Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum
What Visitors Say
Great little place to visit for anyone with an interest in both historical and modern pharmaceuticals, lots of interesting artefacts to check out often compared side by side with their modern equivalent.
Very interesting museum about pharmaceutical history. Small but packed with things. There’s also a library. The people were very welcomed and knowledgeable. Enjoyed my visit via London Open house!
The RPS has got a small museum onsite, free to enter, with display cases arranged around the foyer and lots of information about the exhibits. I enjoyed spending an hour and a half here, looking at the artefacts from medical and pharmaceutical history, including adverts for bear grease to cure baldness, cyanide wool, and satirical prints about medical "quacks". Very near the Tower of London and St Katherine's Docks so could easily be combined with a visit to those areas.
Cracking free museum in reception area. Interesting artefacts, specimens plus cartoons. If you want more detail there are laminated information cards available. Some of the old cures and implements are both grisly and hilarious. The reception staff are very welcoming.
Highlights
Apothecary’s Shop in Miniature
Ceramic albarelli, carboys and drawers show how pharmacists stored and dispensed remedies from the 17th–19th centuries.Painted jar labels (theriac, jalap, rhubarb) are a crash course in Latin drug names and trade routes.
Front display run
Materia Medica & Making Medicines
Specimens and kit—mortars, percolators, pill-rounders, suppository moulds—cover the craft behind dosing.From cinchona bark (quinine) to digitalis leaves, raw materials travel from bench to bottle.
Central cases
Poisons, Patents & ‘Quackery’
Skull-and-crossbones bottles, Pharmacy Act notices (1868) and satirical prints reveal how regulation confronted risky cures.Humour and hazard sit side by side: caricatures lampoon miracle elixirs while new laws restrict toxic sales.
Side cases and print wall
Pharmacy & Public Health
Adverts and advice leaflets show chemists as front-line educators on vaccination, hygiene and self-care.Window displays and branded packaging turned professional expertise into public trust.
Poster rail
Opening Hours
Fun Facts
The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was founded in 1841 to standardise training and ethics; later royal recognition cemented its leadership in the profession.
Britain’s 1868 Pharmacy Act created schedules for poisons and restricted their sale to qualified chemists—many ‘skull’ bottles survive because the law mandated clear labelling.
Materia medica once included animal-derived remedies (e.g., cod-liver oil, cantharides); the museum’s specimens chart the shift to purified chemicals and later synthetic drugs.
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