Sarah and Constant Broyer, Pharmacist and Physician, of Carlton

Abstract

Constant Broyer (1833–1911) trained as a herbalist in Victoria during the 1850s and practised as a medical botanist in Carlton in the 1860s. He obtained medical degrees from the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati (1875) and Harvard University (1879). He is perhaps the first Australian to have studied at Harvard. He was twice found guilty of manslaughter by a coroner’s jury in 1874 and 1896. Both cases were much publicised but Broyer was not prosecuted on either charge. His wife, Sarah Broyer (1829–1877), ran the family pharmacy during her husband’s absence in America in the 1870s. She was the first woman to apply for registration as a pharmacist in Victoria in 1877 under the new Pharmacy Act and was represented in her negotiations before the Pharmacy Board by a young barrister, Alfred Deakin. This article traces the chronology and major events shaping the personal, professional and public lives of Constant and Sarah Broyer (and their extended family) from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1940s.