Page 7 - Pharmacy History 29 July 2006

Collectables by Geoff Miller
19th Century toothpaste pots
Acentury ago the idea of selling toothpaste in tubes would have been considered as revolutionary as the horseless carriage.
In common with most other pastes, whether edible or cosmetic, toothpaste was retailed in small china jars with lids of the same substance.
The appeal of indelible labelling and permanent advertising were the basic reasons why this type of packaging became fashionable.
Pots and lids were manufactured in
large quantities in England, mainly in
the Staffordshire potteries, and one firm in particular, Messrs F & R Pratt, had perfected and patented a process of colour printing on flat or rounded pottery surfaces.
The design was engraved on a special printing plate and then transferred onto strips of paper which were then applied to the unglazed pot. After the pots hardened a glaze was applied and they were then re- fired to fuse the transfer ink onto the ware
and make the porous body waterproof, the result being the very attractive lids that today are valued collector’s items.
In Australia, manufacturers and retailers started importing these ceramic or earthenware pots and lids from England around the 1860s, and in some cases they were still being used in the late 1920s. However by this time the more expensive underglazing method of labelling had given way to the now common paper label.
Dentrifices often contained areca nut, which was said
to make the gums look pink and healthy, hence the name cherry toothpaste or powder.
Manufacturers such as Fauldings and Felton Grimwade and Bickfords also packaged ointments and salves
in pots.
Australian pot lids have
proved to be quite
gregarious, many finds
being made far from the original source of supply. Together with glassware and other household objects they tell us a story about a way of life long gone.
Further reading: Kiel R. Collecting Australian Pot lids – Robert Kiel, 1981.
Most underglazed pot lids were used in the period 1880-1900.
Just as today’s society views most packaging as disposable, the Victorians did likewise, and the source of most lids today is the old rubbish tip.
The more entrepreneurial Australian pharmacists used the underglazed pottery pot for their own formulas, and cosmetic creams and they, like many fashionable dentists, also marketed toothpastes carrying their own names.
Now here’s a great idea!
A century ago pharmaceutical companies developed numerous methods to alert phar- macists that they were handling poisonous drugs.
Sharp and Dohme came up with an elaborate system consisting of shaped tablets on a string in a coloured bottle. (Modern Hospital, 1914)
Can you imagine what fun it must have been for the poor souls who had the job of threading each tablet onto the thread?
Print courtesy of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy
Burroughs Wellcome & Co in England and FH Faulding & Co in Australia, manufactured Mercuric Chloride solution tablets but didn’t quite go to this extreme of threading each tablet on a string, They used a triangular shaped ribbed bottle for their products.
Martindale (24th Ed. 1958) cautions that: ‘These solution Tablets are very poisonous; they must be dispensed in distinctive containers, suitably labelled’.
volume 3 ■ no 29 ■ JULY 2006
Pharmacy History Australia ■