Stories from the stores

The Addictive History of Medicine: Explorer Beware: Hazardous chemicals in Captain Scott’s Antarctic Medicine Chest

May 23rd, 2012 | by | exploration, medicine

May
23

Many museums and organisations have been celebrating the centenary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. But have you ever wondered what kind of medicine Scott and his party brought with them to the ends of the earth? Here at the Science Museum we know because we have one Scott’s original aluminium medicine chests. The chest, dated to 1910, was carried by Scott and his party when they set out for the pole in November 1911. This chest was originally kept at the Lower Glacier Depot on the way to the Pole, however it was picked up when Scott’s second in command Lieutenant Edward Evans began his return journey to the Cape. It was only recovered in 1912 when a search party set out to find Scott and his comrades, whose bodies were discovered 11 miles out from the One Ton Depot.

Aluminium medicine chest brought by Captain Scott to the Lower Glacier Depot c. 1910 (Credit: Science Museum).

This medicine chest can tell us about the kind of drugs indispensible to Scott and his comrades. Plastic bottles containing Paregoric Elixir (Camphorated Tincture of Opium) and Aromatic Powder tablets (chalk and opium) are to be found within this chest. Opium was a useful sedative and pain reliever. Additional phials of hypodermic tablets of cocaine and morphine would have been administered by injection in cases of extreme trauma.

Hazardous Substances from the medicine chest made by Burroughs Wellcome and Co. c. 1910 (Credit: Science Museum)

The chest contains other hazardous chemicals such as strychnine, belladonna, arsenic, and mercury – medicines that would have been used as irritants to bring on a sweat; a common nineteenth century remedy for fever.

 

Scott and his party at the South Pole, c.1912 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Although it is worth considering how modern medicines may have aided early explorers, we know that even the most efficacious of drugs could not have helped Scott or his team survive the Antarctic storms.

Written by Kristin Hussey and Luke Pomeroy, Collections Information Officers

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Booming Fifties, Swinging Sixties. Exploring the British post-war popular culture of science

May 15th, 2012 | by | meta, public history

May
15

What was the popular culture of science like in Britain, in the fifties and sixties? The Science Museum has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to start exploring this question.

Sputnik 1 satellite, 1957

The 1950s and 1960s were years of technological expansion. In 1957, the space race started, with the USSR’s successful launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. In 1969, the USA put humans on the Moon. In 1954 the European organisation for nuclear research, CERN, which operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, was established. And throughout the two decades, civil uses of nuclear energy were being developed.

 These decades of post-war reconstruction, of decolonization and independence, were also when the world population began to boom. Industrial agricultural technologies, such as pesticides and nitrogen based synthetic fertilizers, started to spread outside industrialized nations, as part of what was called the Green Revolution.

 

Richard Dimbleby from the BBC Panorama programme during a live broadcast from the Science Museum, on 14 May 1962, for the exhibition of the US Mercury Capsule, Friendship 7. (credit: Science Museum)

The project, compares how space exploration, nuclear physics, agro-chemistry, and the history of science were put on display in exhibitions at the Science Museum, and on television in BBC programmes. We are looking at how the Museum’s displays and television programmes were organised – what was shown, how it was shown, what decisions led to elements being included and others left out. For example the American Mercury space capsule Friendship 7 was displayed at the Science Museum in May 1962, and it was shown on Panorama, in the same week. Did the two media – museum and television – take the same approach to it? Or were they subtly different? Our project is finding out.

 

 

If you remember a visit to the Science Museum during the fifties or sixties, for instance to see the space capsule Freedom 7 in 1965, please feel free to send us an email at PublicHistory@sciencemuseum.org.uk.

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The addictive history of medicine: the curious case of the 7 percent solution

May 11th, 2012 | by | medicine

May
11

“Which is it to-day,” I asked, “morphine or cocaine?”
He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened.
“It is cocaine,” he said, “a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?”

The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (1890)

Leatherette case for a cocaine syringe, not unlike the one described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Credit: Science Museum).

Sherlock Holmes is undoubtedly literature’s most famous cocaine user. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Holmes uses cocaine in order to stimulate his brain when he wasn’t applying it to a case. The detective famously injected a ‘seven percent solution’ which was most often administered by doctors; not surprising considering Conan Doyle was a doctor himself. In the mid-1880s when the author was publishing such stories as A Scandal in Bohemia (1886), cocaine was believed to be a new wonder drug, able to kill pain and improve mental function.

An advertisement expounds the virtues of cocaine for treating teething children. (Credit: University at Buffalo)

In fact, Sherlock Holmes certainly would not have been alone amongst his contemporaries for his use of cocaine. Since 1856 when cocaine had been isolated from the coca plant, the drug was widely used for its pain-killing properties. The drug found its way into such medicines as children’s tooth-ache remedies and was even prescribed to treat morning sickness.

Although his habit was always condemned by Watson, in later stories Holmes himself referred to his hypodermic syringe as an ‘instrument of evil’. Similarly, the recreational use of cocaine fell off sharply at the end of the 19th century as its dangers became apparent. The drug was eventually banned in the UK in 1920.

Bottle of Tabloid brand 'Voice' tablets containing cocaine for improving speaking and singing abilities, c. 1890-1910 (Credit: Science Museum).

In the modern BBC adaptation of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch, there is no mention of the ‘morocco case’ of Conan Doyle’s originals. However, in ‘A Study in Pink’, 221B Baker Street is subjected to a drug raid, and references are later made to Sherlock experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Could this be a nod to the sleuth’s original cocaine habit?

 

 

This article was written by Kristin Hussey and Luke Pomeroy, Collections Information Officers

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The decline of WorldSpace

May 8th, 2012 | by | communication, meta, space

May
08

Last month I went to a conference marking 50 years of the UK in space. Some of the speakers reminded us many of us use space daily without even thinking about it when we watch satellite television or get directions from our GPS.

A snapshot from last month's conference (Credit: Alex Costa)

I recently took delivery of a new object for the collection that also uses space – a satellite radio made for WorldSpace. The WorldSpace company was founded in 1990 and used geostationary satellites to broadcast to Asia and Africa. At one point they had 170,000 paid up listeners.

This WorldSpace WSSR-11 satellite radio broadcast receiver we recently added to the Museum's collection (Credit: Charlotte Connelly)

The company also maintained a not-for-profit arm, using 5% of the satellite’s bandwidth to broadcast programs giving advice on HIV and AIDS, agriculture or providing information for women. It was tricky to make these programs localised enough to be really useful. For example, WorldSpace broadcast some Somali language programmes for use in classrooms in one region of one country, but anyone in Africa could tune in.

Satellite radio also faces technical challenges; I spoke to an engineer who explained that the signal is easily interrupted by concrete, glass, trees and even smoke.

“I had a guy in Ethiopia write me every day that his signal was lost at roughly 10am, 1pm, and 4pm daily. We couldn’t figure it out… It turned out the antenna was in a courtyard, and people took their smoke break in front of the antenna – effectively cutting the signal until they finished their break.”

Arial masts are a common feature of the landscape in Africa now. This picture was taken in Buea, Cameroon in March 2012 (Credit: Charlotte Connelly)

Unfortunately WorldSpace was unsustainable as a business and went into liquidation in 2008. It might be surprising that a business with 170,000 customers would struggle, but communications technology has changed rapidly since the service started. Back then mobile phones were only just getting going in developed countries, and satellite radio seemed to be a really good way forward. Now, however, mobile phones have completely changed telecommunications in Africa and Asia, and satellite technology is expensive and hard to localise.

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The addictive history of medicine: Opium, the poor child’s nurse

April 25th, 2012 | by | medicine, meta

Apr
25

The Ebers papyrus tells us the Ancient Egyptians had an interesting way to deal with noisy crying babies: just give them a draft of opium. This practice was still very much use in the Victorian era, when it gained notoriety for the dangers the use of children’s opiates posed to general health.

Opium - The Poor Child's Nurse

"The Poor Child's Nurse" from an 1849 issue of British humour magazine Punch. Source: HarpWeek.

We know in this era opium was readily used as a cure for a bad cough, or aches and pains, but it is less well known that opium was also given to children, and even babies. Restless or teething babies and small infants would be given concoctions such as Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, which contained morphine (an opium derivative). There were at least ten brands of mixtures aimed at children and infants including Atkinson’s Royal Infants’ Preservative, and Street’s Infants Quietness. The most famous preparation of children’s opiates was Godfrey’s Cordial, which was a mixture of opium, treacle, water and spices.

Advertisment for Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup

A glamourised and seemingly tranquil card advertisement for Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Source: University of Buffalo.

Medical Officers during this period were convinced that opium was a major cause of infantile death, with the use of opium becoming widespread amongst working class families. Opium was often described as the ‘Poor Child’s Nurse’, due to its ability to stop hungry babies from crying. Attitudes towards the administering of opium to children were often casual, with preparations such as laudanum and paregoric stating recommended doses for children and infants on the labels of bottles.

Bottle of Stickney and Poor's Paregoric with dosages for children

The label on the back of this bottle of Stickney and Poor's Paregoric states dosages for infants as young as five days old. Source: University of Buffalo.

One Manchester druggist even admitted to selling between five and six gallons of “quietness” every week. That’s around 24 pints! Opium caused infant mortality through starvation rather than overdose; as one doctor stated that infants ‘kept in a state of continued narcotism will be thereby disinclined for food, and be but imperfectly nourished”. The scale of infant mortality at the time was not fully known, as coroners often recorded the cause as ‘starvation’. Lozenges or pastilles containing opium were often displayed within pharmacy shop cabinets in rows, very much like a candy shop.

Jar for 'Licorice & Chlorodyne' Pastilles

Rows of jars for pastilles with various ingredients, including one for 'Liquorice & Chlorodyne', on display in the Gibson & Son Pharmacy at the Science Museum, Lower Wellcome Gallery. Source: Science Museum.

 This article was written by Kristin Hussey and Luke Pomeroy, Collections Information Officers.

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