A brief history of British Pharmacological Society meetings

The British Pharmacological Society (BPS) is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary. It is therefore a young society compared with some other biomedical societies and particularly when compared with the origins of the oldest learned societies. In this article, I briefly review the origins of learned societies and examine the rise of pharmacology in the UK, as reflected in the scientific meetings of the BPS. The rapid growth of British pharmacology and clinical pharmacology in the 1970s and 1980s and changes in the way that scientific literature is published have resulted in the BPS having to adapt quickly in the way that its meetings are run. However, evidence suggests that the Society will continue to move strongly and confidently towards its 100th birthday.