacies stock anything other than medicines, and the answer is because we were the experts in the high street in chemicals, plant extracts and health. Why perfumes? Because we had expertise in essential oils and used to blend our own perfumes. Why shaving equipment? Because we not only made shaving preparations but also shaved customers. Why reading glasses and dental care? We used to make tooth powders, extract teeth, test eyes and fit glasses. Indeed, the Pharmaceutical Society was formed decades before the equivalent dentistry and optics bodies. The list goes on: photography, sexual health, dermatologicals, etc. Whatever the public wanted, we bought, made or created a service for it. We need that Victorian entrepreneurial spirit now. Community pharmacy faces the worst financial depression for over half a century. It is tethered to dispensing, for which it will inevitably get less money; the commissioning of clinical services by the PCTs is, to put it mildly, variable in its quality, insight and effectiveness. We need to reconnect to our customer base, to talk to them and offer the services – NHS funded or private – they want. And we need not be afraid of charging for them. For example, those of us in middle age who live far from our parents would be willing to pay a lot of money for the peace of mind that could come from a pharmacist engaging with our parents and helping manage their medicines (including, occasionally, helping challenge their GP)."