ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the medical activities of chemists and druggists, most specifically those taking them beyond their roles as medicine suppliers into the realms of medical practice. The focus will be on the northern manufacturing districts of England, with particular emphasis on the towns of Wakefield and Huddersfield. Wakefield, primarily a market and service centre, experienced only a steady rate of industrial growth during the nineteenth century, while Huddersfield was a rapidly expanding textile community, an exemplary nineteenth-century industrializing town. The significance of the chemists' medical activities, most particularly counter-prescribing, is confirmed by the growing concern they aroused amongst contemporaries, especially the group most threatened by these activities: doctors. Clearly, nineteenth-century doctors recognized that there was considerable potential for overlap between their own activities and those of chemists and druggists, and regarded them as serious competitors for custom. Chemists and druggists were probably the largest suppliers of patent medicines during the nineteenth century, although they faced much competition.
