Ibuprofen Plaque

A hangover cure – and much more

The driving force behind Boots (see ch. 16) for several decades was Jesse Boot (1850–1931), who was quick to realise that the working classes were moving from herbalism to patent medicines. As a result, he employed pharmacists to ensure the quality of his products before his main rivals. It was World War I that gave the company its major breakthrough, however: suddenly, a raft of medicines could no longer be imported from Germany, so Jesse assembled a team of experts to create their substitutes.

One result was an aspirin that Jesse heralded as the purest in the world. Another was a fast and effective water purifying tablet, which soon became a vital part of a soldier’s kit. By the 1940s, Boots had established itself as one of the world’s most innovative drug companies, with a well-funded research department established in the centre of Nottingham. Neither were Jesse’s efforts entirely commercial: he and his wife, Florence (1863 – 1952), were determined to bring affordable healthcare to the average Briton.

In the 1950s, in laboratories on Nottingham’s Pennyfoot Street, two of the company’s leading scientists, Dr Stewart Adams and Dr John Nicholson, began experimenting with various drug compounds, the idea being to find a cure for rheumatoid arthritis. They didn’t discover that, but in the early 1960s they did formulate a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that greatly reduced pain of all kinds. It soon became clear that ibuprofen was safer and more effective than other pain relievers – and, as Adams confessed, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, it even tackled the effects of a bad hangover he was suffering.

In 2013, a Royal Society of Chemistry blue plaque was mounted at the site of the original laboratory, just outside the main entrance to BioCity’s Innovation Building. Sadly, Boots, now part of a multinational conglomerate, no longer works on the discovery of new drugs.