Chelsea Polytechnic Chelsea College Department of Pharmacy King's College London Department of Pharmacy

Materia medica and therapeutics were subjects taught from the inception of King's College. A Department of Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics was created in 1901, superseded by the Department of Physiology, Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry and Pharmacology in 1954. Pharmacology emerged as an independent department at King's College in 1965. Practical pharmacy classes were held in the Medical Department of King's from around 1871, and from around 1896 in the Chemistry section of the Technical Department at the South-Western Polytechnic (later Chelsea College which merged with King's in 1985), and instruction for the examinations of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain commenced in 1922 when the Chelsea School of Pharmacy was opened. Chelsea became the first institution recognised by the University of London to offer a degree in Pharmacy with the first graduate in 1926. The rapid expansion of teaching in pharmacy at Chelsea occasioned the opening of a pharmacognosy laboratory in 1927 and the creation of a separate Department of Pharmacy in 1933. Distinct departments of Physiology and Pharmacology, and Pharmacy, had emerged by 1957. Post-merger, the Departments of Pharmacology and of Pharmacy were part of the Faculty of Life Sciences, and the Biomedical Sciences and Health Sciences Divisions of the School of Life, Basic Medical and Health Sciences from 1991. The Division of Pharmacology and Therapeutics has been part of the School of Biomedical Sciences, and Pharmacy part of the School of Life Sciences, since 1998.