Held on Monday, 16 March 2026 at 6:30pm

Venue: Apothecaries' Hall, Black Friar's Lane, London EC4V 6EJ

Presenting Alligators, carboys and green crosses. Pharmacy symbols, past, present and future (Gideon De Laune Lecture)

To be given by Briony Hudson

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? Modern pharmaceutical signs have a long history drawing on Greek mythology, heraldry, founding fathers and medicinal plants. While alchemists used secret symbols to disguise their preparations, pharmacists used the tools of their trade – including medical ingredients, pestle and mortar, and carboys – to promote their profession. In this highly illustrated lecture, pharmacy history Briony Hudson will share the origins and stories of many of the visual markers still used today on drug packaging, in pharmacies and on medical buildings in London and beyond.

Briony Hudson studied History at Cambridge University, and Museums Studies at Leicester University. She has been Keeper of the Museum Collections at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Director of Museums at the Royal College of Surgeons, and a freelance medical curator. She became Director of Amersham Museum in 2022.

Her publications embrace liquorice, English delftware drug jars, popular historical medicines, the histories of schools of pharmacy, and a children’s guide to medical history.

She is a Past President of the Social History Curators Group, of the London Museums of Health and Medicine network, of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy, and of the Society’s Faculty of the History and Philosophy of Medicine and Pharmacy.

Presenting Medicine and Collecting in Early Modern London: James Petiver's (1665-1718) Apothecary Practice (Monckton Copeman Lecture)

To be given by Dr Katrina Maydom

James Petiver (1665–1718) was an apothecary, Fellow of the Royal Society, and inveterate collector of naturalia. He procured botanical information and specimens from around the world through his global network of merchants, physicians, and ships’ captains. Petiver included many of these exotic plants, such as Virginia snakeroot and sassafras, into medical preparations for his patients. In this lecture, I will explore how Petiver became a medical authority on new and rare materia medica, and how he incorporated this knowledge into treatments for his patients, from pensioners at the Charterhouse in London to colonists in North America.

Dr Katrina Maydom completed her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her published work has explored early modern apothecary practice and the search for new medicines in England’s early empire. She received the Kenneth Emsley Prize for History from St Edmund's College and the Burnby Memorial Prize from the British Society for the History of Pharmacy.