Beatrix's Bottled Business

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In a recent interview author Penelope Lively declared her debt to Beatrix Potter's arresting use of language. This distinctive quality can be felt in many aspects of Beatrix's work. My article for the Journal of the Beatrix Potter Society  puts forward some thoughts on Beatrix's many allusions in both text & image to the contemporary pharmacy.

'Bottled Business - some thoughts on Beatrix & the chemist'. 
​Beatrix Potter Society Journal & Newsletter, 150.  (July, 2019)
back numbers of the Journal are available at the BPS website below
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​​A Tale of
Beatrix Potter's
​War
During the progress of the First World War the British government became aware that plant material needed to manufacture medicines was to be in short supply. To overcome this problem they encouraged both the growing of medicinal plants and their collection from the wild.

This was an area of activity where women found it was possible to use their knowledge to contribute to the war effort. Author Beatrix Potter played her part, collecting varied species around the varied Lake District landscape.  (See also my 'Bottled Business - some thoughts on Beatrix & the chemist'. Beatrix Potter Society Journal & Newsletter)​

Herbs, the journal of the Herb Society, 41:4 December 2016.

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Click on image to open article.

The People
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Beatrix Potter & Louie Choyce. A detail from the cover of 'The Choyce Letters' ed. by Judy Taylor from The Beatrix Potter Society. (see link below).
Bath in Time
Edith Gray Wheelwright c.1911  (www.bathintime.co.uk)

The Plants:

Sphagnum moss (S. palustre)  
​SPHAGNUM 
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​Commonly found in wet places such as peat bogs, marshland and moorland. There are extensive tracts in the Lake District. ​This was the most concertedly collected of wartime medicinal plants. When dried it is twice as absorbent as cotton wool which it replaced at home and at the battle front.
Picture
National Trust

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Aconite or blue monkshood (Aconitum napellus)
ACONITI RADIX: 
Typically found in shady moist locations the species was ‘ruthlessly grubbed up for the market’s demands’ in wartime Europe.  The root, made a powerful tincture, was used to prepare a ‘freely prescribed’ pain-relieving liniment or rub.  

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​Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)
​DIGITALIS FOLIA:  
This nominal poisonous plant is commonly found in damp woods.  Individual glycosides, such as the modern cardiac drug digoxin, had yet to be standardised in 1916. Mixtures of digitalis glycosides extracted from the leaves were used pharmaceutically. 


​Barberry (Berberis vulgaris)
BERBERIS CORTEX:
 A woody shrub historically destroyed near agricultural land, ‘single bushes may be found in woods’. Preparations from the bark are used against dysentery and jaundice.  Derived salts were available of the anti-bacterial alkaloid berberine. 


​Broom (Cytisus scoparius)
​SCOPARII CACUMINA 

The shrub is found in heath & wasteland.  Preparations are made from the dried tops of flowering branches; a weak diuretic for cardiac conditions