Medicine - Treatment, 1750-1900

Improvements in Treatment

• Herbal treatments still used but less access to plants thus more reliant on apothecaries
• They continued to use folk remedies based on superstition, but pills would soon take over
• Pills were made by hand until William Brockedon invented a machine in 1844 that standardised dosage and increased production speed
• Apothecaries and quack doctors sold patent medicines, advertised as cures for everything. However, their ingredients (such as lard and arsenic) didn't work or caused harm
• Money could be made from patent medicines, which encouraged growth of the pharmaceutical industry
• Companies like Wellcome, Boots and Beecham financed chemical research to produce and sell their own brands…