American Institute of the History of Pharmacy

AIHP Pharmaceutical Trade Catalog Collection Now Online

Selections from AIHP’s Pharmaceutical Trade Catalog Collection have been digitized and are now available online (here) through the University of Wisconsin Digitized Collections Center (UWDCC). The nearly 500 pharmaceutical trade catalogs in the collection, dating from 1829 to 2000, provide a picture into the stock of American drug stores of the period. The digitization of the trade catalog collection is the result of a Memorandum of Agreement that AIHP, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy, and UWDCC entered into in 2019. Under the agreement, UWDCC will digitize the entire trade catalog collection (comprising about 120,000 individual pages), and more than 12,000 images from the AIHP’s Drug Topics photo collection. UWDCC will digitize the resources and host the online collection on its website. AIHP and the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy staff will write the descriptive metadata that describes and contextualizes the items. The Pharmaceutical Trade Catalog Collection documents the development of the American pharmaceutical trade and contain advertisements for the varied pharmaceutical preparations and consumer products sold in drugstores. The catalogs feature lengthy lists of medications and prices, as well as color lithographs and other product illustrations. The first phase of the project digitized the oldest catalogs in the collection.

Slate of Nominees for AIHP’s Board of Directors Announced

AIHP’s Nominations Committee has announced the slate of nominees for positions on the Institute’s Board of Directors. 

The terms of two elected directors will expire at the end of 2022: Vice President Cynthia J. Boyle and Director Arthur Daemmrich. A term-limit provision in AIHP’s bylaws bars Dr. Daemmrich, who is completing his second three-year term, from continued service on the Board.

The Committee has nominated Dr. Boyle to stand for re-election as Vice President. Dr. Boyle recently retired from her position as a Professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. She is past president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) and a former president of her state pharmacy association and its foundation. Dr. Boyle has been an AIHP member since 2003.

Institute members will choose between two nominees to fill the director position being vacated by Dr. Daemmrich. The Nominations Committee has nominated Patricia C. Kienle and Terri Smith Moore.

• Patricia C. Kienle, MPA, BCSCP, FASHP, is the Director of Accreditation and Medication Safety for Cardinal Health Innovative Delivery Solutions. A nationally recognized expert in medication safety and accreditation and regulatory compliance, Ms Kienle is the recipient of the 2022 Harvey A.K. Whitney Lecture Award, health-system pharmacy’s highest honor.
• Terri Smith Moore, PhD, MBA, RPh, CPH, is currently the Senior Director of Academic Services and Strategic Initiatives at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). In that capacity, she manages the staff teams responsible for the association journal, institutional research surveys and data, and membership governance affinity groups. 

Points Blog Seeks Contributing Editors

Points, the joint blog of AIHP and the Alcohol and Drugs History Society (ADHS), is accepting applications for five new Contributing Editors to join the editorial team. Interested AIHP members are encouraged to apply.

Points brings together scholars and thinkers with wide-ranging expertise to produce original reflections about the history of drugs, medicines, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and their allied fields. The blog publishes new posts twice weekly.

Contributing Editors are required to conceptualize and author eight blog posts per year, between 750-1500 words, on matters regarding drug, pharmaceutical, or alcohol history and/or their contemporary cultures. Each Contributing Editor receives an annual honorarium of $500.00.

Points seeks to expand the diversity of content published on the blog. Applications are encouraged from individuals who are able to write informed posts addressing pharmaceutical, drug or alcohol histories/cultures, particularly those with backgrounds in one or more of the following geographical regions:

• Africa
• The Americas (including Native American/Native Indian medicine, drug, or alcohol cultures)
• Australasia
• East Asia
• South Asia
• Europe (including UK or Ireland)
• Middle East

AIHP Adopts Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Values Statement

AIHP has adopted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Values Statement to express its commitment to DEI principles and practices. Approved by the Board of Directors at its meeting in October, the statement reads:

The mission of the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy (AIHP) is to advance knowledge and understanding of the history of pharmacy and medicines. Our dedication to this mission is inseparable from our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Diversity: We value a diverse mix of people, minds, backgrounds, and experiences, recognizing that diversity broadens the history we recount, enriches the programming we offer, and brings new value to the archival materials and artifacts we collect and preserve.

Equity: We commit to equity and fundamental fairness among all people as an essential human right, and we recognize our responsibility to identify, acknowledge, and overcome the lingering effects of historical inequities.

Inclusion: We commit to a welcoming, supportive, and collegial environment where everyone is included, respected, valued, and made to feel safe to contribute and learn.

Our commitment to these values will strengthen AIHP as an organization, enhance pursuit of our mission, and contribute to needed societal change.

A committee of AIHP members, chaired by Director Sandra M. Fabregas Troche, was charged with developing the values statement. Other committee members include Nancy A. Alvarez, Christian Asia Brown, Richard Del Rio, John E. Clark, and Dennis Birke.

Grand Opening of Expanded Pharmacy History Museum

The University of Arizona R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy hosted the grand opening of the Coit Museum of Pharmacy and Health Sciences on October 29, 2022. The museum is a major expansion of the college's pharmacy museum first established in 1966.

Expansion of the museum was made possible by a $50 million gift from alumnus R. Ken Coit, a portion of which was earmarked for the museum. The gift funded an increase of the museum's physical footprint and the development of innovative exhibits that present the history of pharmacy and medicines in new and fresh ways.

One new interactive exhibit uses parallax animation technology to generate videos that bring to life the story behind each of the 40 paintings in the famous Parke Davis “Great Moments in Pharmacy” collection. Viewers hear a narration of the painting's story while visually flying in and around the “living” painting. The Great Moments in Pharmacy exhibit took 10 months to produce and was developed in cooperation with the American Pharmacists Association (which holds the copyright to the paintings). Brief excerpts from this award-winning exhibit can be viewed at this link.

The museum also features the Disneyland Upjohn Pharmacy Collection. This collection is comprised of many of the artifacts from the Upjohn Company apothecary story (circa 1890-1910) that had been part of Disneyland’s Main Street USA from 1955 to 1970.

Tribute to Pharmacists Killed in World War II Posted on Website

A new resource on AIHP’s website honors the 165 American pharmacists and pharmacy students who were killed in action, or died while on active duty, during World War II. The resource, a directory titled We Remember Them: Pharmacy’s Fallen (accessible at this link) identifies and provides a brief biography of each man. This tribute to fallen pharmacists is the product of years of painstaking research by longtime AIHP member Dennis Worthen, PhD.

The directory is an outgrowth of Dr. Worthen’s book, Pharmacy in World War II (Pharmaceutical Products Press, 2004), which provides a detailed accounting of the many contributions of pharmacists to the war effort, both on the battlefield and on the domestic front. (The book was awarded AIHP’s Edward Kremers Award in 2010.) Of the approximately 12,000 pharmacists and pharmacy students who served in the U.S. military between 1940 and 1945, Dr. Worthen’s research identified 165 who were killed in action or died while on active duty.

Dr. Worthen took on the project to honor fallen pharmacists in an effort to ensure they are not forgotten. To that end, the directory not only identifies the soldier (and in many cases provides a photograph), but also includes information about when and where he was born, his parents and family, his education, how and where he served in the military, the circumstances of his death, and where he is buried. Compiling and verifying this information required a herculean effort and years of dogged research.