Victorian Pharmacy: Rediscovering Home Remedies and Recipes

Providing hints, tips, recipes, and historical background, this book explains how many traditional remedies are still in use and how to make them at home Here is the story of consumer medicine—how drugstore healthcare emerged in just 50 years and how consumers still rely on hundreds of formulations and products that can trace their origins back to the 19th century. Sun cream, treatments for insomnia, dandruff, or warts, perfumes, and soaps are all as important today as they were 100 years ago and are stocked by the local pharmacist. This book takes a look at which products were on offer, whether they were effective, and how they are used today, showing that while the names of products on the pharmacy shelf have changed over time, consumers’ hopes and aspirations remain much the same as their Victorian predecessors. This is also the story of the growth of the drugstore, and how families have come to rely upon them as dispensaries of healthcare.