pharmaceutical collection

When Norwich pharmacist John Newstead noticed that traditional pharmacies were dying out in the 1960’s he set out to preserve what he could from establishments across East Anglia. To house his new collection he built a Victorian style shop behind his house. The objects which were donated to the museum in 1984 range from shop furniture and fittings to dispensing equipment and mahogany drawers still full of the raw ingredients used to make medicines. Before the formation of the NHS in 1948, visiting the doctor was an expensive option, many people would have used a pharmacist instead who would make them a concoction using the personal recipes they recorded in their prescription books.