• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Swansea Museum

  • English
    • Cymraeg (Welsh)
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Visit Swansea Museum
    • Boats and ships on display
    • Swansea Museum Collections Centre
    • Tramshed
    • Staff Contacts
    • Friends of Swansea Museum
    • Join our mailing list
  • Our collection
    • Art UK
    • Egyptian artefacts
    • Transport
    • Nautical objects
    • Finds from Swansea and Neath
    • War time Swansea
    • Donating an item to Swansea Museum
  • Swansea – a brief history
    • Archaeology
    • Industry
    • The Sea
    • Mumbles Train
    • World War Two
    • Old houses and places
  • What’s on
    • Exhibitions
    • Events
    • Past exhibitions
  • Museum shop
  • Learning
    • School Visits
    • Community Outreach
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Our collection / War time Swansea / Wartime Chemist’s Formulary, Scales & Pill Box

Wartime Chemist’s Formulary, Scales & Pill Box

Wartime Chemist's Formulary, Scales and Pill BoxDuring the war years,1939-45, it was not only food, fuel and clothes that were in short supply.  The availability of tablets and medicines was also affected.

The National Formulary for 1941, listing pharmaceutical substances, their formulas, uses and methods of preparation for use by doctors, pharmacists, etc. stated “War conditions make it imperative to exercise the strictest economy in prescribing…many important substances are available in but limited amounts for medicinal purposes.  They are more urgently required for other branches of the nation’s war effort.”

The ingredients that were available were weighed out precisely on scales using tiny brass weights (2ozs; 1oz; 1/2oz; 1/4oz). The tablets were then dispensed in circular, cardboard pill boxes like this one from J. T. Davies (Chemists) Ltd. of the Uplands in Swansea.

Paper-based pill boxes were patented in 1890 by Robinson & Son (today Robinson Healthcare, Worksop) whose business began in 1839.

This item is located at Swansea Museum Collections Centre at Landore in the Stores

Primary Sidebar

Search

Back on Track

Tramshed is now open
Wednesdays & Saturdays from 11am to 4pm.

Find out more

Blog

  • `The Record’
  • YMCA Jubilee Campaign Poster 1919
  • Board Game, to raise awareness of issues facing Young Carers
  • Prisoner of War Diary
  • Swansea Blitz Photograph
 

In ‘Swansea – A photographer’s Dream’ Colin Riddle’s pictures of Swansea in the 1960s represent images of a lost age.

 

Though much of what he photographed still exists for the keen historian to seek out, much has also disappeared.

     

Buy your copy

Tweets by swanseamuseum

Footer

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

City and County of Swansea

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2022 · Swansea Museum, City and County of Swansea

  • enEnglish
  • cyCymraeg (Welsh)