Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain’s Imperial World, 1618-1968, 2024

Dr. Stuart Anderson’s wide-ranging analysis of the development of pharmacopoeias in the British imperial world from 1618 to 1968 takes a multi-perspective approach to examine how their uses evolved over three and a half centuries. Anderson sees developing mechanisms not only to ensure the quality and safety of drugs, but also as “instruments of soft colonial power” (249). The term ‘pharmacopeia’ describes a “list of materials used for medicinal purposes in communities, either in general or as determined by some authority” (5). Pharmacopoeias had many functions such as controlling the range of available remedies, excluding substances from legitimate use, or enforcing uniform standards across the empire (249). Using legal records, drug reports, newspapers, and a considerable number of pharmacopeias from the British imperial world and beyond, Anderson investigates the relationship between drug regulation and official pharmacopeias, contributing to contemporary discussions on the global drug trade, commercial networks, and imperialism.

This book is divided into ten chapters. Chapter one provides background on interdisciplinary contributions to the study of pharmacopoeias from fields such as anthropology, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, and history. Chapter two presents various levels and models of drug regulation and discusses issues regarding the authority, function, and enforceability of each. Chapter three compares the development and use of pharmacopoeias across several European empires, such as the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French. Chapter four describes the emergence of the earliest national metropolitan pharmacopeias, the London Pharmacopoeia, Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia, and Dublin Pharmacopoeia and chapter five describes development of colonial pharmacopeias. Chapter six describes the consolidation of the three metropolitan pharmacopeias into the British Pharmacopeia by the 1858 Medical Act, the earliest attempt to create a single imperial pharmacopeia. In chapter seven, Anderson describes the rise of Dominion Pharmacopoeias and the ensuing efforts to promote the British Pharmacopoeia as the “sole authority on all matters related to pharmacy” beginning with the 1885 edition of the BP (British Pharmacopoeia). In chapter eight, Anderson examines the poor reception of the Indian and Colonial Addendum (ICA) (1900) by India and the Dominions, the relationship between the publication of the ICA in 1901 and the appointment of a committee of inquiry in 1925, and impact of World War I. Chapter eight questions why the establishment of a committee of inquiry was necessary to determine the legal status of the BP and chapter ten describes the outcome of the Macmillan report and impact of decolonization on the BP in the mid-20th century.

According to Anderson “the British way of dealing with pharmacopeias in the colonial context” was “the exception to the norm” (246). Rather than impose a metropolitan pharmacopiea on the colonies like most other European powers, British committees collaborated with colonial subcommittees who helped shape the pharmacopeia with the contribution of colonial addendums. Such efforts, however, had mixed results and often ended in disappointment, highlighting unbalanced power dynamics between colonies and the metropolis and professional tensions between physicians, chemists, and pharmacists. This was particularly true in the case of India, where efforts to reintegrate Indigenous medicine and systems of knowledge were repeatedly disregarded.

Unification under the BP was short-lived and interrupted by disruptions of supply chains during the first and second world wars, leading to demands for an investigation into the legal status of the BP. Ultimately, the Macmillan Report (1928) ruled that “the colonials would be free to select whatever drugs they wished and to publish their own addenda and supplements” (217). The BP would continue to list standard drugs in general use throughout the empire but cease functioning as the highest authority. Decolonization accelerated the decline of the BP, as former colonies and dominions such as India and Canada replaced it with national pharmacopeias.

To Anderson, Britain’s attempt to imperialize the pharmacopeia by “joining disparate colonies and dependencies into a united empire with common identity,” with common standards “across national boundaries” ultimately failed because it could not be enforced in colonies where alternative guidelines existed (250). Effective drug regulation was only possible when official pharmacopoeias were backed by legislation providing for punitive measures against violations of professional standards– official status alone could never ensure compliance.

Anderson’s book presents a thorough study of the relationship between official pharmacopoeias and drug regulation in the British Imperial world. His chronology of the development of the British Pharmacopeia from chapters four through ten is meticulously researched with close attention to each edition of the BP, its addendums, drug reports, committees, and legislation, showcasing the author’s extensive background in the history of pharmacy and the medical market. The author has assembled an impressive array of pharmacopoeias, even outside the British Empire. However, the official nature of his sources could present some limitations. While Anderson’s argument concerns drug regulation as a problem of soft imperial control, his source material consists almost exclusively of official pharmacopeias, legal documents, and drug reports. Such official documents can only tell us how pharmacopeais and various drug controls were intended to function theoretically from a top-down, legal perspective. They provide little information of what was happening on the ground in clinics or pharmacies, what kinds of drugs patients were buying, and what medical professionals and laypeople said or thought about these measures. The reader might get a more grounded understanding if Anderson had included inventories or personal writing. The top-down perspective is not always well integrated with cross-imperial comparisons. And Anderson sometimes seems more concerned to define the parameters of academic subfields than to deliver existing historical knowledge of pharmacopeias.

Quibbles notwithstanding, this is a very well-researched book that would make an excellent resource for business historians interested in the drug trade. Chapters three and four contain information about a number of European pharmacopeias and early methods of drug regulation, related corporate networks, and a section on the use of pharmacopeias for tracking trends in imports and exports (91). Chapter one would also be useful for historians seeking interdisciplinary literature for research on topics such as the trade of medicinal plants or bioprospecting. Chapters five through ten contain the most detailed descriptions of the BP and its addendums and (the most useful sections on India), medical supply chains for chemical drugs, and legislation on drug regulation and drug safety.