Ohio History Journal

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ROBERT A

ROBERT A. BUERKI

 

Pharmaceutical Education in

Nineteenth-Century Ohio

 

 

 

The development of pharmacy as a profession in America had its roots in

English customs and traditions, the colonial practice of pharmacy differing

from that of its mother country only in being more lax and unrestricted and

standing on a somewhat lower level. Only a small minority of its practition-

ers was educated beyond an apprenticeship that lacked both the system and

standards that strong English guilds had once given it. Not until after the

Civil War was any school of pharmacy founded as a regularly recognized in-

stitution or as a part of a more comprehensive educational organization; in-

deed, formal academic study in pharmacy as a prerequisite to licensure would

not be required in any state until 1905.

Early attempts at pharmaceutical education in the United States met with

varying degrees of success. Until 1865, all formal instruction for the practice

of pharmacy centered in one southern medical collegel and, more importantly,

in five independent schools operated by pharmacists through their local asso-

ciations, called "colleges of pharmacy."2 These organized groups of pharma-

cists and druggists were determined that their apprentices would be better edu-

cated than they themselves were. Less altruistic, but no less important exter-

nal stimulation came from physicians who saw pharmacy emerging as a sub-

sidiary branch of their own somewhat more developed profession, from a drug

market infested by substandard and adulterated drugs, and from publicity at-

tending the accidental poisonings attributed to ignorant drug vendors.3 In

 

 

Robert A. Buerki is Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Administration at The

Ohio State University.

 

1. In 1838, a pharmacy course was instituted by the Medical College of Louisiana, which

later became part of Tulane University. Graduating only one or two pharmacy students a year

before 1861, the venture was never influential on the development of university instruction in

pharmacy or on practice, but rather served as an example for other medical colleges that en-

tered pharmaceutical education in the 1860s. See Glenn Allen Sonnedecker, "American

Pharmaceutical Education Before 1900," (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of

Wisconsin, 1952), 59-60.

2. At this time in England, "college" referred to corporations with scientific aims as well as

to educational institutions. The term had a like meaning in France, where Parisian apothecaries

had established a College de Pharmacie in 1777 with educational as well as professional func-

tions.

3. Glenn Sonnedecker, "The College of Pharmacy During 75 Years at Ohio State

University," unpublished address before the Ohio Academy of Medical History, meeting in