Victorian pharmacy : rediscovering remedies and recipes

This is the story of consumer medicine - how high street healthcare emerged in just 50 years and how we still rely on hundreds of formulations and products that can trace their origins back to the nineteenth 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 chemist. Accompanying a major new BBC series, this book takes a look at which products were on offer, whether they were effective, and how we still make use of them today.

Providing hints, tips, recipes and remedies to make at home, and fascinating historical background, this book shows that while the names of products on the chemist's shelf have changed over time, our hopes and aspirations as consumers remain much the same as our Victorian predecessors.