Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Figure 9 Morrison's Pills © Wellcome Images
‘A neighbouring tradesman having learned from his friend, Bottles
the chemist, that I had put myself under a regular course of medical
treatment loses no time on presenting his card. Bye the bye Mr Sadd
is the same gentleman who proposed getting up an anti-Morison
demonstration – he says that he considers Morison’s pills are a most
unjustifiable interference with the vested rights of Undertakers.’
Another example of the effect of ‘secret remedies’.
1826 Salicin (which is converted to salicylic acid in the body) was isolated by
Barthlomew Rigatelli. The following year The Institut de France named
a commission, which approved the drug, but the medical public were
less enthusiastic and by 1865 it was ‘un peu abandonée’ in France, but
thrived in Spain and Portugal (Guibert, 1865).
Benjamin Shaw, a Lancashire mill mechanic, kept a recipe book
mentioning several simple mixtures including: ‘Take of snake root 15
grammes 158 , Cadir (chopped willow bark) 10 grains, sulphur 3 grams,
syrup of sugar to mix, and make into a bolus… given in the worst
kind of malignant fevers, extended with convulsions and
158 Gramme (French and English) = gram (customary English usage) = gramma (Greek)