Guest Blog: Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires by Stuart Anderson

In Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain’s Imperial World, 1618-1968, Stuart Anderson explores the many meanings now attached to the word ‘pharmacopoeia’ in scholarly writing. In this guest blog, he describes the origins and background to the book, some of the problems that can arise, and indicates what scholars can do to ameliorate them.

I first came across the word ‘pharmacopoeia’  many years ago as a pharmacy student in an official book of standards for drugs and methods for testing them, published by an authorised body, with  the full authority of the law behind it. Its meaning was clear and unambiguous. As my academic career progressed, I discovered that the word was being used by others, most notably anthropologists and ethnopharmacologists, in a very different way, to describe the materia medica of particular Indigenous groups or specific regions.

Later, as a pharmaceutical historian, I became interested in how pharmacy practice in the metropoles of the European imperial powers shaped pharmacy in their colonies, and wrote about the role of the British pharmacopoeia as an instrument of empire. With increasing interest in the topic, the International Society for the History of Pharmacy established a pharmacopoeia working group and invited contributors to bring together the histories of the pharmacopoeias of many countries in one place.

Comparing these different histories of pharmacopoeias revealed similarities and differences. The sources of official authority varied, from kings and princes, to colleges of physicians and religious bodies. Some were ‘official,’ but not embodied in legislation, not statutory. With no inspection regime, no means of prosecution, and no sanctions, some were little more than voluntary guides. The role metropolitan pharmacopoeias played in colonial practice varied greatly.

A simple distinction between ‘official’ and other pharmacopoeias seems no longer adequate to indicate how the term is being used. It is derived from the Greek pharmakon (medicine) and poiein (to make) and was first used by the Greek writer Diogenes Laertius as the title of a book about the preparation of medicines. However, the first volume to appear under this title in Europe was the book Pharmacopoeae, libre tres published in 1548 by the French physician Jacques Du Bois.

The word remained largely the preserve of the medical and pharmaceutical communities for the next few hundred years, with official pharmacopoeias being commissioned and published across Europe and beyond by authorities with the power to do so. Whilst there were significant differences, what they had in common was that they were official guides to the range and quality of medicines prescribed by physicians and supplied and dispensed by apothecaries in particular territories.

Figure 8.2: Wellcome brand chloroform fulfils all BP requirements, 1916 (Wellcome Collection)

As anthropologists and others took an increasing interest in the range of materials used for medicinal purposes in Indigenous communities, they searched for a word to described it; ‘pharmacopoeia’ fitted the bill. For these scholars a community’s ‘pharmacopoeia’ describes the range of materials from the natural world used in the treatment, prevention, or alleviation of illness or disease. These pharmacopoeias did not need to be written, since such knowledge was passed on through oral tradition.

It was only after 1963 that ‘pharmacopoeia’ appeared regularly in anthropological writing. Several contributors then used the term in the 1976 edited volume Medical Anthropology, and it received a further boost with the 1988 publication of Sjaak Geest and Susan Reynolds White’s edited volume on pharmaceutical anthropology, after which it became routinely used in anthropological scholarship.

The 1980s saw renewed interest in medicinal plants in the West, as the search for new medicines from natural sources grew. The term ‘ethnobotany’ had originally been coined in 1896 by the American botanist John Harshberger to describe “studies of plants used by aboriginal people.” ‘Ethnopharmacology’ was coined much later to describe the intersection between medical ethnography and biological studies of therapeutic action. The literature in both these fields is now extensive.

Today, a search of ‘pharmacopoeia’ in Google Scholar generates around 300,000 hits. The vast majority of these relate to articles appearing in the anthropological and ethnopharmacological literatures. Those more interested in official pharmacopoeias, both current and historical, need to narrow their search considerably.

Figure 8.1: Orange quinine wine, prepared according to the BP, 1898 (Wellcome Collection)

The boundary defining what is embraced by ‘pharmacopoeia’ continues to be pushed ever wider, not only by scholars but also by others. ‘Pharmacopoeia’ now appears in the titles of novels, film series, and other outlets. In his 2022 book Pharmacopoeia: A Dungeness Notebook, Derek Jarman views his garden as a ‘pharmacopoeia’ – “an ever-evolving circle of stones, plants and flotsam sculptures all built and grown in spite of the bracing winds and arid shingle.” In the Vice TV show Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia – first aired in 2016 – Hamilton Morris explores the history, chemistry, and social impact of psychoactive substances.

Does it matter that the same term is used to convey very different meanings? In my new book I argue that it does. Scholarly work on pharmacopoeias increasingly crosses disciplinary boundaries, and lack of clarity about definitions can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. In too much scholarly writing precisely what is meant is not clear. Thus, to some, British Pharmacopoeia means an official book of standards for medicinal substances. To others, ‘British pharmacopoeia’ means the range of natural and other materials used in Britain for medicinal purposes.

Figure 2.1: An unscrupulous chemist selling arsenic and laudanum to a child (Wellcome Collection)

The confusion, misunderstandings, and ambiguity which can result are not without consequence. Opportunities have been missed for cross-disciplinary learning. Lack of distinction between the official and statutory status of pharmacopoeias often results in their use not being located within a drug regulatory framework, and inadequate recognition of the changing nature of pharmacopoeias over time means that important historical features and opportunities for new avenues of research have been missed.

This book uses the development of pharmacopoeias in the British Empire to problematise use of the term in scholarly writing. It considers the issues from several perspectives: a cross-disciplinary perspective examines how scholars from a range of disciplines use the term in different ways; a cross-imperial power perspective identifies ways in which the British approach to the use of pharmacopoeias in its Empire differed from that of other European powers; a cross-colony perspective describes ways in which the use of official metropolitan pharmacopoeias differed between British colonies; and finally, a temporal perspective explores how the meaning and function, legal status, content, and use of pharmacopoeias changed over both time and space.

What can scholars do to improve clarity and minimise ambiguity? The first step is for all those working on ‘pharmacopoeias,’ from whatever perspective, to be aware of the scope for confusion and misunderstanding. Terms, of course, are not ‘owned’ by one group to the exclusion of others, yet in many cases alternative and more appropriate terms already exist. For pharmacopoeia these include materia medica, herbal, and formulary. This book calls for all those who use the term in their writing to make their meaning clear to all readers regardless of disciplinary background.

Stuart Anderson is emeritus professor of pharmacy history at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.