Before you go any further, why not follow our apothecary, Trevor, on Twitter @ApothecaryTrev?

Due to the pandemic, and like many museums, we have had to remove lots of our handling objects and museum resources from display in the Museum.

Until it’s safe for us to put them back, this page will talk you through some of the objects on display.

This is a representation of what a chemist’s or apothecary’s shop would have looked like at the turn of the 20th Century (about 1900), with the equipment required for making and packaging medicines. To be an apothecary, you would be apprenticed to a skilled apothecary (much like Sir Charles Hastings did before he went to university to undertake a degree in Medicine).

Earlier in the 1800s, apothecaries were able to practice medicine so the apothecary’s shop was a place where poorer people in society might go for advice on medical matters. This might usually be a few pennies cheaper than going to a Physician. Even so, the very poorest in society would have found this too expensive; they had to rely on inefficient Poor Law Medicine until after about 1880, when Poor Law Dispensaries were established, including two in Worcester.

Our favourite object on display?

a pill silverer

Trevor is reaching for a wooden (treen) pill silverer.

Having made their pills, apothecaries would coat them with silver by placing them in these containers with a silver powder. Gently rolling the pills within the sealed sphere would cover them ready for bottling.

where did the apothecary drawers come from?

The Museum’s collection includes a beautiful set of mahogany drawer fronts complete with crystal knobs and gold leaf. They were donated by Mr Gedge of Malvern Link Pharmacy. Here they had been used to cover a door into the dispensary.

After their donation, they were displayed in the Postgraduate Medical Education Centre at the Ronkswood Branch of the former Worcester Royal Infirmary.

When the drawer fronts were transferred to the Charles Hastings Education Centre’s museum, they were found to be in poor condition, and so a replica was built for display, while the originals have been resting in our stores.

The original drawers, which date back to at least the early 1800s, have abbreviations on them for their contents. See the list below for what would have been in each drawer (we think!).

As you can see we have a few question marks, so do let us know what they are if you know.

What’s on the counter?

On top of the apothecary counter, there are three handling objects and a glass display case, full of a range of empty medicine containers dating from 1920-1935. You might still find some of these in the back of your granny’s medicine cabinet. Each object has a Braille label. Please do not remove these.

Cork press

Until the 1930s, corks were used to seal medicine bottles so that they could be taken home by customers. Each cork needed to be moulded to fit the bottle neck.

Suppository maker

A suppository is a drug taken into the body via the rectum, vagina or urethra. Here, the medication dissolves or melts and is absorbed into the blood stream. This mould is a bench model, which makes 12 suppositories through the large vertical cylinder into a mould.

Root cutter

Used by an apothecary making his own ingredients from the roots of plants and herbs which were the source of most medicines before the chemical age. Cutters were screwed as permanent fixtures on pharmacy benches.