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When I was a kid, my mum would send me to “the chemists”. To me that was the shop where you got your prescriptions and other aides to the sick such as Lucozade and Germoline; although, confusingly, ours also did photographs. And then I went to grammar school and we had chemistry. How so?

In the middle-ages doctors often used untrained apprentices to mix medicines- which could lead to variable results! The chemist, by contrast, had studied the interaction between substances and had the specific skills and equipment nesesaary for synthesizing them correctly. With largely illiterate patients, it also became necessary for both to have a recognisable symbol: the doctor with a snake wrapped around a stick, and the chemist with a mortar and pestle. Another common feature of the chemists shop was a selection of carboys filled with brightly coloured liquid on a shelf at the top of their front window: the last one I can recall doing that was in West Street, Horsham.

Sadly, today we are more likely to see the continental green cross. And I still can’t get used to people drinking Lucozade when they’re not ill….


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