MacFarlan Smith
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Pharmaceuticals |
| Predecessor | J.F. Macfarlan Duncan Flockhart T&H Smith |
| Founded | 1815 |
| Headquarters | Gorgie, Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Area served
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Global |
| Products | Opiate alkaloids, Bitrex |
| Owner | Johnson Matthey plc. |
| Website | MacSmith |
MacFarlan Smith is a Gorgie, Edinburgh based Scottish pharmaceutical research company, founded in 1815. It is part of the Fine Chemical and Catalysts division of Johnson Matthey plc.
J.F. Macfarlan Ltd was founded in 1780 as an apothecary supplier. In 1815 John Fletcher Macfarlan, licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, became the owner of the family business, and acquired an apothecary's shop in Edinburgh. He immediately began to manufacture laudanum, a medicine based on opium. In 1830 Macfarlan began a partnership with his former apprentice David Rennie Brown, and so incorporated the business as J.F. Macfarlan and Co Ltd. In 1832 the company began manufacture of morphine acetate (the medicinal version of heroin) and hydrochloride, which led to the development and manufacture of the anaesthetics ether and chloroform. This allowed the company to develop sterile dressings for Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister under contract. After acquiring the Abbeyhill chemical works in 1840 for the production of alkaloids, from 1870 the production of codeine began in 1886. The company then acquired another site in Northfield, Edinburgh, in 1900 for the production of strychnine.
John Duncan was born in Kinross in 1780. After serving a five-year apprenticeship in Edinburgh, he moved directly to London, before returning to Perth in 1806 to establish a chemists shop. After expanding to Edinburgh in 1820, Duncan dissolved the partnership with the Perth shop and started a new partnership in Edinburgh, which in 1833 was called Duncan & Flockhart, incorporated three years later. Following the death of John Duncan (c. 1839) the firm was taken over by his son Dr James Duncan. In the same year the firm began to manufacture lactucarium, and from 1847 supplied Chloroform to Sir James Simpson. The firm expanded, and supplied chloroform to both the British Army, Royal Navy and British Red Cross during both world wars. After the start of World War I, the company established a drug growing farm at Warriston, to assure supply.
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