The book sparked off a nostalgic musing in me. Most of my earlier memories of pharmacy are primarily related to the family business. As a nine-year-old I moved to the town, Castleisland, where my grandfather had his practice since 1925. Pharmacy in those days was a very exotic place for children. The smells were aromatic and distinctive. The shelves were mahogany brown, filled with soaring banks of drawers. These were adorned with beautiful old lettering, with big glass knobs in which all sorts of esoteric chemicals were carefully stored. The shelves almost groaned under the weight of a vast selection of multi-coloured bottles with descriptions in Latin. Of course, it wasn’t just the sensory stimulation, it was the people. At that stage my grandfather was just short of 70, a Methusaleh to my young eyes. Like most grandparents, he was friendly to a fault. Additionally, he had a huge whiff of adventure about him. He had been shot during the war of independence and had almost died. Part of his mystery was that, to his dying day, he still had the lead from the bullets that tore his lower body to shreds. Of course, he also had other attractions. Nobody, that entered into the pharmacy, escaped the main attraction for children heading into any Medical Hall. The barley sugar stick was a most important fixture. Coming in two colours, original orange, which did not in any way taste of citrus, and a shiny black liquorice, these contributed to the sensory overload and marvel that the premises held.

By the 1970s, it was quite clear that the days of compounding medicines were moving behind us. My memory of the work in the dispensary, was of industrious secrecy. All tablets were dispensed with the label “The tablets”. Tubes of cream had a further indignity applied to them. The use of paint stripper and single edged bohemian blades were an integral part of any pharmacist’s armoury. It was a delicate process to remove all the paint from the tube to bring it back to its basic silvery lustre. Again, it would be labelled with the most basic “The cream”, with whatever instructions were required. This was an obvious response to the changing role, even at that stage. The concept of prescriptions for medicines wasn’t as ingrained. It was quite common for pharmacists to supply their own individualised, and sometimes patented, medicines.

The last thing they needed was the perception that what their pharmacy provided was actually exactly the same as their competitor down the road. The concept of controlled drugs, while important, was by no means as rigid in those days. It was not unheard of that a thousand pack of Dexedrine (dexamphetamine) tablets would find their way from the pharmacy into the local greyhound trainer’s hands. It was a time when strychnine was readily available, albeit with restrictions. It is funny to muse that this deadly poison is almost unknown to the current generation. A particularly nasty chemical, I have memories of measuring out very small quantities of this alkaloid to supply to farmers on foot of a Garda requisition. I hated it. It had been ingrained into me in my college days the horrendously painful way that it would dispatch its victims. No wonder it was beloved of Agatha Christie. I was reminded of a court case that my grandfather was involved in as a witness, way back in the 1930’s.

It was quite common to sell strychnine as a rodenticide. One of the important duties of the pharmacist, in this situation, was to ensure that an accurate amount of poison was supplied. It was recorded in the poisons register. In this case, lady was charged with deliberately administering strychnine to her husband with the inevitable fatal consequence. Legend has it that there was an amount of local sympathy with the defendant who, apparently, had an extremely difficult domestic situation. My grandfather’s role was to testify how many ounces of strychnine he had sold to the lady. Her defence was that she hadn’t even opened what she got. It appeared that the quantity she had in the house was broadly the same as what she had purchased. She was acquitted. My grandfather’s wry comment was that weighing scales weren’t maybe as accurate in those days.

We now find the profession, a few decades later, on the cusp of the next iteration of pharmacy. Yet, behind it all, the key message will always be the same. Look after the best interests of the patient. Nothing really changes.