Martindale: The men behind the bookAinley Wade, Editor, Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia (1972-1978), Bath, UK, ainley.wade@easynet.co.uk

Christiane Staiger, Jean-Philipp-Anlage 24, 63263 Neu-Isenburg, Germany, ch.staiger@gmx.de

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

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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