Date: Monday 2 November 2026

Time: 6.00 pm AGM; lecture 6.30 pm

Who can attend: Open to all

Cost: £15 for the lecture ONLY; the AGM is free to attend
If when paying for a ticket for the lecture, you’d like to give a donation of:
*£5 pick the £20 ticket option (any guest ticket will be £15)
*£10 pick the £25 ticket option (any guest ticket will be £15)
*£20 pick the £35 ticket option  (any guest ticket will be £15)

Dress code: Smart casual
Members’ Portal (LMS): Click here to book
Contact: friends@apothecaries.org

Friends AGM & Lecture

Is Florence Nightingale’s medicine chest Florence Nightingale’s medicine chest?

To be given by Kate Williams, Florence Nightingale Museum

The Florence Nightingale Museum has a medicine chest in its collection said to have belonged to the ‘Lady with the Lamp’. Like many other objects in the Museum’s collection, details are scarce, although a number can be linked back to the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas’s Hospital. Researcher Kate Williams will share her exploration of the origins of the chest: what is its story, and how does it fit into the wider context of Victorian medicine chests and home medicine more generally? Like most research, it raised more questions than it answered.

Kate started off by graduating in zoology, and while doing that realised that her interests in people, science and food intersect in clinical dietetics, so next qualified as a dietitian.  She worked in the NHS in London for the whole of her career, in acute general hospitals, and for the last 30 years at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, working in all areas of mental health, and specialising in eating disorders.  Most recently she was part of a team developing a care pathway for people on the autistic spectrum who also have an eating disorder, outlined in the book “Supporting Autistic People with Eating Disorders: A Guide to Adapting Treatment and Supporting Recovery”.

Kate was lucky enough to be able to take a sabbatical about 25 years ago, and took an MA in the history of medicine and science.  This was so much fun that she resolved to return to this interest in retirement, and began as a volunteer at The Florence Nightingale Museum in the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife – 2020.

Refunds, minus a £5 admin fee (per ticket), will be offered, upon request, to anyone cancelling for any reason up to six working days before an event.  After this time, no refunds are available.