Victorian pharmacy. Part 2.

The second in a four-part series in which historian Ruth Goodman, Professor Nick Barber and PhD student Tom Quick recreate an authentic 19th-century pharmacy. In this part the team look at the pharmacy between the 1850s and 1860s at a time when overcrowding and lack of sanitation had reached their peak. There were a number of supposedly 'cure all' medicines made out of rhubarb, liquorice, soap and syrup. They also look at the realm of electrotherapy and find out how the discovery of germs made disinfectants popular - they experiment with making their own by extracting carbolic acid from coal tar.