Totally unscientific I know, but my little Christmas recreation of investigating my family history has brought home to me just how many people died of what would now be preventable diseases, and in Dundee at least how many these were lung and chest related.

Some were preventable like tuberculosis, other were probably the result of breathing dirty air day in day out – and probably explains why the middle classes moved out to Monifieth and Brought Ferry on the Tay Estuary with they’re (hopefully) cleaner air.

One thing that my work of documenting the contents of Dow’s Pharmacy has shown is the increasing reliance on patent medicines – and when you had a disease with no cure you’d probably grasp at anything that gave some relief and would tend to go back time and again to products that worked for you, and hence increased brand recognition of these particular patent medicines ….