An ordinary meeting of the Society was held on 2nd December 2015.

The President was in the chair. He introduced the speaker Mrs Barbara Wright who spoke to the title ‘I used to have scruples – 50 years of pharmacy’.

Barbara said she was not brilliant at science at school so the teacher suggested pharmacy as a career, which she then studied at Nottingham University. She said there were three things that particularly stick in her mind from that time: that Strychnine was used by farmers to kill moles; that pharmaceuticals had important connections with plants and that the department had a lump of opium in the safe which was brought out for demonstrations, weighed first, then shown to students, re-weighed and returned to the safe.

However, the most important thing she learned there was the science of pharmaceutics.

She brought with her an array of old medicine making instruments and moulds and gave us a demonstration of making pills and pastilles and then sent them round for us to taste.

She also brought some suppositories she had made earlier from cocoa butter and told us about making creams and powders.

After her degree she came and worked at Southampton General Hospital where she was at first put to making intravenous infusions. She described the process and how purity was tested by holding the infusion up to the light.

Later she opened her own pharmacy in Woolston which was eventually taken over by a chain chemist.

By then the fun had gone out of it as everything was pre-packaged and she took up locum work before retiring.

In his vote of thanks the President reflected that he thought it a very good move when pharmacists started joining his paediatric oncology rounds.

There being no other business the meeting was closed at 10.00pm.