Preview

The exhibitions will open with a preview and drinks reception from 3–8pm on Monday 20 August in the Council chamber of the RCP's main building.

Please book for this preview evening by clicking through on the right-hand side. You do not need to book to make a visit any other time.

Timetable

• Tea served from 3pm
• Drinks reception from 6pm 
• Paintings from The Illustrated College Herbal – talks at 4pm and 6.30pm
• Treasures from the College’s Herbarium of the Pharmaceutical Society – talks at 4.30pm and 7pm

Private view evenings will be held on other occasions by special request.

Opening times

• Tuesday 21 August – Friday 24 August, 10am–5pm
• Monday 27 August – Thursday 30 August, 10am–5pm

The art exhibition will be taken down on Friday 31 August.

About

The botanical art work that will be on display was published in The Illustrated College Herbal: Plants from the Pharmacopoea Londinensis of 1618. It illustrates the medicinal plants that were used 400 years ago to make medicines for the College of Physicians. They range from watercolours on paper and vellum, to pencil drawings and lithographs to pen and ink.

There will be a price list for those paintings which will be for sale and no commission will be charged.

The herbarium exhibition will highlight plant specimens from all over the world which are in the 6,000 examples in the herbarium of the Pharmaceutical Society. The ones chosen had importance in cardiac medicine in the 19th century and will be shown in association with the RCP's exhibition of the works of William Harvey, who first described how the blood travelled from the heart around the body and the lungs. 

Information on some of the great plant collectors from that era will be displayed, with a particular interest in the medical men who risked their lives collecting in perilous places.