Victorian Pharmacy Episode 1 - TV Thursday

Do you love learning about the past? Then I’ve got a new 4 episode series to share for TV Thursday that you are going to love–Victorian Pharmacy!

These 4 episodes are made by the same folks who did the Wartime Farm series. The “boys” aren’t in this one, but it features Ruth Goodman as the domestic/lifestyle specialist along with pharmacy professor Nick Barber and doctorate student Tom Quick as the pharmacy experts.

Each of the 4 episodes sort of “takes place” in a different time period of the Victorian era and covers some of the changing social, medical, and commercial aspects of the pharmacy or “Chemist” as it was also called. The replicate various products and cures, utilize period equipment and perform tasks that pharmacy of the day would have. They take pains to point out things that were used that we now know to be harmful or that are highly controlled, and of course nothing dangerous (like cocaine cough syrup) is used on anyone in the show.

This first episode takes place in 1837. The team moves into the shop, looks around and starts looking at traditional remedies, foraging for medicinal herbs, making tinctures & plasters for sale, treating patients, experimenting in the laboratory and advertising the pharmacy. Ruth even goes off site to visit a “spa” for a hydrotherapy “cold water cure”.

I love history, what I love to think of as “everyday” history — not the big sweeping events but the little details of how people lived their lives, what they thought about, how they solved all their everyday problems. This series gives a fascinating insight into those things. I hope you enjoy!