It’s taken a while, but a pharmacy has finally made an appearance in ITV’s Downton Abbey, now in its fifth series. In episode two of the latest series, Lady Mary, in need of a contraceptive device of some sort, sent her maid Anna to buy same with the help of a Mary Stopes book carrying an illustration of the required item. The pharmacy looked suitably antique – it’s 1924 now at the abbey – but it reminded me of the artist Damien Hirst’s idea of such an establishment, with things placed where they should not be.

Up to waist level behind the counter in the Downton pharmacy there was a very nice run of wooden drawers – so far so good – but above that were shelves of drug jars that should only be found in the seclusion of the dispensary. Another Downton bloomer to go with the TV aerial and the double yellow lines! Anna’s quest was successful, by the way, but only after she declined to be served by a rather dour male pharmacist and requested female service instead.

The assistant, though, felt obliged to confirm the purchaser was married before making the sale. It’s a good job the pharmacy was not part of the Boots chain, because there would have been nothing to sell. Until well into the second half of the previous century, Boots did not supply contraceptives on account of the beliefs of founder Jesse Boot, a Quaker. Staff used to send people to the hairdressers down the road – where they would enquire: “Something for the weekend sir?”

Boosting the NHS 

The Labour leader Ed Milliband said at the recent Labour party conference that his party had plans for extra NHS funding to pay for 8,000 GPs, 20,000 nurses, 3,000 midwives and 5,000 more care home workers. No mention of extra pharmacists, but then the schools of pharmacy are producing too many anyway.

A bit rich

I see that Nigel Clarke, chairman of the General Pharmaceutical Council, has been criticising pharmacists for not joining the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. He is reported to have said that the best way to protect patients and encourage professionalism was to be a member of the RPS. I find this all a bit rich. There would have been no need for this kind of talk if the General Pharmaceutical Council had not been set up in the first place and regulation had been left with the Society.

Although it used to be fashionable to criticise the Society when it had regulation as part of its remit, it had not done a bad job in advancing the profession and protecting the public for well over a century before it fell foul of the last Labour government’s penchant for making everything the same in health regulation. That government’s view was that it was not appropriate for any body to be both regulator, and promoter, of the interests of a profession.

There is a certain philosophical justification for that view, but in practical terms it can inhibit professional progress. The old Society could take a view on an issue in order to develop pharmacy practice. Now it can’t. The GPhC can’t either. Hence Clarke’s frustration.

Educational controversy

I read that Bill Scott, Scotland’s forceful chief pharmacist, has been having a go at the undergraduate curriculum: too much science and not enough healthcare. Needless to say, the academics are up in arms and busy defending the science base (and their research grants, too, no doubt). I think Professor Scott has a point.

I recall, many moons ago, sitting in my first pharmaceutics lecture and seeing on screen a diagram showing the various phases (gas, liquid, solid) of a substance and being left wondering what this had to do with the practice of pharmacy I had experienced before embarking on my course.The issue here is whether the pharmacy course should start from the basics and work up, or start from the actuality of pharmacy practice and patient need and work down. I think I know which approach I favour. I reckon it is the same as Professor Scott’s.