The Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) celebrated its one hundredth year celebration last month (November 18). 

In attendance was Muriel Anderson, a 1950 winner of the gold medal for overall distinction in pharmacy, an award given to the top-scoring graduate in the MPharm at both Ulster University’s and Queen’s University Belfast’s pharmacy schools. Anderson studied at Queen’s which was the only pharmacy school in Northern Ireland in 1950. 

This year’s gold medal winners Fionnuala McGrory of Ulster University, and Maeve Harkin of Queen’s University Belfast, also attended. 

Attendees also witnessed the current council’s photo being taken and compared it to a photo taken of the first council in 1925. 

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Dr Aidan McMichael, whose family ran a community pharmacy in Ballycastle from 1910 until the 1980s, also lent paperwork, books, photographs and artefacts from his family’s history for the celebrations. 

Some of these were also published in a 2007 copy of the Irish Pharmaceutical Journal, where McMichael wrote about his family’s pharmacy history. 

His grandmother Rose McMichael was in the first group of women to study to be a pharmaceutical chemist in Ireland. She won a C+D postcard competition for translating a prescription problem back in 1913. 

McMichael found this comment by C+D in 1905 on women entering the profession: “That the ladies can beat us in the classroom has been proved many times. Nor does anyone doubt their ability to dispense medicines elegantly and accurately. And yet they have scarcely made any progress towards business rivalry.” 

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He also wrote about the prescriptions his grandmother and grandfather James McMichael made up, and how they supplied chemicals for the local council and lighthouses on Rathlin Island. 

They also advised locals on everything from cameras to perfumes, and sold cigars, pipes and soda syphons. 

The PSNI was founded on November 23, 1925. A small collection of artefacts and documents were on show at the celebration, including ones related to the foundation of the NHS in Northern Ireland and Ulster University’s collection of possessions from the PSNI’s first president Horatio Todd including patented remedies. 

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There was also the original agreement between the PSNI and RPS (formerly the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) from 1928. 

And there were speeches from current president Dr Geraldine O’Hare, chief pharmaceutical officer Professor Cathy Harrison, and a video message from health minister Mike Nesbitt. 

Professor Roisin O’Hare and Professor Mike Mawhinney delivered a presentation on the PSNI’s history. 

At the PSNI’s one hundredth annual general meeting in October, health minister Nesbitt instructed the Department of Health to “formally engage with the PSNI” in exploring “options for the future sustainability of pharmacy regulation in Northern Ireland”. 

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The PSNI said a “consultation on future models of regulation for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians” will take place. 

In September, Community Pharmacy Northern Ireland (CPNI) announced that one million consultations have been delivered by community pharmacies in Northern Ireland through six targeted public health campaigns in the last three years.