10 The 1868 Pharmacy Act

In another sense, too, structural changes within society helped formulate this problem framework. Earlier chapters have already touched on how the emergence of separate `professions' of doctors and pharmacists in the middle of the century marked a significant stage in the establishment of altered perceptions of opium. Professional medical control was to be one of the most important motives behind the new way of looking at the drug. In the second half of the nineteenth century the growing self-confidence and organization of the medical and pharmaceutical professions made a significant contribution to the altered perceptions of opium use. This came about in two ways. There was an increased concern about the availability of the drug, and that this should be in the hands of professional men. It began with the agitation leading to the 1868 Pharmacy Act and continued at the end of the century with the struggle to bring chlorodyne under pharmaceutical supervision. But there was also concern at the way the drug was used and about the medical control of its users, exemplified in the establishment of the particular problem of hypodermic morphine use and the outlining of disease theories of addiction, which are discussed in Chapters 12 and 13. In the 1850s and 1860s, however, the professional bodies concentrated on the availability of opium, not its use; the result was the 1868 Act.