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Martindale: The men behind the bookAinley Wade, Editor, Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia (1972-1978), Bath, UK, [email protected]
Christiane Staiger, Jean-Philipp-Anlage 24, 63263 Neu-Isenburg, Germany, [email protected]
Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia (‘EP’) is one of the
most prestigious compendiums in pharmacy. The first
edition was published in 1883, in London. The men behind
the book were experts in their field.
William Martindale
The originator of the EP,
William Martindale, was
born 12 June 1840 at
Hesket in the Forest, near
Carlisle in Northern Eng-
land. He came from a
farming family and might
have become a railway-
man, but a great-uncle
with a chemist and
druggist business whose
son had died young
apprenticed William in
1856. The great-uncle
died in 1858 too and William completed his apprenticeship
with Andrew Thompson in a local rival pharmacy.
In 1862, William moved to work in London pharmacies. He
took pharmacy courses at the Bloomsbury Square School,
passed the ‘Minor’ examination of the Pharmaceutical
Society in 1864 and the ‘Major’ in 1866. Two years later he
was appointed dispenser and teacher of pharmacy at
University College Hospital. He married Mariah Hannah
Harrison in 1872 and bought a fashionable pharmacy
located at 10 New Cavendish Street in 1873. The same
year, he joined the Board of Examiners of the
Pharmaceutical Society and became an elected member of
the council in 1889.
Based on his writings for the Pharmaceutical Journal
Martindale published the Extra Pharmacopoeia, with Dr
William Wynn Westcott who provided the medical
commentary and references.
In 1898 Martindale became treasurer and in 1899
president of the Society, but he resigned in 1900 due to
cardiac health problems. Although well known throughout
the Empire, he committed suicide on 2 February 1902
complaining of overwork and ‘brain fag’. His elder son
William Harrison took over the pharmacy, analytical and
publishing businesses.
William Wynn Westcott
William Wynn Westcott
was born 17 December
1848 in Leamington, War-
wickshire, England. He
lost both parents before
the age of ten and was
left to the care of Richard
Westcott Martyn, a half-
uncle who was a
surgeon. Westcott was
educated at Queen Eliza-
beth Grammar School,
Kingston-upon-Thames,
London, and studied
medicine at University
College, London. He qualified as a physician in 1871 and
became a partner in his uncle's practice in Martock,
Somerset. He spoke French and had some knowledge of
Latin and Greek. His diplomas were the Licentiate of the
Society of Apothecaries and Bachelor of Medicine of the
University of London. He became a member of the College
of Surgeons in England and took a diploma in Public
Health in 1892.
Westcott married Elizabeth Burnett on 18 February 1873;
they had 2 sons and 3 daughters. After 1879 he moved to
Hendon, where he pursued studies in occultism for two
years. About 1880, he became a leading member of the
Rosicrucian Society of England. In 1881, he started his
distinguished career as coroner in London.
Westcott published an large number of works. He earned
distinction as an authority on Freemasonry, Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and the history and mysteries of
Rosicrucianism. He published e.g. Egyptian Magic (1896),
Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtue (1890),
The Pymander of Hermes (1894), Rosicrucians, Their
History and Aims (1894), and The Science of Alchymy
(1893). In the medical field he published numerous papers
in the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and the
Transactions of the Medico-Legal Society, from 1872 on. A
social science treatise Suicide: its History, Literature,
Jurisprudence, Causation and Prevention (1885) was one
of his major monographs. In 1883, he contributed the
medical information for the new EP.
Further mutual work with William
Harrison Martindale included
“Salvarsan" or "606" (dioxy-diamino-
arsenobenzol): its chemistry, pharma-
cy and therapeutics (1911).
In 1918 Dr Westcott retired from
professional life and around 1920
emigrated to South Africa to live with
his daughter and son-in-law at Dur-
ban. He died there on 30 July 1925.
William Harrison Martindale
William Harrison Martindale succee-
ded his father in the New Cavendish
Street pharmacy and the work on the
EP. Born on 17 July 1874, he went to
University College School and was
apprenticed in Kilburn to Charles B.
Allen, who became later Vice-
President and President of the Pharmaceutical Society.
‘Harri’ studied in England and Germany, where he obtained
a PhD from the University of Marburg in 1898. The same
year he became a pharma-
ceutical chemist. In 1901,
he married Isabel De
Morgan, the sister-in-law of
a pharmacist. While expan-
ding the manufacturing busi-
ness he kept out of public
affairs, and became increa-
singly deaf from 1923.
He continued to produce
editions of the EP at
intervals of 2 to 3 years,
with Westcott until 1925,
and then on his own.
When he died on 8 April
1933 the pharmacy business was sold to Savory and
Moore, while the Pharmaceutical Society bought the
copyright of the Extra Pharmacopoeia.
Harri’s unqualified son lived on as a ‘gentleman farmer’
near Winchelsea for another 43 years.
Left: PhD certificate of William Harrison Martindale from
the University of Marburg.
Right: Extract from the Private Ledger kept by William
Martindale 1889-1899, showing fees and expenses paid for
his son William Harrison's PhD studies in Marburg with
Prof. Schmidt, 1895.
Courtesy of Wellcome Library GC/26/B/1.
Pictures
1. Monogram of WM
2. William Martindale
3. William Harrison Martindale
4. Title page of the EP, first edition
5. PhD certificate of WHM
6. Private ledger William Martindale,
Courtesy of Wellcome Library GC/26/B/1.
7. William Wynn Westcott
Figure
Martindale Family tree
Bibliography
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Martindale WH. W. Wynn Westcott, M.B.(Lond), D.P.H.: A Memorial
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Westcott, William Wynn. In: Who Was Who 1916-1928. London,
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http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/westcott/westcott.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/william-wynn-westcott
http://www.golden-dawn.org/biowestcott.html,
all accessed 1 May 2011