TradeNames: Brady's Pharmacy on Upper Camden Street has been at the centre of the local community and developing medical practice for well over 100 years. Rose Doyle hears its story.

Dr Colm Brady has an acute memory for detail, especially of the historical kind. He grew up over the family pharmacy at 12 Upper Camden St, still practices next door in Harrington Street and recalls the years since his father took over the pharmacy in 1924 with an enthusiasm that makes the story write itself.

"It's has been a chemist since 1894," he begins, like the best storytellers, at the beginning, "and was owned then by Dr Ryan MPSI. It was a prominent chemist shop, even in those times. Dr Ryan was the pharmacist to Jacobs and made up medicines ex-temperanously, on the spot from stock bottles. As they did in those days. As my father did too."

He reflects on this, fondly, shows me a 100-year-old bottle used for holding ginger. It's still half-full. Bottles were a certain colour if they held poison, green or blue if they held liniments or rubs. Aspro was available in tablet form and so were Beechams Pills, three of them for 1d.

"Dr Ryan died in 1924. My father had been managing the shop and he bought it, then built it up. I remember well how it was in the 1930s and 1940s; there were no anti-biotics, pharmacies remained open until midnight and my father would deliver medicines personally to patients after that. In those days there weren't very many doctors so patients went to the pharmacist first."

He casts a fond eye on the busy street outside. "This district was very congested, teeming with people now gone. The old Camden St is gone, too, and Charlotte St/Harcourt St station was a busy place - the people around here went from it to Bray.

"The developments of office blocks in the area means we're dealing with a different kind of customer now. The older customers were families and constantly in and out of the shop for advice on medical matters. Simple matters, easily managed. My father would refer them to the local doctor if he was worried."

Colm Brady's father was Philip Brady, pharmacist and, later, Lord Mayor. He met Kitty Deery, who would become his wife and the mother of his seven children,when she was working as a medical rep and selling to pharmacies.

"My father became interested in politics because of the deprivation he saw," Colm goes on. "He represented the area along with Sean Lemass, became Lord Mayor in 1960 and died in 1995, his 102nd year. He'd been a pharmacist for over 78 years by that time. As a family, we were initially reared over the shop but eventually moved to Rathgar."

He describes how the shop once was: "A Georgian building with steps up to the door.My father wrote 'Steps to better health' across them but in the 1960s levelled them to allow access to disabled people. In the early days the dispensing department was to the left and on the right was what was called the store. There were two large windows, one onto the Camden St corner and the other on Harrington St and displayed in them large containers and carboys, to show people you were a pharmacy.

"We had the first neon sign in the area, made by Taylors of Portobello in 1939. We used have to turn it off during the war black-outs."

On Camden St there was a small, side "wine window. People came for Buckfast or Wincarris or Cardinal de Salis tonic wines," Colm Brady explains, "and it wasn't the honey in Buckfast they were looking for!

"There was terrible poverty around this area in the 1930s so pharmacies would try to make some money selling sugar and chocolate. Later we took on sundries, like cosmetics, to bolster income. Then, too, the production of medicines was very time-consuming.

"Brady's cough mixture was made up according to a formula of my father's and cost 2/6d. for 8ozs. It had huge sales. People came from far and wide. Many people had their own formulas for tonics and such, often based on sulphur. People came for eucalyptus, wintergreen - the pharmacy in the 1930s was a sort of alternative medicine centre, with a great many herbs in use.

"You walked into one in those days and there was a lovely, herbal scent from the storage of medicines. Leaves and roots and bark - they all had a smell. It was a much more intimate business then. That's one thing I miss; knowing everyone. Your knowledge of people ran to thousands."

His brother, Fergus, also a doctor, pops in and together they remember Ben Daly and Jimmy Hayes and how they spent their working lives in Brady's Pharmacy. "They were bricks of the place," Fergus says. "I remember a Mr McCarthy, too, and Ms Dymphna Williams, Pearse Farrelly - all the names of people from years gone by."

Their mother worked all her life in the pharmacy, two of their brothers, Philip and Des, carried on the tradition and became pharmacists, Gerard is an optician (and TD), Frank a surgeon and their sister, Una, is now involved in care for the elderly. "The medical aspect came through in us all," Colm says, and goes back to remembering.

"There were quite a few doctors living around, working in surgeons and UCD and attached to Portobello. Prescriptions would come in with just a number on them and my father would know the formula and make them up. You wouldn't get away with it now - everything has to be tabulated. In the 1940s and 1950s messenger boys or the family had to do medical deliveries on bicycles with wicker baskets which had 'chemist' written on them in red and white. My father would send me on a bike to Tallaght and to a family in Three Rock Mountain in the late 1940s. It was easy, only a cycle run to the country. Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards used come in here in the 1940s. Michael always liked to smell the perfumes, his preference was for Houbiqant and Chelque Fleurs. We stocked a special stage make-up just for him.

"We supplied medicines, too, to Portobello House, which used to be a nursing home, and I remember delivering there to Jack Yeats at the end of his life."

Things changed, medically speaking, in the 1940s and 1950s. "New medicines came in, treatment for TB and for ordinary infections, anti-biotics and steroids. The pharmacy began selling medicines which came ready branded and the way of dispensing changed."

Sunday mornings in the early 1950s were lively times in Brady's Pharmacy. "It used be packed to the doors with people coming from mass. They would buy small things, a soother or something, but really they just met here. You rarely see anyone on a Sunday now. We lost lovely people when they moved everyone out! And there was a beautiful, soft Dublin accent that was typical of this area."

He casts an eye over life outside the window again. "This used be Kelly's Corner, after the sweetshop across the road. All the streets were cobbled until they took them up with the tram tracks; four tracks converged here and you would believe the number of wires crossing this corner! Now they're putting down Luas tracks right beside us.

"There were always large numbers of immigrant people living around here. The early 20th century Jewish people have been replaced by Muslim and Hindu groups but medical needs don't acknowledge religion! We're all the same. We still have a loyal customer base of regular customers but nowadays it's very much more a passing trade, especially office workers at lunch time. It's a different style of thing altogether but the function remains the same. A skilled pharmacist is a wonderful person to help people."

Colm Brady reflects on another change. "From being a predominantly male profession, pharmacy is now predominantly female," he says. "Possibly because the hours suit women who want to be in a caring profession." Proving his point, Brady's Pharmacy is these days staffed entirely by women. Kate Maher is its pharmacist/manager and she's assisted by Clare Watson, Fiona McGrath and Patriona Ghee.