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Blists Hill Victorian Town in Shropshire revives the sights, sounds and smells | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
of the 19th century. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
At its heart stands the pharmacy - a treasure-house | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
of potions and remedies from a century and a half ago. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
Now, in a unique experiment, historian Ruth Goodman, professor of pharmacy Nick Barber | 0:00:15 | 0:00:23 | |
and PhD student Tom Quick have opened the doors to the Victorian Pharmacy. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:29 | |
Recreating a high street institution we take for granted, but which was once a novel idea. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:35 | |
They're bringing the pharmacy to life, sourcing ingredients, | 0:00:35 | 0:00:40 | |
mixing potions and dispensing cures. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
But in an age when skin creams contained arsenic and cold medicines were based on opium, | 0:00:43 | 0:00:48 | |
the team need to be highly selective. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
They're only trying out safe versions of traditional remedies on carefully-selected customers. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:57 | |
The start was like the Wild West. People didn't know what was good and bad. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:02 | |
Get a bit of speed up. There we go. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:04 | |
The pharmacy was something that affected everybody's lives in one way or another. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:09 | |
They're discovering an age of social change that brought healthcare | 0:01:09 | 0:01:14 | |
within the reach of ordinary people for the very first time. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
Heralding a consumer revolution that reached far beyond medicine | 0:01:17 | 0:01:21 | |
to create the model for the modern high street chemist as we know it today. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:26 | |
So far, after a grand opening, the pharmacy team have made the transition | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
from the traditional remedies of the early 19th century to the birth of new scientific advances. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:45 | |
Now they're taking on the medical and commercial challenges of the 1850s and 1860s. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:52 | |
Hello there. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:54 | |
As promised, Professor Barber's Miracletts! | 0:01:54 | 0:01:56 | |
In the mid 19th century, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions had reached their peak, | 0:01:56 | 0:02:02 | |
leading to unprecedented outbreaks of diseases like cholera and tuberculosis. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:08 | |
Desperate for cures, people turned to the pharmacies as never before. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:13 | |
I mean, this is the point when public health is at its worst. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
Of perhaps all the time in Britain, the 1850s is the very, very worst. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:22 | |
-The most scary time of all. -There are whole series of infectious diseases. Cholera, scarlet fever, | 0:02:22 | 0:02:26 | |
typhus, typhoid, influenza - all of them killing people, right, left and centre. Measles... | 0:02:26 | 0:02:33 | |
What you get as well is a new fear. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:36 | |
It must have been a really scary time, actually. You'd just reach out for anything, wouldn't you? | 0:02:36 | 0:02:42 | |
Anything that offered any sort of hope. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
With medical science struggling to provide viable treatments and people looking for miracles, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
new commercial opportunities beckoned. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:54 | |
People were really worried about these diseases and were prepared to spend money. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
The pharmacy's a business, so there need to be medicines which either cure or believe to cure | 0:02:58 | 0:03:05 | |
the diseases which are there. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
In the spirit of experimentation, they developed creative new remedies for the health crisis, | 0:03:08 | 0:03:12 | |
one of which aimed to solve everybody's problems in one go. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:16 | |
Cure-all medicines. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:18 | |
"Do I need to have separate medicines for each of those things?" | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
"No, we can come up with a cure-all which is going to make you better whatever's wrong with you." | 0:03:21 | 0:03:26 | |
They addressed the public's fears and brought people clamouring to the pharmacy. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
It's got to solve people's problems, really. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:34 | |
They were seen as a viable means of treatment. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
The team are going to make their very own Victorian-style cure-all. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:42 | |
Ruth and Tom are setting out to determine the level of customer demand for their product. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:47 | |
-Morning! -Hi there. My name's Tom, this is Ruth. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:56 | |
-My name's Tom. -Nice to meet you. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
We're from the pharmacy just up the road. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
-We're on a bit of a market research... -Right. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:04 | |
We're looking for people who might have something wrong with them, of any sort, really. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
-I've got quite a few actually, yeah. -I do have a small stye here on my eyelid. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:13 | |
Oh, yeah. I see. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
Working with sewage as well, I tend to get septicaemia quite a lot because I burn myself. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:21 | |
My back is absolutely killing me. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
I've got a burn there which is in an open, movable joint, which will take some healing up. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:28 | |
-And then quite a nasty one on my arm there. -Oh, that's horrid. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:33 | |
I've had a sore throat for a couple of months. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:35 | |
Quite bad tonsillitis. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
And then of course, anything you could do with baldness would be appreciated. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:43 | |
With potential customers lined up, Nick needs to decide on the ingredients for their medicine. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:50 | |
Briony Hudson, curator of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:55 | |
has brought him some examples of genuine cure-alls for inspiration. | 0:04:55 | 0:05:00 | |
Well, some of the really big-sellers are things like... Let's have a look. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
Beecham's pills. Started off when Thomas Beecham went round the markets in Lancashire, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:09 | |
selling pills that gradually got more and more popular, hit the national market. So he was a really big name. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:14 | |
We've got Holloway's pills. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:16 | |
Thomas Holloway, who styled himself as a professor, | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
no medical background, but absolutely hit the big time. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
He was making so much money, he died a millionaire. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:26 | |
Did people know what was in them? | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
Could they say, "It's got this and this in it," like you can now? | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
No. Not at all. Part of the mystery and perhaps part | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
of the appeal was that they were what were called secret remedies. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
So there was absolutely nothing in law that meant you had to reveal what was in them. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:43 | |
They didn't have to reveal any scientific basis to claim | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
that they could cure this massive list of diseases. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
How many would people take? | 0:05:50 | 0:05:52 | |
Were they generally a one-a-day or one-a-week minimalist thing? | 0:05:52 | 0:05:56 | |
Some you would want to take just when you were ill, but a lot of these, you | 0:05:56 | 0:06:00 | |
really did want to encourage people to take a regime of many, many. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:04 | |
Morison's is a really good example. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:06 | |
People were taking up to 1,000 of the pills a week and in the 1830s, | 0:06:06 | 0:06:11 | |
the first case of someone dying, clearly a very serious issue. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
You had to trust your pharmacist, or trust the advertising or trust | 0:06:15 | 0:06:20 | |
the person that recommended it to you that they wouldn't do you harm and they would do you good. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:26 | |
Ruth and Tom are making headway gaining trust from their potential customers. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:33 | |
I certainly think these pills should - they're designed to help you. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
-Would you be happy taking them? -Yeah. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
-Yes. -That would be great. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:40 | |
I'm willing to try everything. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
If you can stop it growing out of me ears and up me nose | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
and put a bit on my head, that would be lovely! | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
With a growing number of ailments to treat, | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
Nick wants to find an authentic formula. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
Fortunately, although these remedies were secret at the time, a book was later published by | 0:06:55 | 0:07:00 | |
the British Medical Association revealing the hidden contents of popular cure-all brands. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:06 | |
So this is their secret remedies. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:08 | |
What they cost and what they contain. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:10 | |
Exactly. So, what they were aiming to do spelt out on the cover. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
A lot of them have things like senna, aloes, liquorice, rhubarb - that sort of thing. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:20 | |
Most of them were laxatives and so they did have an effect. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
-People would think, "It's working because I can feel there's an effect." -Exactly. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:29 | |
One example - the wonderfully titled Pink Pills For Pale People, which is great. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
They were claiming, as with all of these things, they could treat a really wide range of diseases. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
One of the adverts says "the dark days of dyspepsia..." | 0:07:39 | 0:07:43 | |
"Dr Williams' pink pills go to the very cause of the mischief." | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
If you look at the ingredients, nothing particularly worrying. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
Certainly, you've got liquorice in there. You've got sugar in there. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
So, along with sulphate of iron and potassium carbonate. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
But I don't think anything that would have done anyone great harm. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
Or great good, either, for that matter. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
It's hard not to be sceptical about the ingredients of cure-alls, | 0:08:05 | 0:08:10 | |
but in the mid-19th century, many people genuinely didn't know any better. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
There was little scientific understanding of the cause of disease. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:19 | |
Nobody knew, in our everyday terms now, what really worked and what didn't. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:25 | |
Through into the middle Victorian times, people believed that infections and disease | 0:08:25 | 0:08:30 | |
often came from decaying matter and that this raised up an invisible gas which they called a miasma. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:38 | |
The miasma theory of disease believed that disease was spread by evil clouds of bad smelling air. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:45 | |
People said, "Obviously these new diseases are being caused by the evil miasmas. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:50 | |
"Wherever there is stink, there is illness." | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
They believed it was the same miasma for everything. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:57 | |
So it was the same one for cholera as influenza. | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
Your body, your constitution would react to that miasma in a different way, | 0:08:59 | 0:09:03 | |
and that's what would give you the disease state. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:06 | |
If they had a bit of flatulence or diarrhoea, they didn't know if it was cholera or not. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:11 | |
So that's when they'd take their cure-alls. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
They'd take it to nip the disease in the bud and stop it progressing. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:19 | |
With their thinking rooted in false scientific theory, pharmacists were inadvertently misleading the public. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:26 | |
Pharmacists in the 1850s are somewhere between the quacks on the one hand who are just out | 0:09:26 | 0:09:33 | |
there selling things which they knew were pointless, and the scientists who were researching things. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:39 | |
They'd be selling things which people believed | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
would work, but they had to make a living out of it as well. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
The pressure to make money was very real. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
Records show that in the middle of the 19th century, about 100 pharmacies went bankrupt every year. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:57 | |
Shops opened six days a week, often from 8am to 11pm. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
The staff worked even longer hours preparing the shop in the morning for business, | 0:10:07 | 0:10:11 | |
and catching up with the day's prescriptions and accounts at night. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:15 | |
Organising their expensive stock was another time-consuming priority. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:25 | |
Poor storage or over-stocking could put their whole business at risk. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
Supplies come in quite regularly in batches, and of course the things have to be stored properly. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:34 | |
It's no good putting herbs in the cellar. They'd get damp. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:39 | |
They're better off being decanted into the drawers where the atmosphere is dry and people are opening | 0:10:39 | 0:10:44 | |
the drawers fairly regularly, so you're getting plenty of air supply through them. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
As a 21st-century pharmacist, Nick is struggling to select | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
the ingredients for his 19th-century cure-all. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
We know that one set of ingredients is not going to cure all ailments, so what I've got to do is put | 0:11:05 | 0:11:11 | |
my modern knowledge behind me and try and find something | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
which is authentic, which will have an effect on the body, but also we need to make sure it's really safe. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:20 | |
He turns to his pharmacy's prescription book - a log of preparations doctors had | 0:11:23 | 0:11:28 | |
requested for their patients, which were administered by the pharmacy. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:32 | |
A lot of people couldn't afford to use the doctor, | 0:11:32 | 0:11:35 | |
but these cure-alls were sometimes prescriptions which the doctors used. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
They'd sort of cut out the middle man. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:41 | |
People could get access to theses doctors' medicines | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
by just going to the pharmacist and getting them over the counter. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:49 | |
Here, Nick finds inspiration for his formula, | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
and finally decides on a variety of perfectly safe ingredients. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:56 | |
He's showing Tom how to turn his formula, or recipe, | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
into their first batch of pills - enough for 20 customers. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:08 | |
-I've got a secret recipe. -What are we putting in these? -That's secret. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
I'll tell you, cos you're an apprentice and need to know. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
So, what I've got is some soap powder - acts as a laxative. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
They actually used quite a lot in Victorian days. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
Some liquorice root going in - | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
it helps people cough, and can protect the stomach as well, if people have ulcers. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:30 | |
Grinding them together now, nicely. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
And then we've just got one more thing to add, which is rhubarb. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
Ground rhubarb root. It's a laxative, and so actually two of these ingredients are laxatives. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:44 | |
What we've got to do now is bind this together. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
So, a little glucose syrup, a little bit at a time. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:52 | |
-I suppose the main cost is man-hours, if anything? -That's right! | 0:12:52 | 0:12:57 | |
On average, the price charged for just one pill would have covered the cost of making over 200. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:04 | |
They sold in massive quantities, despite having what we now know were very modest healing properties. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:12 | |
If you give people a sugar-coated pill and they think it's a medicine, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
you can get a 20%, 30% recovery rate in some conditions. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:20 | |
The power of the mind to heal is quite amazing. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:25 | |
And this is just beginning to thicken now | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
at the bottom here. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:30 | |
A little bit more on the crumbly bits. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
All that powder just gradually comes together into this sort of cake. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:38 | |
If my calculations are correct! | 0:13:38 | 0:13:41 | |
-Cheesecake base. -Yes! | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
I don't think it will taste as good, though. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
Shall we have a go at actually rolling some pills, then? | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
Yes. It is now one mass. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
The pharmacy has a brass and mahogany pill-making machine, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:56 | |
which Tom's getting his hands on for the first time. | 0:13:56 | 0:13:59 | |
-So, what I need to do here is break off a bit and make it into a sausage, don't I? -That's right. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:06 | |
Before this machine was invented, the pill mass was rolled out by hand and cut to size with a spatula. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:12 | |
And then you roll it down into a long, thin sausage. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
This is a piece of advanced kit, in a way. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
Making sure you get the same dosage for everyone because it | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
standardises the size of each little pill coming out. It's looking good. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
Still a bit too much, though. Oh, look. Flattened the thing. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
You don't need a lot for this, do you? | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
-Now we just roll it across these bits, yeah? -Yeah. -This way round, though. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:36 | |
The brass grooves are designed to cut a spherical pill. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
Push back and forth a few times. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:41 | |
That's it. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
Get your body into it. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
And we have lots of slug-like pellets. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:50 | |
I'll try to make them better with this pill-rounding device. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:54 | |
They do look horribly like rabbit droppings. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
I think we needed to have slightly stickier pills. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
Appearance was key. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:06 | |
They had to look like they were going to work, even if the main ingredient was soap powder. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:12 | |
Some pharmacists even coated pills for their wealthier customers | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
in silver-leaf to increase their desirability and their price. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:19 | |
How many thousand have we got to make? | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
So, if we're doing 50 pills in a box and a box a week for a patient... | 0:15:22 | 0:15:29 | |
-20 people... -20 boxes a week. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:30 | |
That's 1,000 pills. We've just nearly done 50. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:36 | |
As apprentice, it'll be Tom's job to make the rest of the pills. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:42 | |
This is going to take about three days to do it. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
In the kitchen, Ruth is making a remedy for Bill Jones, the plumber who complained of hair loss. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:57 | |
Herbalist Eleanor Gallia has come to show Ruth how to make Makassar hair oil. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:03 | |
Its recipe came from Makassar in India, giving it exotic connotations, | 0:16:03 | 0:16:08 | |
but most British pharmacists used ingredients from closer to home. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:13 | |
I've got here the European alkanet, which sort of produces a hugely effective dye. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:20 | |
Just look at that. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:22 | |
You've got the fresh, you've got the native British. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
If you look there, can you see it glistening? | 0:16:26 | 0:16:29 | |
-Yeah. It's really quite pretty. -It's beautiful, really beautiful. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:35 | |
It's weeping a gooey, sort of, sticky sap that'll help coat the hair. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:44 | |
Make it easier to comb. Act more like a conditioner. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
Absolutely. And nourish the scalp as well. Moisturise the scalp. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
Victorians didn't have a proper understanding of hair loss, and saw it as an illness. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:56 | |
One 1864 medical report stated its causes as "habitual drinking, late hours, violence, | 0:16:56 | 0:17:03 | |
"intense study or thoughtfulness and the pernicious practice | 0:17:03 | 0:17:08 | |
"of constantly wearing a hard, non-ventilating hat." | 0:17:08 | 0:17:12 | |
We'll put it all into cold oil and then heat it above the fire. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:19 | |
-This recipe has gone unchanged for hundreds of years. -I'm just going to stir this in. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
Already pink, even cold. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
-Yeah. Lovely. -The mixture has to heat for an hour before the remaining ingredients can be added. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:35 | |
-Shall we have a cup of tea? -I'll make a nice pot of tea. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
In preparation for the launch of their cure-all pills, Nick is drafting a poster. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
In the 1850s and '60s, more people could read, printing processes have | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
improved, and advertising really begins to take off. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
And it was really influential on people. | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
In Victorian times, pharmacies could make exaggerated claims | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
about the drugs they sold without worrying too much about rules and regulations. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
It was completely different of course to how things are today, when we've got a whole mass of rules. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:14 | |
Lots of medicines can't be advertised to the public at all. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
And if you advertise medicines, there's got to be evidence as to | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
how they work, whether they can really cure you or not. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
You can't claim anything cures unless there's a whole load of evidence behind it. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
You'd have to give information about side effects and all sorts of things. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
So it's a very different situation. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:35 | |
I'm going to get the printer to print lots of copies. I'm going to put them all round | 0:18:35 | 0:18:40 | |
the town, and try to get people to come in and buy my miracle cure. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:44 | |
In Ruth's kitchen, the Makassar hair oil has heated through. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:53 | |
There you go, that's been boiling, boiling, boiling, | 0:18:56 | 0:18:59 | |
hot, hot, hot. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:01 | |
Fantastic colour. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:03 | |
Beautiful. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
Look at the colour of that! | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
Eleanor has an old trick up her sleeve for blending in another ingredient - cleavers. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
You'd get your cleavers - I picked these this morning. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
Your first row goes up the way. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:21 | |
Your second row goes across the way. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:23 | |
So, basically, you're weaving. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:25 | |
They all want to stick together, so making that is pretty much what they've got in mind by themselves. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:32 | |
It's a sieve. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
It's going to make a really nice filter. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
But, at the same time, we're pouring hot oil through it, so that's going | 0:19:37 | 0:19:42 | |
to draw some of the contents of the cleavers into the liquid at the same time. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:48 | |
In a sense, by making a sieve of it, you're sort of killing two birds with one stone. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
And then we pop that in there. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
It does smell good, this. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:00 | |
We haven't even added the perfumes yet. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
It looks like it's coming through quite nice. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
Ooh. Oh, that smells good. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
The final stage is to scent it with cinnamon, lemon and cloves. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:26 | |
So this is a hair oil aimed, I suppose, at both sexes, to some degree. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:35 | |
People would usually put slightly different scents in, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
according to whether it was a male hair oil or female. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
-This one could go either way. -It could. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
It's how you package it as to whether it's for women or for men. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
The pharmacy will market the hair oil as a preventative remedy for hair loss aimed at men. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:54 | |
Many enterprising pharmacists expanded its appeal beyond medicine | 0:20:54 | 0:20:59 | |
as a health and beauty product aimed at women. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
-That's a lot of hair oil, isn't it? -It is. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
Tom's been busy pill-making - one of the many chores an apprentice would have carried out for his master. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:15 | |
An apprentice had to impress his boss. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
And Tom's hoping to do just that by drumming up further publicity for Nick's cure-all medicine. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:25 | |
He's drafted in engineer Chris Hill to help him put together a promotional stunt. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:31 | |
What we want to do at the pharmacy is make a bit of an event, really. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:36 | |
A bit of a show to attract some customers. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
And what we thought we could do is maybe fix up some sort of machine | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
that we could maybe power a pestle and mortar with, | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
so we can show our ability to grind all the medicines and so on. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
-Yeah. OK. An automated grinding mechanism. -That's right, yeah. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
He's been inspired by a contraption | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
used by a chemist in Knaresborough in the early 19th century. | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
A pestle and mortar, powered by a dog. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
Victorian England is actually filled with advertising. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
There are adverts in all the papers. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
Some of the papers are just composed of adverts in exactly the same way as today. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
What's fascinating about doing a stunt like a dog pestle and mortar | 0:22:15 | 0:22:19 | |
is that you're creating a real, physical event in the street. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:24 | |
And it's a lot more local. You're advertising it on a local scale. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:29 | |
Chris is going to make the machine. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
All Tom needs now is the dog. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
Morning. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:44 | |
It's time for the first marketing push. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
Nick's claims for his cure-all have been put into print. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:53 | |
I can feel them working already. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
The first batch of Professor Barber's Miracletts is ready for delivery. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
-Morning! -Morning. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
I've...brought you something. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
We've got some special pills for you. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
Pharmacies, of course, are a business. We have to make a living. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:16 | |
We've got these Miraclett miracle cures for you today. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:21 | |
And that means getting in touch with your local community. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:23 | |
As promised, | 0:23:23 | 0:23:25 | |
-Professor Barber's Miracletts. -Thanks very much. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:29 | |
It means finding the products that they want to buy. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
We'll see if it sorts out your back. It should certainly clean your blood, if nothing else. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:36 | |
Clean your blood - right! | 0:23:36 | 0:23:38 | |
You have to project an image that was enormously trustworthy and deeply convincing. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:43 | |
-I have my doubts. -Really? OK. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
-Do you know what's actually in it? -Um... | 0:23:45 | 0:23:48 | |
With the best will in the world, it's not going to cure everything, is it? | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
I think pharmacists would have been quite coy | 0:23:51 | 0:23:54 | |
-about revealing their secret ingredients, actually. -Of course. Yes. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:58 | |
-I hope that it does some good. -Any side effects that I might...? | 0:23:58 | 0:24:02 | |
You can tell us! | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
Must have been quite difficult, mustn't it? | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
Sort of maintaining this front. | 0:24:08 | 0:24:10 | |
Better go and sell some more. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
Engineer Chris Hill is putting the finishing touches to Tom's dog-powered pestle and mortar. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:22 | |
Hey, Chris! | 0:24:26 | 0:24:27 | |
One small dog. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
-All right? -Up until the mid-19th century, a breed of dog called | 0:24:32 | 0:24:36 | |
a turnspit was often used to turn meat on a spit over a fire. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:41 | |
The dog pestle and mortar is an adaptation of that technology. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:46 | |
Hopefully, all we need to do is get Tilly to move a little bit. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
The turnspit dog is now extinct, so Tom is using a Jack Russell... | 0:24:50 | 0:24:55 | |
Tilly, Tilly. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
..a breed less renowned for its turning capabilities. | 0:24:57 | 0:25:01 | |
Come on, come on! | 0:25:01 | 0:25:03 | |
No! | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
Tilly, Tilly, Tilly... | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
-I'll give her a hand. -A little start. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:08 | |
She'll be fine once she gets started. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
Come on, Tilly! | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
There we go! Look at that! She loves it! | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
-She could get used to that. -Look at the pestle going round! | 0:25:15 | 0:25:19 | |
She's almost doing that by herself. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:20 | |
I think Tilly needs some sort of treat. Come on. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:26 | |
Hey, look at that! | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
Good girl! | 0:25:31 | 0:25:33 | |
One thing the Victorians understood above all else was that | 0:25:37 | 0:25:41 | |
no matter how great the advances of science and medicine, the best way to draw a crowd was good marketing. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:48 | |
Tom will reveal his new-fangled marvel, | 0:25:49 | 0:25:52 | |
the dog-powered pestle and mortar, giving Nick a chance to catch up with his cure-all customers. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:58 | |
If they say the worse a medicine tastes, the better it does, | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
I should be really fighting fit, because it was vile. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:05 | |
-I didn't think they were too bad, actually. -They weren't very nice, no. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
A little bit tart, but they went down OK. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:10 | |
Don't you think Victorian medicine should taste a bit nasty? | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
I think it probably should taste nasty, yes. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
-Have you got a sore throat now? -No, it hasn't come back. -Fantastic! | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
It just shows they work for everyone. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:22 | |
That's healed up. This is nearly healed up. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:24 | |
-You had a stye on your eye? -Yes, I did. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
-Do you still have it? -I do. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
Can you see? | 0:26:29 | 0:26:30 | |
-Did your back get better? -My back did get better. -Fantastic! | 0:26:30 | 0:26:34 | |
-But I didn't take the tablets. -Oh, really?! | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
-The thing that it did do for me is just give me a bit of extra flatulence. -Oh, yes! Oh, really?! | 0:26:37 | 0:26:41 | |
Fortunately, Nick has other products he can turn to, including Ruth's Macassar Hair Oil. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:49 | |
Just put a bit on your hand. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
And how long does this take? | 0:26:54 | 0:26:55 | |
Oh...I don't think we're working in minutes! | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
It's Tom's moment to impress the public...and his boss. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
It's a big moment, Tilly. This is the big night! | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
Oh, go on, Tilly. Just for us! | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
Watch it! She'll get it out of your hand any second. Go on, Tilly! Come on! | 0:27:16 | 0:27:20 | |
Come on! | 0:27:20 | 0:27:22 | |
Oh, come on! You know you like cheese. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:24 | |
You liked cheese before. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:26 | |
Are you bored of cheese now? | 0:27:26 | 0:27:28 | |
Tom's first PR stunt has drawn a crowd. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:33 | |
And the pestle is finally turning... | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
Ooh! | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
But it's not being driven by Tilly the dog. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:40 | |
This is... It's not quite as it was planned, is it? | 0:27:40 | 0:27:44 | |
-No, not entirely. -Not quite. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:46 | |
Not entirely, Nick. No. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:48 | |
As an apprentice, you've got a lot to learn, clearly. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:52 | |
Don't you think dog-powered pestle and mortars have a future? | 0:27:52 | 0:27:56 | |
Er, I think, if we work on it a bit, we could get it going. | 0:27:56 | 0:28:00 | |
Folks, thank you very much for coming. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
I'd like to show you this, the first dog-powered pestle and mortar prototype. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:08 | |
-Thank you for coming, everyone! -APPLAUSE | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
Next time on Victorian Pharmacy, the discovery of how to kill germs. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:17 | |
Look at that go. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:19 | |
Nick turns his hand to some horse medicine. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
-Rather you than me. -You're a big chap, aren't you? | 0:28:24 | 0:28:26 | |
-Do you want to try it? -Yeah, go on. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:29 | |
And Ruth tries some Victorian electro-therapy. | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
Argh! | 0:28:32 | 0:28:34 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:28:39 | 0:28:42 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 |