Page 4 - Pharmacy History 32 July 2007

Early Victorian pioneer pharmacists
OResearched by Geoff Miller
f all the Pharmacists who have claimed Melbourne as home, two men stand out in
this commitment, Joseph Bosisto and George Nicholas.
Both relied on innovation and research as the source of their speciality products to a much higher degree than their contemporaries and both sought to broaden their markets by exports. They had the makings of builders of an indigenous Australian drug industry.
Bosisto, predating Nicholas by
about 60 years, pioneered Australian medicinal botany and sought to
build a business on its unique natural products.
Joseph Bosisto was a pharmaceutical chemist, and arrived in Adelaide
from England in 1848.to take up a three year contractual appointment with FH Faulding & Co. When his contract finished in 1851 he moved to Melbourne and established a pharmacy business in Richmond.
For the next half century Bosisto’s influence on professional pharmacy in Australia proved stronger than that of any other man.
He promoted the creation of pharmaceutical libraries, museums, and periodicals; he became the
prime mover in establishing the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria in 1857 (the first such society in Australia), the Pharmacy Board of Victoria (1876) and the Victorian College of Pharmacy (1881). Fascinated, like his friend Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, by Australian flora, Bosisto undertook research
into its many aspects, always with
an eye to possible world markets for Australian natural products
He was probably the earliest manufacturer of essential oils on
a commercial scale in Australia,
and gave special attention to the manufacture of eucalyptus oil, building up a large business. He took to politics, and was in the Victorian Legislative Assembly from 9th
Joseph Bosisto, (1827-1898)
For the next half century Bosisto’s influence on professional pharmacy in Australia proved stronger than that of any other man.
April, 1874, to 11th March, 1889 and from 20th April, 1892, to 4th September, 1894, and, by means
of Exhibition Commissions and Royal Commissions, he exercised considerable influence in the direction of the manufacture and utilisation of products from Australian indigenous vegetation.
His contributions to scientific literature include:
Abstract of a Paper on the Yield and Uses of Volatile Oils from Native and Imported Plants in the Colony of Victoria (Proc. Roy. Soc. Vict.,
vi., 52);
Some Notes on the Culture of Opium in Gippsland (Proc. Roy.Soc. Vict.
x., 39);
On the Culture of Mentha piperita, or True Peppermint, in Victoria, &c. (Proc. Roy.Soc. Vict., x., 116);
Is Eucalyptus a Fever destroying Tree? (Proc. Roy.Soc. Vict. xii., 10).
He did research on the native hopbush, local tannin-containing
species and many plants containing essential oils; he made an ingenious survey of the eucalyptus content in plants of Victoria’s bushlands and grew peppermint to produce oil matching the best quality English oil. With advice on the most appropriate location from his friend von Mueller he grew opium poppy yielding a morphine content equal to the world’s best. He was the driving force in one of the first commercial ventures based on Australian natural products, in partnership with Felton Grimwade
– the distillation of eucalyptus oil and its export.
He also studied the life cycle and culture of Australian leeches – yes, leeches – which were then in vogue in Europe as an alternative to venesection and for withdrawing blood from congested areas. He even perfected the method of keeping the leeches alive on their long voyage
to England. Australian leeches, however, – the five striped variety
– had to compete with the established German, or speckled, and the Hungarian, or green, variety, so the British Pharmacopeia took its time to give the five-striped alien its blessing. By then, 1914, it was too late for Bosisto; he died in 1898.
Bosisto failed to create a major pharmaceutical enterprise based on the uniqueness of local flora (although production of opium concentrate and eucalyptus oil has survived); indeed natural products could not have
held back the next century’s tide of synthetic drugs
Sixty years later another pioneer
of pharmaceutical manufacture, George Nicholas took up this new challenge.
(Cont. on page 5)
4 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 3 ■ no 32 ■ JULY 2007